The Deer in the Boot

[Graylien]

I live in Norfolk, which has occasional patches of deer population and plenty of unlit country roads. I've heard the following story at least three times, always told as a FOAF tale, but I can't find any references to it on the web. Perhaps it's local to this region, or perhaps it really does happen all the time round here. Anyway, I'd be interested to know if anyone else has ever heard of it.

The story goes that a FOAF - always a girl - accepts a lift home from a party late at night with a man she barely knows. As they are driving down a winding country lane a deer runs out in front of them and they hit it head on. The driver gets out of the car, takes one look at the deer, then hauls it round to the back and throws it into the boot. Getting back into the car, he remarks happily "There's no point letting it go to waste", and drives on as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. The FOAF is so offended by the drivers callous attitude that she gives him a wide berth ever after.

Ring any bells?

 

[PeniG]

I live in Texas, and that doesn't sound like what happens ater a deer collision, which is likely to involve damage to the car and a lot of deer mess. Nor would I expect the meat to be any good, but I'm gaming with my hunting friend this afternoon and will ask him whether or not roadkill venison is likely to be too shocked to eat.

Also, how big are these deer? Deer are normally carried on the roof or in the bed of a pickup.

 

[Jerry_B]

Many moons ago when I worked night-shifts in a factory, one of my co-workers hit a small deer on his way into work. Once he arrived at the factory, he showed us the carcass, which he'd put into the boot of his car (a Volvo estate, IIRC), and he seemed well-pleased with the possibility of free venison. I can't remember if he ever took it to a butchers. So I guess the story isn't beyond the realms of possibility - I wonder why it's a FOAFtale, as it doesn't strike me as being at all unusual.

 

[Timble2]

It doesn't sound impossible, but it must have been a small deer (like Jerry_B's colleague's deer), a couple of my families' neighbours have run into deer (they live in Scotland) and the cars were pretty well undrivable afterwards.


It's actually pretty common:

Road traffic accidents involving deer present a major problem in the UK as well as in many other countries in Europe. For example, in Germany during last year over 120,000 traffic collisions occurred involving deer, over 800 of which led to human injuries and 27 to human fatalities...

.....In the UK there is at present no system for central registration of road traffic accidents involving deer or other wildlife. Firm statistics on the scale of the problem in this country therefore remain unavailable. However, a recent survey commissioned by the Highways Agency estimated, that the toll of deer killed annually in traffic collisions in the UK is likely to lie between 30,000 and 50,000.

At Deer Collisions

 

[Graylien]

Also, how big are these deer? Deer are normally carried on the roof or in the bed of a pickup.

The ones I've actually seen myself would be too big to get into an average boot, though I guess you could just about squeeze them into an estate car.

 

[Timble2]

Muntjac are pretty small;

In flight Muntjac have a barrel-like appearance and they can often be mistaken for foxes when seen in poor light or dense cover. A mature animal may reach a height of 43-46 cm at the shoulder and weigh between 11 and 16 kg, the females (does) being slightly smaller.

Deer_UK

However, one of these would mess up your car:

Red deer...

Stag weights vary between 90–190kg (200–420lbs), with hill Red rarely weighing more than 300lbs. These weights are traditionally measured in stones (one stone = 14 lbs) and pounds. The height at the shoulder of mature stags will be between 101–112cm (41–54in).

Red Deer

 

[wembley8]

One of my Dad's friends once hit a sheep, which then ended up at the local butcher via his boot. (...supposedly.)

 

[RealPaZZa]

a mate used to rabbiting with his car; headlights on rabbit freeze, run them over, then fill the boot.

 

[mejane]

I live in Texas, and that doesn't sound like what happens ater a deer collision, which is likely to involve damage to the car and a lot of deer mess. Nor would I expect the meat to be any good, but I'm gaming with my hunting friend this afternoon and will ask him whether or not roadkill venison is likely to be too shocked to eat.

I'm intrigued by the idea of the animal being too shocked to eat - do you mean bones broken and therefore hard to butcher properly or is the meat somehow spoiled because of the cause of death?

Now for a true "It Happened to Me!" tale that happened back in the (in)famous hot summer of '76 when I were a lass ... our parish priest, knowing that Mother was finding it hard to make ends meet, gave her a present of a rabbit that he'd run over in his car and thought would make a nice stew. Now, I'm quite partial to rabbit stew but roadkill rabbit that had been baked in the oven of a car boot for a few days? Needless to say, Mother thanked the Father and promptly gave the poor animal (and attendent maggots) a decent burial.

Jane.

 

[Kondoru]

Done it myself and others have so many times not worth commenting upon.

 

[mindalai]

Red deer are huge and probably would not go into most boots but the more common (round here anyway) roe deer are really quite tiny. I reckon I could get at least four into the boot of my Punto if I was a less careful driver (and not a vegetarian).

 

[Kondoru]

common round here, especialy in the suburbs

reds rare

we also have muntjac

its so distressing the way they behave like pheasants on the road. I have had so many near misses

and yet you seldom see them as roadkill...perhaps they get picked up??

 

[PeniG]

I brought it up at the game and the consensus was that so much depended on the size of the deer, the size and velocity of the car, and the angle of impact that predictions are hard to make. Any result is possible from totaling the deer and the car to the deer getting up and bounding away. In fact, when I started the story he thought I was going to tell the one about the stunned deer waking up and totaling the car by kicking its way out. This is a real possibility if the deer isn't wallowing in gore, so take care!

My friends agreed that probably a deer struck hard enough to be killed would have meat sufficiently bloodshot as to be unpleasant to eat, but parts of it might be salvagable and a lot depends on how picky you are. "Shocked" or "bloodshot" meat has had blood distributed into the muscle by impact and is normally rejected, but he said he could imagine a "Norfolk hillbilly" eating it. Butchering an animal is a skill I don't recommend anyone undertaking untrained. It's easy to ruin the meat.

One friend said that, having done it, he would expect hitting a Texas-sized deer in a British-sized car to demolish both the deer and the car. On lighter vehicles, even a nonlethal impact can bend the fender of a modern car to the point that the wheels can't turn. It's hard to imagine a muntjac wrecking a car, though, and it would easily fit in a trunk.

 

[Nemo]

My friends agreed that probably a deer struck hard enough to be killed would have meat sufficiently bloodshot as to be unpleasant to eat, but parts of it might be salvagable and a lot depends on how picky you are. "Shocked" or "bloodshot" meat has had blood distributed into the muscle by impact and is normally rejected, but he said he could imagine a "Norfolk hillbilly" eating it. Butchering an animal is a skill I don't recommend anyone undertaking untrained. It's easy to ruin the meat.

But, doesn't meat have blood in it already?
(That's why its called "red meat".)

And what is wrong with meat with extra blood in it? (Unless the flesh has exploded due from the impact and the shredding of the fibres)

Unless you only eat meat drained of blood?

[edit] IIRC. In the UK it's illegal for the driver, who has runover/killed (in this case) a deer to take it away with him...but the driver of a car following the first car can take the carass away with him.[/edit]

 

[PeniG]

Well - yes, you do, normally, eat meat drained of blood. That's one of the purposes of hanging meat. The blood's not in the muscle and fat - it's in the veins and capillaries. Although a small amount of blood remains in the capillaries of any given cut of meat (so that a rare steak bleeds and chicken isn't done enough when you poke a hole in it and it runs pink), you don't want the blood from the veins and arteries violently expelled into tissue. You also don't want to nick the stomach when you're dressing the meat, as the bile will enter the tissue and turn the meat sour.

A gun shocks the meat, too, but less of it than a car impact would. This is one reason to prefer bow hunting to hunting with a rifle. Properly used, however, a rifle kills more quickly and is therefore more humane. These are the sorts of considerations a hunter (or a livestock rancher) has to balance out when he decides how he's going to undertake making meat.

Turning animals into meat is a complex process. Very few parts of very few animals aren't usable for human nutrition, but they have to be prepared properly every step of the way, or the animal is unpalatable (at best) or dangerous (at worst) to eat. I don't recommend trying it untrained, but if you're going to eat meat, I think learning proper dressing and butchering techniques is a good idea, if only so you can appreciate what you're doing.

 

[GNC]

Wouldn't the meat be bruised at the very least?

 

[filcee]

Wouldn't the meat be bruised at the very least?

Tenderised, maybe?

...[edit] IIRC. In the UK it's illegal for the driver, who has runover/killed (in this case) a deer to take it away with him...but the driver of a car following the first car can take the carass away with him.[/edit]

I'm reliably informed that this is true for game birds, so probably true for deer, too. My country friends tend to carry mobile phones for just this purpose. If one of them 'accidently' hits a pheasant or similar, their mate's there in no time to pick up the result...

 

[PeniG]

Think of shocked meat as bruised squared. Bruising is the result of capillaries breaking and spreading blood into the surrounding tissue. Bloodshot meat has massive, massive bruising around the impact area because of the breaking not only of capillaries, but of veins and arteries.

Tenderizing meat by beating on it after it's been through the butchering process doesn't bruise because most of the blood is gone. Beating on a steak breaks down the muscle tissue and makes it easier to chew. A single massive car impact won't be nearly as effective in breaking down the muscles as it will be in spreading the blood.

I had no idea I knew this much about the post mortem vicissitudes of meat, but you pick up things if you're paying attention.

 

[Scunnerlugzz]

I've known this to happen.

A young chap I know hit a roe deer damaging the wing and headlight of his car. He decided to take the carcass into town to the local butcher, who was well known to buy poached and road kill deer. He thought at least he'd get a some cash towards the repair.
He folded down the back seat and got the deer into the hatchback and drove home. He stopped in past his parents to get his dad to give him a hand carrying the deer into the butchers. When he came out of this parents house the stunned deer had come around and was going mental inside his car.
It ripped the interior to shreds and his car was written off!

 

[mindalai]

I've got to know. was the deer Ok in the end?

 

[Scunnerlugzz]

Yup, they opened the hatchback and it got out. Probably a bit bashed and bruised, but last seen running into a wood with a pair of fluffy dice swinging from it's antlers.



Ok, maybe not the fluffy dice bit

 

[mindalai]

phew!

I can sleep again.

 

[Kondoru]

Double phew!

That almost happened to me once.

 

[kirmildew]

Red deer are pretty big but roe deer are small. Fallow deer are smaller than I thought too, even the stags are quite petite!
My grandad knew a man who saw a pheasant at the side of the road and swerved to hit it... How he must have laughed as he hit the painted cement garden model and wrecked his front bumper and lights. Well, he shouldn't have been so mean.

 

[Kondoru]

he should have waited untill it walked out in front of him.

 

[GNC]

Did anyone see the update to the Iron Age Village documentary from the seventies last night on BBC Four? Very interesting, but at one point one of the ladies said that she used the gutting and preparing of meat skills she acquired in the project all those years ago to pick up a deer carcass she found by the side of the road so she could chop it up and eat it later.

So there you go, it does happen.

 

[LordRsmacker]

I'm intrigued by the idea of the animal being too shocked to eat - do you mean bones broken and therefore hard to butcher properly or is the meat somehow spoiled because of the cause of death?

I seem to recall hearing that when deer are hit by a car, but get up and run away, they will almost certainly die a few hours later, that they are particularly susceptible to some sort of delayed shock syndrome. Maybe the chemicals released into the bloodstream would taint the meat? That wouldn't affect an animal killed stone dead though, I suppose.

Round here we have a major problem with gangs killing the farmed deer, clearing out the stock overnight, killing with crossbows. There were warnings issued not to buy cheap venison in pubs, not because it might be stolen, but because it might be poisonous! This was supposedly down to the stuff they were fed, that they were never being raised for human consumption. This sounds like BS to me, more a way to dissuade people from buying the cheap meat. Then again........can anyone enlighten me?

 

[Mister_Awesome]

We get lots of white-tailed deer around here, and they frequently make ill-advised attempts to cross the highway and other roads. They aren't all that big, but even at a relatively slow speed they can do a lot of damage to a car, or so I've heard. My parents tell stories of people trashing their cars on deer, while the deer gets up and runs away; though they almost certianly died quickly thereafter. As for the food, it is a lot of perfectly good meat, even if you carve away the damaged parts. It really isn't too ridiculous to imagine someone keeping a deer they've hit, to me.

Actually my dad has a good story about (almost) hitting deer. He used to drive his motorcycle on the mountain roads at night at very high speeds. He says one night he caught a glimpse of a deer in his rear view mirror that he must have missed by inches while driving over 60 miles per hour. If he had hit it, he would almost certainly be dead.

And for an example of a deer hitting a vehicle, he said he was talking to some guy at a construction site who had recovered from a two year coma. He said he'd been driving his motorcyle down the road and a deer had jumped off a bank onto his lap, basically, causing a nasty crash. The only reason he knew what had happened is because someone had been driving behind him and witnessed it. The last thing he remembered was driving. Could have been the guy pulling my dad's leg, but it doesn't sound too far-fetched!

 

[Ringo]

A deer would certainly do some damage depending on your speed but imagine hitting thisat 70 mph!!

 

[rynner2]

This thread seems to be the nearest we have to a Road Kill one - although this story isn't even about road kill!
Roadkill man will eat dolphin for Christmas in Cornwall
By DaveCDM | Posted: December 08, 2015

A Cornish man famous for eating roadkill is planning some-fin different for his Christmas lunch - a DOLPHIN he found on the beach.
Eccentric Arthur Boyt, 76, has spent years dining on dead animals he salvages from roads including weasels, hedgehogs, squirrels, and otters.
He scoops up the flattened carcasses before taking them home and turning them into meals or freezing them for later.

Last Christmas he tucked into badger casserole but this year he is preparing cooked common DOLPHIN.
Arthur says he found one washed up dead on a beach near his home in Davidstow, Cornwall.
But it could land him in trouble with the Queen - experts say all dolphins found on Britain's coast belong to the CROWN.
The retired biologist said the marine mammal tastes so "delicious" he's already eaten some of it along with a SEAL he found in the same spot.
Married Arthur said: "This will even be a first for me eating dolphin on Christmas Day.
"When I found the dolphin on the beach I collected what meat joints I could and I kept them in the freezer for special occasions such as Christmas. It tastes so delicious.
"The great thing about roadkill is that you are getting meat without the guilt of killing an animal or having one killed on your behalf.
"It's a situation much more in keeping with the spirit of Christmas."

But Danny Groves, a spokesman for the Whales & Dolphin Conservation, said eating dolphin found on a beach is a crime.
He said: "Whales and dolphins are not public property - they belong to the Crown. If they do get washed up they should be removed by local authority.
"A washed up dolphin or whale could be riddled with disease so anyone eating the animal is putting themselves at serious risk.
''In the UK whales and dolphins (and porpoises) are classed as 'Royal fish'. Essentially when they strand they are the property of the Crown.
"They should not be removed by members of the public. Even if that were not the case, it is a very unwise thing to eat dead whales or dolphins that wash up on the shore.
"They can carry diseases which are transferable to humans, and are usually taken away by local authorities to be buried in landfill.

"Whales and dolphins can also be heavily contaminated. Pilot whales, for example often carry high levels of mercury.
"Long term independent studies of children in the Faroe Islands where the meat is consumed have directly linked neurological delays, cardiovascular problems and other development problems to their mothers pre-natal consumption of the whale meat.
"Anyone who does come across a dead whale or dolphins should contact the UK Strandings Hotline rather than take the carcass home and eat it."

Abby Crossby, a spokesman for Marine Stranded Network Trust, said: "To remove any stranded animal requires a licence to be issued by the Marine Management Organisation.
"In addition to dolphins, these are protected species and there are laws in place to prevent the public from interfering with them - whether they are dead or alive.
"We would not recommend these practices, not only for legal reasons, but for the factors of pollutant and disease risks as well."
But a spokesman for Defra said a law may only have been broken if Arthur had transported the dolphin.

Arthur will be spending Christmas with his wife, Su, and his 90-year-old mother-in-law, but said they will not be joining him with his dolphin dish.
He added: "My wife is a vegetarian so she doesn't eat the dishes I cook and especially not ones with animals I've collected from the roadsides.
"There will still be a traditional turkey on Christmas Day but I don't like buying and eating meat.
"I feel very strongly about killing animals, so strongly, I can only just about manage a chicken leg at a party or something.
"I would never buy meat and the great thing about roadkill is knowing that the animal hasn't been purposely killed."

Arthur started eating roadkill aged 13 and loves to pig-out on fox, rabbit, sparrow, deer, and pigeon.
He says the oddest-tasting food he's ever had is BAT and he once had porcupine he brought back from a holiday in Canada.
He said: ''What you have for Christmas depends very much on what you find by the road in the week or so beforehand - unless you are like me and keep a good supply of all kinds of roadkill in the freezer.
''Rabbits are always getting killed on the road and they make a very tasty and nutritious meal for at least four people.
''The pheasants that have survived three months of shooting go on getting themselves killed on the roads without a shot being fired.

''But badgers are heavy with fat by now and are out and about as usual until the cold really sets in. The family will be amazed and there will be no tyre mark on the meat.
''If it looks reasonably fresh don't worry about how long it has been dead as in this cold weather they will last for weeks, unless its skin comes off in your hand when you pick it up by the back leg, in which case it may be too strong for any palate but that of the connoisseur.
''Just because it hasn't got a label on doesn't mean it's not edible. I've been doing it all my life and never been ill once.''

An average Common Dolphin can contain up to 125 lbs worth of meat once stripped from bones - the equivalent to 600 McDonald's quarter pounder burgers.

http://www.cornishman.co.uk/Roadkil...s-Cornwall/story-28318363-detail/story.html#1