Careful, it's deer thirty out there
I'm a big fan of the whitetail deer. For over 30 years I winter tent camped and hunted them here in Indiana. Many years I camped and hunted with one or more of my sons every weekend from October 1'st till muzzleloader season ended in December. When the kids were young and I had four young to feed I never let a legal deer walk by me without putting it in the freezer. As the kids got older and started helping fill the freezer I was able to sit back in my tree and let most of them walk by. If I was only going to take one, I wanted to take it on the last hour of the last day so I could spend more time in the woods. I was never a trophy hunter although after the boys started filling the freezer I never intentionally shot a small buck and was content to just take a doe or two if a mature buck didn't happen by.
As the 61 year old owner of a bad back, this will be my first year of not camping and hunting and it's a milestone I'm not happy about. (I'll still do some close to home deer hunting)
However, after putting well over 50 in the freezer over the years I am acutely aware of them. While riding home behind my oldest Grandson last week (he also rides and we work together) we saw a buck chasing a doe which is the earliest sign of the rut I can remember. Imagine how crazed we would be if we had to wait 10 months to chase the ol lady? That's how crazed the deer will be now that it's their season for romance and recreation. So let's be careful out there. Here in mid Indiana there are a lot of them (not as many as 10 years ago though) so keep your eyes open, in particular around dawn and dusk, otherwise known as "deer thirty".
I've combined deer hunting and motorcycles many times over the years. As in riding my Valk down the miles of gravel roads to our deer camp if my gear was already there. Once I even wrapped a bucks head in a trash bag with the antlers poking out, lashed it to the passenger seat and took it to a taxidermist who lived at the end of a rutted, steep half mile trek up a long gravel and dirt hill. I hadn't been to him before, when I pulled up there were chickens pecking at animal carcases along the drive, five or six dogs and several guys caping deer outside. They seemed disturbed to see a leather clad motorcyclist appear in the drive and stopped what they were doing to find out who I was. All was good when I climbed off the bike and they saw the antlers behind me.
I'll keep riding to work as long as the temps are above 32 and its dry. Dew freezes on the road when the road temps drop to 32 and black ice is damn disconcerting at the best, at the worst it kills you. I have an infrared heat gun and I'll sometimes walk to the road before dawn to check the pavement temps and decide if I'm riding or driving that morning.
In the last ten years the wife has hit two deer in the civic and one in the outback, all within a mile of our house. I've had two run into the side of my pickups and some very close calls on motorcycles, the closest ever was this spring on the F6B.
I was meeting a school bus on a rural road, the deer flashed across in front of bus and then in front of me. I was on the brakes hard but knew I couldn't avoid it. I was still running probably 40 mph & my tires were near lockup when it disappeared under my fairing and I braced for impact.
I heard the bus driver exclaim something through his open window. Then it appeared out the right side of my fairing without me feeling an impact. Checked the bike at work when the sun came up. No scuffs, no hair, clean miss. I was praying I wasn't going to get killed in front of a bunch of school kids and I didn't.
Never missed a days riding over it though. For me, life is just too short to sit in a cage if I can avoid it.
