A Cobb County judge is the latest metro Atlanta motorist to have a close brush with disaster involving a deer. He's OK, but his truck sustained thousands of dollars in damage, Channel 2 Action News reports.
“It looked to me like the deer tried to jump over my truck and obviously didn’t make it,” Judge Jason Fincher told Channel 2.
Fincher was driving to work Tuesday morning on John Ward Road near Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park when a deer leaped out of the woods and crashed into the judge’s truck.
“Never saw it, wasn’t expecting it, and the next thing I know, my windshield is shattered,” Fincher said.
The animal caused $5,000 damage to the windshield, hood and front fender.
“I couldn’t have been going more than about 35 or 40 at the time,” Fincher said. “If I had been going faster, that deer might have been in the cab of the truck with me.”
A state court judge who handles mostly traffic cases, Fincher said police have told him they’ve responded to many similar crashes. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources reports 50,000 incidents of drivers hitting deer in the state every year.
The animals are most active at dawn and dusk. Also, November is rut season for whitetail deer in Georgia.
“I’m almost certain it was a buck. It was probably chasing a doe across the street,” Fincher said.
In other recent deer-human incidents, on Nov. 7, a deer crashed through a window at a Taco Mac restaurant at 875 N. Main St. in Alpharetta, startling patrons and employees as it scrambled through the eatery and then out a patio door.
On Sept. 9, customers and employees at a Publix supermarket at 1000 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard in Suwanee were shocked when the front doors automatically opened and a pair of fawn darted in.
The deer wandered toward the back of the store, where a couple of store workers scooped them up, carried them outside and released them.
No humans or animals were injured in either incident.
Fincher has no trophy to remember his own deer encounter. The animal ran off.
“I would love to charge that deer with failure to yield,” he said.
Georgia DNR gives tips to motorists about avoiding collisions with deer at this website.
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