I was coming home from fishing. The road was straight and wide with a wide shoulder on a slight downhill. Ahead I saw a doe and a large yearling fawn cross. Usually there is more than one so I was ready when the second fawn crossed. I had been slowing down by then and figured that was it but a third fawn crossed and timed the collision perfectly. I wasn’t going that fast but as I slammed on the brakes I struck the deer and he rolled over on his side; got up and ran after the others. There was no damage to the car; only a little fur on the grill. The deer should be sore but OK. Usually a doe gives birth to two but that one was prolific.
Glad that you saw the deer in time, and were prepared for more than one of them. Three fawns is a lot for a deer. I have heard of them having 3, but only seen deer with one or two babies.
I've been driving in this state since 1970 and never hit a deer until I moved to this rural area in 2010...I've hit 5 since. Heck, just the other night I was driving home after dark and (fortunately) had my eyes peeled. Standing at roadside at an open field (no trees) was a young doe just waiting for me to get right on top of her before she stepped in front of me. I stopped in time. My brother used to drive his son to the school bus stop in the mornings and the two of them would sit & talk as they waited for his bus. One morning they had been sitting there for a while, and there was a BAM!! against his truck. A deer actually broadsided his truck while he was parked on the side of the road!! Some survival skills, huh?? Such elusive little creatures...
I know it does upset us to hit any animal I ran over one of our own dogs a couple decades ago,felt terrible for months. MY sons MIL is called the Deer Slayer she has hit so many inTexas one caused her some pretty bad injuries from the wreck.My son hit one a couple months ago,sadly they are runnign out of habitat like many other animals except invading Anaconda pythons here in Florida that has wiped out many native wildlife animals..
The White tails seem to have adapted to urban living quite well here in Alachua County (U of Florida) and Santa Fe College (where I was an adjunct until two years ago). They are all over the place, including on the college campuses. We see them quite often on our wooded property. Even the fauns have no trouble jumping the fence. I've been lucky and also careful.
Eh, I live in deer country, and see them dead on the side of the road almost daily. The day after Easter, 2018, it was a bright sunny day and I was coming home from lunch about 1 in the afternoon. I was doing about 50 and two deer came from the side and ran across in front of me. The first one made it but not the second. My truck was only a year old then, and it did $11,400 worth of damage.
I read an article once that said that deer are "edge-dwelling" creatures, and that to an extent, when development occurs, it creates more "woods/openness" interface and deer populations increase. I don't know where the tipping point is where habitat decreases too much. I used to see a few just 8 miles out of DC in very dense neighborhoods, but nothing like I see here where the population density is 67/mi² (as opposed to the town I left that was 3,700/mi²)