My neighbor Chris is a great guy and a fellow motorcyclist with an incredibly busy schedule. His work often keeps him out of town on weekdays, and what little riding time he has falls late in the day on weekends. We struggle to ride together as I spend much of my road time ripping around local (and not so local) backroads on weekdays as, well, becaus eits part of my job.
Asa result, I’m typically pretty knackered by the time Saturday rolls around, having logged a couple hundred miles while Chris has been hard at work. He often texts me about joining him for a two-wheeled jaunt late in the day, just when the temperature is starting to dip and the whitetail deer population are most active. I’ve had a collision with one of these fearless (and mostly clueless) denizens of local woodlands (and yards, and roads) and enough frightful near-misses to make me wary of zipping along the twisties as dusk falls. To play it safe, I often resist the urge to ride on anything besides major arteries this time of year simply because on divided highways and major thoroughfares, where vegetation is generally cut away from the roadside berms, providing a much-needed buffer zone between deer haibiats and ourselves.
I don’t know about the road conditions in your particular state, but here in Western Pennsylvania, nearly every backroad has dense vegetation growing on both sides. This means there’s little or no way to spot a heard of deer before they’ve begun their jaunts across the asphalt. Our state just happens to be the home of the third most deer/vehicle collisions recorded nationwide behind neighboring West Virginia and Montana. This means we’ve got a one in 62 chance of hitting one of these ubiquitous, furry road hazards each time we ride between October and December.
I’ve discussed this unfortunate state of affairs with plenty of other riders, some of whom swear by their loud exhausts which they believe sufficiently frightens the wildlife from inadvertently crossing into their paths. Others attach small brass bells or whistles to their fenders in hopes of avoiding meeting Bambi and her relatives up-close and personal. The effectiveness of any of these items is questionable and I suspect they serve about the same level of usefulness as baseball pitchers avoiding stepping on the chalk baselines entering the field as they fear it will bring bad luck.
My advice is to stay off the roads as much as possible during this, the deer mating season, unless full daylight is at your disposal. We’ve enough to contend with, from slippery wet leaves to tires that fail to adhere due to colder temperatures and avoiding the whitetails seems the sensible path to take. Chris and I will just have to find time to ride together once the weather warms up and the deer find better things to do.
