Everyone knows colliding with a deer on the road can be dangerous, but what happens when a deer rear-ends you? In a quiet residential neighborhood. While you’re doing yard work?

Ask Joe Jameson of Fayette County, Georgia. In his residential area neighbors enjoy seeing and photographing deer. This year a family group of eight does, probably three generations that includes four playful fawns, have been frequent visitors. Also commonly sighted were a spike buck and a nice 6-point.

Wednesday, Oct. 14 was beautiful day in the neighborhood until about 4:20. Street traffic was light, and Joe was towing a leaf sweeper behind his Husqvarna lawn tractor. That’s when he heard a “boom” and found himself flying through the air. “What in the great googly-moogly happened?” he thought as he picked himself up from the ground.

There lay the spike buck. It was seriously injured, with all four legs broken and one of his antlers missing. A Toyota Camry had been coming down the street and as deer sometimes do, the spike buck appeared out of nowhere. The car’s impact launched the deer into Joe’s yard where it slammed into his lawn sweeper and then hit Joe, with the back of the tractor seat absorbing part of the blow. Joe was banged up, and once the excitement wore off he was sore enough to start swallowing Tylenol.

Deer are plentiful in the area, so it’s no surprise that people see them any time of the day. But they aren’t usually hit by cars and they certainly don’t often hit property owners sweeping their lawns. “The driver and I were both stunned,” Joe said. “We checked each other out to make sure we were both OK, and then started thinking what to do about the deer.”

Joe asked his stepson to go in and get his deer rifle. “While he was in the house my neighbor came over to see what happened and said, ‘I sit all season long in a treestand, and you get a buck right in your yard?’ Then he told me he didn’t think Georgia law allowed putting the deer out of its misery, so I called the Sheriff’s office. The dispatcher told me not to kill the deer, but that they’d send someone.”

So we waited while the deer suffered. “It took 20 to 30 minutes for the deer to die. The Sheriff’s office called back to say someone was coming, but I told them not to bother, the deer died.”

The car suffered a lot of damage but was operational. The lawn sweeper is probably repairable. And Joe would heal.

He took the deer to a processor who said besides the four broken legs the deer had two broken ribs and lots of bruising around the spine. It probably had injuries to internal organs too, but the processor said he could salvage around 80% of the meat.

Jameson said he saw four more bright spots in the incident.

First, “I lived, and I wasn’t seriously hurt!”

Second, “I don’t think the spike would see this as a bright spot, but I’m glad he was taken out and not the 6-point.”

Third, “I learned about a good deer processor in the area.”

And fourth, “I told the deer processor I was new in the area and he gave me some leads on hunting leases I might be able to join.”

After returning from the deer processor, Joe checked his security system to see if he had any photos. His camera over the garage never tripped and he had no footage. His neighbor’s camera points toward Joe’s lot, and it saw the car but not the impact because leaves on the trees blocked the view — but it did record the sounds (including the “oof” that came from Joe when the deer hit him).

Joe looked everywhere for the broken antler. He never found it. However, he did find a Toyota emblem, one more trophy from the crazy incident on that beautiful day in the neighborhood.

— Steve Sorensen (aka “The Everyday Hunter^®”) is an avid deer hunter from Pennsylvania and is a frequent sportsman’s dinner speaker.