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The saddest thing

sourceninja

Diamond Member
I saw the saddest thing today on my way to work. I've tried to stop thinking about it, but it's really bothering me.

It was a baby deer. He had been hit by a car and his back legs were broken. He was crawling and screaming trying to get away, but he couldn't walk. We got him off the road and to the side, but I didn't have my pistol, a knife, or anything to put him out of his misery. All I could do is watch him suffer for 35 minutes while I waited for the police to come and put him down.

My point is, don't be an asshole. If you hit something and it's alive, call the police or animal control. Nothing should have to suffer like that.

I can still see him in my head and hear him crying out for his mother. I couldn't do anything for him. He died alone, terrified and in what I can only guess was horrible pain.
 
All that meat, gone to waste.

Don't get me wrong, I eat meat, I've hunted. I have no problem with killing for food or population control. I have a problem with suffering.

He was about the size of a small dog. Probably just old enough to walk and run with his mother.
 
You should have put it in a choke hold and just kept squeezing while saying "shhhhh, shhhh, it'll be ok".....it would have been emotionally tough, but better than having it suffer for 35 more minutes.
 
How come you stayed for 35 minutes? Why not just call police and leave?

Poor deer.

I pulled him off the road, in the bushes on those country roads there is no way the police would find him. He was injured so he couldn't move, but he wouldn't have died for hours. I stayed to keep him company and give the police a way to find him and to make sure they put him down humanly.

I'm a little bothered at the people who stopped to see if I was broke down. I'd explain and they would just give me a WTF is wrong with you look and drive off. My boss stopped on his way in and I explained it and he was the only compassionate passer by. I know it's just an animal, but I think even animals have the right to live and die with dignity. Nothing should have to lie there like that and suffer.
 
Don't get me wrong, I eat meat, I've hunted. I have no problem with killing for food or population control. I have a problem with suffering.

He was about the size of a small dog. Probably just old enough to walk and run with his mother.

probably means the meat was even tastier, no? I don't know anything about young venison.

but yeah, that does suck to have to watch it suffer. Doesn't mean that taking the carcass home and harvesting some tasty deer meat is in any way wrong. :\
 
That is a rough way to start the day but at least you stayed with it till it was put down. It may not be much but your heart is in the right place and you did what you could.
 
yea that definitly sucks. most people wouldent have stopped, im one of them im so out of it on my drive to work i doubt i would have noticed it was alive and just driven around it
 
No pistol in the car, I assume.

Normally, I keep mine with me. But today I was running late and didn't want to get it out of the safe.


Thanks everyone for the kind comments. It's not that I'm broken up about it, just bummed and bothered. I've hit deer before, but this is the first time I've seen a baby like that. I think that plus the fact he was suffering is what got me.
 
I got airborn when hitting a dead deer at like 5:00 in the morning before the sun came up. I was heading home from a 12 hour work shift and came around the corner and whoosh, hit the deer and went dukes of hazzard.

When I got home there were tufts of hair in my lower radiator support.
 
The last deer I hit actually hit me. I was driving to work and I saw a group of deer out in a field. Knowing that typically if there are deer one one side, that there may be deer trying to cross on the other I looked at the other side of the road.

Seeing no deer on that side, I started to look a back at the other side when smack! A deer ran into my door right next to the car mirror. He bounced off my door and ran off though the field and into the woods.

I finished driving to work and found my door was jammed shut from the impact and the whole side of my car was a mess. The deer walked away without a noticeable scratch.
 
I've experienced something similar to this. Someone hit a horse with their car and mangled it's back leg. Me and another guy had to hold the horse down and keep it from trying to get up. It's eyes were as big as saucer plates. Took forever for the Sherriff's deputy to arrive and put one between it's eyes. He had to get permission from the local livestock inspector before he could do it.
 
You should have put it in a choke hold and just kept squeezing while saying "shhhhh, shhhh, it'll be ok".....it would have been emotionally tough, but better than having it suffer for 35 more minutes.

The sound of a human voice is probably terrifying to a deer.
 
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