Smart deer

Coming from the vast expanses of the United States to the small country of Germany, you may notice that wild animals here are much more weary of humans.

Stateside, there was the pair of racoons who had their trails through the neighbor's yard and who were as punctual as the church bells in our German town. There was the deer at the outskirts of the city, jumping fences to get at the fresh garden feast. There were the bear tracks in the fresh snow as we peeled out of a tent in the mountains.

In the more densely populated lands of Central Europe, encounters like these are rare.

We did, however, run into a smart deer and a hunter with reflexes sharp enough not to pull the trigger and shoot us.

During hunting season around here, hunting parties put up roadside signs warning of a hunt.

You read correctly, they have to put up signs on the roads. Some may regard this as overly bureaucratic, to us it is a nice thing to do. It does protect the hunters on foot on the curvy roads.

Last hunting season, we were driving on one of the smaller roads, a county road meandering up and down the hills between villages that dot the rural highlands. We had duly noted the "Caution: Hunt ahead" sign and slowed down. Not that you can go fast on such a winding road anyway.

Past a couple of worn, boxy parked Landrovers out of the 1970s or so, we negotiated a tight curve and found ourselves right in front of a deer. The animal was young, we guessed, and stood still in the middle of the road about 20 yards ahead. Another twenty or so yards up the hill on the side of the road was a hunter, the shotgun up in the direction of the deer.

Or rather, our direction because the line from the hunter to the deer continued straight to us.

Taking the foot off the gas was near instant, and at the crawl speed of 20 mph this was enough to coast and figure out when to hit the brakes. As our driver had done the thinking and depressed the bake pedal, the deer looked first toward us, then toward the hunter, then toward us once again.

The car came to a stop, and the deer sauntered straight towards the car, then changed course a little so as to pass within a yard of the driver side, heading further to the rear of the vehicle. Next, the animal executed a 90 degree turn, took a long jump into the brush on the side of the road, and was gone.

"Did that deer used the car as cover?" the driver laughed as the foot came off the brakes and the vehicle moved forward again. 

We waved to the hunter, who was standing still by the side of the road, the shotgun down.