Today I took off for my consulting and speaking appointments. It took a long time to leave as I was busy answering tax questions for clients. I don't do tax returns, but do a fair amount of tax consulting on failed TICS, real estate deals, conservation easements etc. It became later and later when I was ready and leave and finally left at 6:30pm.
I was in the mountains of Montana about 10pm when I hit an Elk in the middle of Interstate 90. Fortunately she was not standing or I would have most likely been crushed when the body came through the windshield.
The elk was perpendicular to the right lane and I hit the neck and hindquarters becoming airborn but not going off the road. I immediately heard strange noises from the Toyota Tacoma truck and stopped at the next exit near DeBois Montana (just before St Regis) and called a tow truck and mechanic. We didn't see damage to the body of the truck other than a lot of long elk hair, blood, and guts. He seemed to think that the damage was mostly to the undercarriage but the truck seemed to be running and I would be late to speak if I delayed too long, so I continued on driving through the night and called in the insurance claim as I was driving on.
I believe that the technical name for it is WVC Wildlife Vehicle Collisions. Apparently there are 1-2 million per year in the United States and the frequency is increasing. See the Reduction study made for Congress in October of 2008 at http://environment.fhwa.dot.gov/ecosystems/wvc/index.asp
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