[Roadsters] [Fwd: Re: Elk encounter]

[Durf & Sue Hyson]

Good thing this was a missive not a missile ! I completely missed the 
target on the first try.

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It is amazing the damage animals can do. In the spring of 94 we were 
towing our Datsun race car to Pocono for a race  weekend. Not that far 
from the track but still on the highway we came upon a large blood trail 
on the pavement. We all commented on how big a deer it must have been to 
leave that big a spot. When we arrived at the track and were setting up 
a fellow came around asking if we had a sawzall. It seems they had had 
an accident and needed to cut the roof off of their trailer to try to 
get the car out. We didn't have the tool but were naturally curious 
about what was going on so we decided to stroll down and investigate. As 
we approached we noticed there were a lot of people working on this and 
that there were a number of policemen and what turned out to be Fish and 
Game people. As we got closer we could see a big Chevy Dually with a 
fifth wheel trailer larger that ours. (bigger that 38 ft.) The grill , 
hood, and front of the truck roof were destroyed and all covered in 
gore. The windshield was gone and there was a huge hole in the front 
face of the trailer where it projected above the roof of the truck. The 
front portion of the roof of the trailer was all bent up in the air and 
mangled. There were 4 or 5 guys with all kinds of odd tools , including 
a hatchet who were I the process of cutting the trailer open like a can 
of sardines You could see looking in the back door there was a tube 
framed GT-1 Camaro in the trailer. The whole inside of the trailer was 
covered in blood and you could see the nose bodywork , windshield area 
and roof of the race car were demolished. Turns out that about 5 A.M. 
that morning in the half darkness and patchy early morning fog traveling 
at between 65 and 70 MPH they had hit a 1200 lb bear standing in the 
middle of the highway.  The truck hit the bear which then came up over 
the hood , skipped off the roof and went through the front of the 
trailer and wedged into the Camaro. In the end it hit the car with 
sufficient force to bend the cage enough to jam itself into the car. 
Extracting it once they got the car out of the trailer required cutting 
the halo off the cage to extract the body. It was a miracle the two guys 
in the truck only had some minor injuries , I guess mostly from flying 
glass. It was an unbelievable sight.

Durf

Gary McCormick wrote:
>  The dangerous thing 
> about hitting an animal like this (elk, deer, moose, horse, cow, etc.) 
> is that they have a large, heavy body that is held  high up off of the 
> ground on relatively slender legs, which usually results in the body 
> coming up over the hood and right through the windshield.