Dam this hits home. I hit a deer (big 450 pound buck) in almost that exact same spot only a week ago. (5km east of Sunkit creek).

It was almost mid-night and the road was dark when two deer stepped out in front of the truck. There was one in each lane, and so I hammered the brakes while trying to keep it on the road and smoked the buck dead center. It was the first animal I'd ever hit in 9 years of driving truck.

I felt bad, but was lucky in that it bounced off the front of the truck without any damage to the truck other than a grill pushed in an inch or so. Hitting the brakes was the worste part as it almost pulled me off the road on the ice. I didn't even feel the deer.

When I went back to check out the deer it had a broken leg and was trying to stand up, but kept falling down. I was lucky that a highway maintence truck pulled up right away and offered to put the animal down for me. He couldn't believe there was no damage to my truck for the size of animal I hit, and said an animal that size could easily have got me killed had I not hit it square on.

The moral of the story is if your going to hit an animal hit it square on and under any circumstance do not swerve to miss it. I got that advice early on when I swerved to miss a family of ducks once and almost hit a car that was tailgating me. It almost cost me my job, but in the end I got good advice for next time, and the advice paid off.

My condolonces go out to the mans family.