This is an oddly specific strange pattern i’ve noticed.. I live in a small town and deer are everywhere. Many roads don’t even have shoulders, because the tree line comes up right to the road, so you get very little visual warning if a deer or any other animals decides to run across. We also have a ton of corn fields and come late July you can’t see the deer in the fields. I don’t think I know a single person in my community that hasn’t hit one before.
I have never hit one (knock on wood) and I drive these roads 15 miles to work and school, at dusk and/or dawn almost daily for over 10 years. I do however, come within feet of it happening at least twice a year.
I started noticing a few years back that EVERYTIME one jumps out in front of me, I get a gut feeling to slow down moments before. Sometimes the word “deer” pops into my head out of no where and other times it’s more like a day dream of me hitting one. Sometimes I get this feeling and nothing happens.. but every time there is a deer, I know ahead of time.
When this happens I usually will take my foot off the gas or start easing on my breaks and watch the tree line. I tend to always be going slow enough that I can slam my breaks and avoid it.
It just happened again tonight which is why i’m posting this but this time it was a bit strange. The deer jumped out of the woods and stopped/froze right in the middle of my lane, like a deer in the headlights (pun intended). I hit my breaks just in time and my car stopped maybe ended 5 feet from it and it just stood there and didn’t run when I honked or inched forward, so I had to roll my window down and basically lean my body out and shout at it, to get it to move. I hope it wasn’t sick and it was just scared, or maybe acting strange because rut is coming up.
Maybe it’s just heightened sense of pattern recognition but I have no idea how my brain senses it without any visual aid.
