trucks vs deers

[jamaldog87]

there was a customer in the store that i work at complaining about how he hit a deer and wreaked his truck(he had a ford ranger). Well it got me thinking, there are tons of trucks and SUV's  down here with brush guards and are they protectson for your vehicle? if I was in let's say a ford F-250 with a brush guard and I hit a deer would that wreak the truck hitting a it or would the weight if the truck just knocked the animal out of the way with little to no damage and? 

this site sell a Grill Guards Built for Moose for 18wheelers.

[url=http://www.800toolbox.com/grill_guard/grill_guard]http://www.800toolbox.com/grill_guard/grill_guard[/url]

[no guns here]

Depends on the brush guard.  Some are really just for looks and don't really do much other than look nice.  Go for a heavy steel one that is an actual bumper replacement.  Look at ranchhand.com for some like I'm talking about.  Heavy steel bumpers.  Heavy wrap around bars.  Good thing is an F250 (assuming 4x4) is tall enough that you'd probably hit the bumper and not the hood.
 
 
NGH

[jamaldog87]

yeah like that, i see alot of pick-ups with those kinds of heavy brush guards and the winch on it on the parking lot at work. 

[Graybeard]

Iffen ya hit a full size deer at highway speeds ya need to figure on several thousand dollars in repair bills. Dunno about them little FL deer tho. I've hit a few dogs and never did any damage to the cars I was in at the time. Luckily they rolled under the car and nothing above the bumper was touched. They made cars of better materials back then tho.

[no guns here]

GB,
 
With the size of Texas deer AND the much taller 4x4 pickups now, (isn't it crazy how big a 250/350 is now?) if you put a full, heavy steel replacement bumper on an F250 (op'ers example) they are pretty much going under like a dog UNLESS it happens to jump up.  If I lived any farther out I'd probably put one on my truck too.  There's a reason that just about every truck in South Texas has a replacement bumper from RanchHand or equivilant on it.  Of course with the number of idiots that let there dogs run loose down here... maybe they are just better at killing dogs than a stock bumper.
 
 
NGH

[Lloyd Smale]

hit a 150 lb deer at 60mph and about no matter what you got on the front of your truck its going to bend. Problem with brush guards is that when they bend insurance companys alot of times wont fix them because they were added on.

[ironglow]

  You know how that stuff works...you put on a big grille guard, and the deer comes running out of the woods top speed and slams into the side of the front fender, then spins around and slaps his butt into your door, destroying that too.
  I speak from experience with a new Ranger (in 1987), which I had for just 3 days. I didn't have a grille guard, but it would have made no difference, since he caught my truck just behind the headlight.
     Never can tell just what the damages may or may not be..  Just yesterday my Marine Sgt grandson (posts here as " ironglowjr ") collected a big beautiful 10 point buck, just before he entered the gate to Parris Island. A small dent in the side of his Toyota Tacoma, that looks like he popped it with the base of his palm..didn't even scratch the paint..

[us920669]

I saw an incident Saturday morning on I 64 between Richmond and Williamsburg Va.  This is dense bottomland with trees right up to the shoulder, speed limit 70, pace around 75 to 80.  With the sun in front of us, woods in shadow, I doubt if the guy saw the deer until it was in the road.  It happened about 5 cars ahead so I didn't see it, but the cloud of dust and smoke was still hanging.  Since there was debris in the road and people already out of their cars, I didn't do a lot of gawking, but it was a pretty new full size PU, looked pretty upscale with 4 tires in back.  Headlight and grill smashed of course, and the molded plastic "bumper" all busted up and hanging down, also some serious crumpling to hood and fender.  I couldn't see if the airbag deployed, but it might have.  My wife said the guy was out and walking normally.  Definitely many thousands of bucks.


Speaking of bucks, the deer was a magnificent, calendar-grade specimen.  I didn't try to count points, maybe just 6 or 8, but terrific mass and spread.  I wondered if some of the Samaritans were thinking about the rack - I don't know what the law is on that.  It knocked him clear across the shoulder into the median, laying in an awkward heap, but he looked mighty big.  I thought only the young and stupid ran out on to crowded interstates.  There was actually another carcass only about 40 yards up the road so it was easy to judge the scale.  Must be a popular crossing point.     

[SHOOTALL]

I ran over a large buck up north on the way to Canada. It was layng in the left lane not moving. It was raining . About the time I got to it it jumps over my lane. I was going about 70 towing a boat . Since it was down it rolled under the truck and trl. Boat trl. bounced up in the air a good ways. I was lucky , we stopped and the boat and trl. was covered in minced deer and such. The rain cleaned most off. Other than some of the rack sticking in places no damage was done.

[Dand]

A few years ago a friend of mine hit a medium to small deer full speed at night on a Nebraska highway. Crunched the hood, blew out the windshield, the airbag deployed.  The truck was totaled and my buddy spent a few hours in the hospital I think.  He was mostly just badly shaken but the airbag whacked him pretty good.


I think he was driving a Ranger.

[us920669]

I'm thankful that here in Virginia all we have to worry about are deer.  Some people have to deal with Elk and Moose, which would definitely hurt you.  When I hunted Zimbabwe in 2000, my PH picked me up at the airport and drove me to the camp in a closed-cab Toyota.  The speedo was in kilometers but it felt like 75 or so - the roads are practically deserted - and a big Mercedes full of big guys in suits and sunglasses zoomed past, way over 100.  Probably the fastest I've ever seen a car on the road.  The slipstream actually rocked the truck was they went by.  PH chuckled and said, yeah, that's what they do, and once in a while one of those big African animals wanders into the road.  As he put it, "All the German engineering in the world doesn't help you in a case like that".

[LanceR]

As far as brush guards I prefer to call them what they really are: grill guards or radiator guards.  The only ones I've ever had are on the military vehicles we collect but if I lived a little further north into the Adirondacks I'd consider an industrial strength one due to the increasing moose population.  As heavy duty as the grill guards are on the smaller trucks I suspect it would only  take 35 MPH or so to push them back into the grill and hood.  The radiator guards on the big trucks are further protected by a 3/8" steel bumper and, on most of ours, a big honking PTO driven winch.

I would offer the opinion that a lot of the front end damage from deer/car accidents is in fact a demonstration of how much safer cars are now that they were in my childhood in the late '50s and '60s.  Back then we had steel dashboards and rigid body on frame designs, stiff steering wheels and non-telescoping steering columns.

Hitting an immovable object like a large tree or bridge abutment at 35 MPH had a good chance of killing you with either the steering column impaling your chest or your brains splattered in the dash.

Today we see folks walk away from head on crashes with closing speeds of 80 MPH and higher.

I see the energy absorbing crumple zones as a plus.

With that said we have had three car/deer accidents in the last 30 or so years.  In one a buck was standing in the middle of an ice glazed curve at night and must have thought the headlights of the '74 Dart were going to pass over him.  He lay dropped to his belly in the middle of the road while holding his head up to look.  The bumper broke his neck and he slid out from under it with no visible damage.

The second time a doe ran in front of my new '80 Lincoln Town Car and was literally popped.  The only damage to the car was a broken grill but bits of doe were driven into the radiator and splattered right back to the back of the roof.  We were on our way to a formal military ball.  I was in my dress blues and my wife was in a gown.  Not the kind of clothes to wear while cleaning enough deer parts off the windshield to see.

The third one was as already described in another post.  A buck ran into my wife's LeSabre last year.  He hit right at the headlight, spun into the door, peeled the mirror off etc.  He stood up, shook himself off and left $1,800 in damage behind.  The headlight, fender, hood and door skin were all damaged. 

Here in NY there are about 70,000 reported car/deer accidents each year and there are pretty reliable estimates that the actual figure may be close to twice that.  It is a good time of year to be in the body shop business...

Lance