I had my last car for 7 years, lived in a rural area for most of that time. I called it the "Meat Magnet". Honestly I didn't try to hit any animals with it but I swear that car drew them in.
After I hit the last deer a few years ago I got to thinking of the entire tally over the time I had the car, quite a score. Since it was showing its age by then I figured it couldn't hurt to start painting the score on the driver's side door like a fighter pilot.
Unfortunately the pic I took of it the morning I traded that car in when I bought my truck got inadvertently dumped from the camera before I could download it.
I modeled the deer after the familiar deer crossing road sign, just cut out little sheet aluminum stencils and spray painted them on.
8 deer, 6 coons, 1 opossum, 1 turkey, 3 fox (hat trick, all in one whack), 1 kitty, 2 beavers, 1 bat, 6 squirrels, 1 snapping turtle and too many lesser critters to keep track of, frogs, birds, snakes, chipmunks.
Surprisingly the deer weren't all that bad, damage wise. The worst was one of the beavers, that cost me a radiator. He was a big sum bitch, size of a black lab.
Like I said, I didn't try to hit any of them. 8 deer might seem like a lot but it averages out to about one per year and the area I lived in was crawling with them and I avoided likely more than two hundred for the eight that I hit. Those are usually the ones that bolt out of the corn right in front of you so no avoiding it.
BTW, the second day I had my new truck I hit a deer on the way to work at 4:00 in the morning. No damage to the truck, slightest little kiss mark on the bumper but I labeled that sucker square in the ass and launched it spinning like a helicopter in the trees probably ten feet in the air on the opposite side of the road.
Maybe I should hang a rabbit's foot from my rear view mirror?
