Quote of the Day
I use a .308 to hunt deer. My wife uses a 2025 Subaru. She has got more deer than I have.
My Next-Door Neighbor (in Idaho)
October 30, 2025
I was busy shoveling dirt on and around my underground bunker to improve the landscape and fallout protection when the closest neighbor to the north (over a half mile away) drove in on his ATV to say hi and ask how the construction was going. We chatted for probably 20 minutes, and he told me of the recent collision of his wife’s car with a deer in Orofino (yes, inside the city limits). He also explained that he had his rifle on the ATV in case he saw a deer while he was driving around. He has been in the area for a few years, and I asked if he usually gets a deer. “Only one so far”, he said, but this is his wife’s second deer.
Here in TinyTown™ in northwestern Wyoming we have a major problem with car/critter collisions. Just last week somebody on the North Fork highway (between Cody and Yellowstone) hit and killed a buffalo. Totaled the car but didn’t kill the occupants.
Lots of people from around here call our town the “Petting Zoo” because of all of the mule deer that hang around inside the city limits. They occasionally hunt them out, allowing bow hunters to set up stands, but there are still ‘way too many of them. Some idiots around here even feed them, which is a great way of spreading diseases amongst the herd. I’ve got a major problem with the local mullies eating my aspen saplings right down to the ground, and I have to fence off the likely-looking individual trees to keep them alive.
So far (knock wood) I’ve only hit one, and that was right in town. I had stopped for a sign and was making a right turn onto a street with diagonal parking. There was a woman getting out of her car about 6 cars down, and when she slammed the door shut it startled a mule deer out from between the 3rd and 4th cars; it had its head down so you couldn’t see its rack at all, and it jumped right in front of my truck. I detonated the brakes but since I had barely stepped on the gas after making the turn the truck stopped immediately, with the front end dipping down and then just hardly tapping the deer in the side with the bumper as it rose. The deer jumped sideways, looking at me in confusion, and then looking back at the woman, trying to decide which was worse. He backed away, and then before crossing the street to the other side actually LOOKED BOTH WAYS prior to stepping out.
I got out to look at my front end but it hadn’t even busted a headlight. The woman began to apologize for startling the deer (I assured her that she’d done nothing to apologize for), but we both ended up laughing about the deer looking for traffic AFTER being tapped by a car.
We get lots of bikers riding through here before and after the Sturgis rally, and one of the ugliest things I’ve seen is the result of a motorcycle/deer collision when a deer steps out of the ditch onto a 70 MPH highway. One second invisible and the next right in front of the bike. Both were dead on impact, and momentum carried the bike and its dead rider past the curve and into the gully. He had been in the middle of a pack of about 20 bikes and probably thought he was safe from deer. I got there just a few minutes after it happened, but fortunately he’d had enough buddies that I didn’t need to go down and check him out or render assistance. Poor SOB.
I got a deer with a Honda Civic inside the city limits of Castle Rock, CO which is much bigger than the towns mentioned here. Stupid varmint tried to jump the car and hit the windshield which held. Windshield has an extreme slope which is probably why I didn’t end up with a deer in my lap.
What caliber for white tail?
F-150
Eagle,.Toyota, Ford, Honda…..they all worked for me!!
.32 Winchester Special when I am actually hunting the damn things!!
My wife’s cousin got 6 deer, all with the same Ford Taurus over several years.
When she got rid of the Ford, she never hit another one.
I joke about vehicular deer season, but there are more mule deer in town than ever.
I almost got hit by a black tail on a bike path when it leapt over the path, and almost hit a mule deer with a kayak.