I thought there might be some good laughs or sad tales (pun intended) from our collective experiences with animals while riding day or night. I’ll throw one out and hope that others will share their own encounters. This is a true story that happened 2 years ago. I ride with an open face helmet and goggles, and I have a fairly large beard. At the time, I didn’t have a windshield on my bike. I was going to a nearby town to pick up one of my prescriptions. I was just about there when a Turkey Vulture caught my eye as it flew about 30 feet overhead. Two seconds later, a huge pile of vulture crap came into view, my life flashed before my eyes, and there just wasn’t any time to react. I took a direct hit in the face and it went everywhere . If you’ve never seen one take a dump, it’s about 6 to 8 times as much as a Seagull and really foul smelling. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me to take a selfie. Luckily, I have a trunk in the sidecar and I keep bottled water, spray soap for the windshield, and shop rags in there. I was able to wash most of it out and still had the nerve to go in and get my prescription. When I got home, the first thing I did was take a shower. The second thing was to order the Long Haul screen for my T-Bird. I had been waiting for an excuse to buy the screen that the lovely wife would accept . I don’t recall seeing vultures on any of my trips to the UK. The Turkey Vulture (video below) has no feathers on its head so it can push its face into a carcass and feed. They pee on their own feet when roosting to kill parasites and cool-off their bodies by evaporation. They roost in groups of about 10 to 20 and wind up ruining or killing everything around that area. They’re about 30 inches long with a 6 foot wingspan, and they weigh up to five pounds. They do two things very well – fly gracefully and clean up all the dead carcasses on the side of the road. Everything else they do is just wrong. Anyone else with a story to pass along?
Mine was a suicidal pigeon , riding along the A82 up along Loch Lomond, nice sunny day with no tourists !!! The fact there was no tourists should have told me that something bad would happen This pigeon flies straight at my head. I’m doing somewhere in the region of 50 mph. I tilted my head to the side whilst hitting the brakes , pigeon hits a glancing blow to my helmet. Thankfully I stay upright. Went to look for the pigeon after a minute or two to see if the bugger survived. If it had been alive and on the ground, I would have stomped up and down on it for certain. Couldn’t find it anywhere so my lust for revenge was unfulfilled that day.
I had a blackbird do one of those floaty slalom paths directly in front of me as I was winding on the taps on a back road. It suddenly flew vertical to go over me but hit me smack in the visor... for a split second everything was black until it slid off my noggin. I didn’t crash, but my underpants were well tested!
When I had my 99/00 sprint , I hit two Crows ! They swooped something on the road , there was no bang or or any strike noise, there was feathers everywhere. I stopped to see what happened and where they were. One was stuck under the front mud guard and I couldn't see the other one . so I continued on to the meeting point with some mate's , several said what's the "Fecking" smell !! We found the second crow behind the radiator on top of the exhaust header's it was half cooked and burning feathers don't smell nice... !
Female pheasant - I think it had already been hit by a car coming the other way as it looked a bit dazed and confused. Bouncing off the front of the Bonneville didn't improve things for it!
I hit a pheasant while " making progress " on a welsh back road. Saw it lift off as I was heading towards it. I braked and ducked but it struck me full in the face. Not sure what happened to my wind shield. I was unconscious before I hit the ground. That probably saved me from further injury, being as limp as a rag doll. Several fractured ribs and a punctured lung. The bike carried on under its own steam. It eventually ran off the road and into a ditch. I remember being wheeled past the bike to a waiting helicopter. The forks were bent double where a low concrete bridge over the ditch brought the bike to a standstill. Pheasant poo and feathers all over my leather jacket. The policeman investigating the accident later told me another rider had been killed in a similar incident 12 months earlier on the same road. Phew. Edit. This was during a last farewell ride on my old Tiger 955i. Later in the week I was part exchanging it for a new Fazer thou. I phoned the dealer from my hospital bed to cancel the deal. Big hats off to On Yer Bike, Aylesbury. They reimbursed every penny I had spent on the deposit and for accessories for the new bike. It had already been registered in my name too.
Allow me to raise the bar here just a little to a sheep Me and the wife were on my VFR 750 on the A65 up near Skipton when the sheep ran into the road in front of us, fortunately we weren’t going very quick as the bike wasn’t running very well ( blocked air filter) and we struck it a glancing blow on the left side. It was still enough to kill it, and the fairing, but we miraculously stayed on the bike. On the animal subject why do dogs bark and run at us when we are on the bike? Had one used to do that regularly when I was learning, always ran out of its open gate at me and almost had me off a few times, that was until I swung my leg at it and connected squarely on its nose with me steel toe cap motox boot, it never strayed from its garden after that. (Sorry to all you dog lovers, I’m generally a fan too)
A friend of mine hit a dog that ran out in front of him. He went over the handlebars and broke his collar bone. The bike wasn't a pretty sight as it had bounced down the road on both sides. The dog had to be put down.
Blackbird square in the face at about ~ 70 ish. Felt like a baseball bat to the heed. Vision black, saw wee stars and tweety birds like the cartoons. Luckily on a fairly straight bit of road, just clutch in and slowed to a stop. Head on tank for a minute and rode on. Lad following said it looked like my head exploded with all these black stuff everywhere as it hit. Had just done 1000 miles incident free around Scotland and was only 5 miles from home. I can see how anything bigger, like those suicidal pheasents, could take you off the bike. Local lad took one to the knee, swelled up like a feckin ballon. Some energy transfer when your doing 60+ and they weight 4lbs odd. Image a 4lb weight getting fired at you at 60mph !!! That is gonna hurt. Edit: - not a motorbike, but a cyclist I worked with got killed by a pheasant. Doing 30mph down a big hill, bird into front wheel, not wearing a helmet !!! LINK to motorcyclist killed by pheasant
LINK to motorcyclist killed by pheasant [/QUOTE] I read about that incident at the time Mr O. So pheasant strikes aren't that rare. My accident was about 2004. I honestly think that I was lucky to survive.
Riding my Hayabusa back from my Dads in Dorset 6 am, 60 ish mph, a deer jumped over hedge& stopped staring at me in middle of my lane. Anchors on, hit deer midships, it was wedged between fairing & front wheel, bucking & snorting, snot every where. Remarkably stayed on bike, impact speed prob 25 mph, deer rolled off into ditch, dead unfortunately. Bike: complete fairing kit, headlight & mountings, front fender, front wheel. Mental!! V lucky though
Many moons ago, I hit a big possum! I was riding to work on my beloved '81 GS850 Suzuki, downhill headed into the Miss. Delta flatlatland about 1030pm. I was thankful for my start in the dirt, because I just took a short crouch with bended knees and got real loose on the handlebars. He just missed the front wheel, but hit on the bike's exhaust headers and off to the side. Probably about 60MPH at the time. I looked for him the next morning on my return trip, but no sign anywhere! Lucky me.
You reckon us Aussie's have got a big lead in the worst animal meetings on bike's ! Many Many year's a go, about 1985 I owned a Laverda RGS1000, I was stationed in Sydney at Holsworthy Barracks . this happened on the Friday night after taking part in Full Military Funeral Guard for a Mate who died in service, did funeral guard at 2 pm , headed out at 3 pm on my bike on the way to Narrabri to attend my Sister In-laws wedding being on the Saturday Afternoon, when about 11 pm at night and 3/4 of the way through the 800 KLM ride , I was doing 180 kph (150w spotties on) I hit a 6ft tall Male Kangaroo, I saw him 200 metres or more away, I braked like Wayne Gardner on steroids , got my speed down below 130 kph and weaving side to side cause the bastard kept hopping into my path, left/right/back again and bang everything went black I hit him up the arse !!!! I didn't fall off, but tank fairing and lights all killed or damaged, I wobbled to a stop , still in top gear .. seat was gone ! The strike thorough the fairing attached to the fuel tank drove back the seat , smashed the rear latch/lock and puff''' seat gone.!.!.! A car I had just passed about 2 seconds before the strike saw the whole thing ! He picked up my seat and helped remove Roo carcase from the road. He had a spare Headlight globe and we patched the crack in my tank before all my fuel leaked out ! It took an hour or more before I got back on My way ! My wife knew something had happened ! I said I'd be in Narrabri by midnight, and when it turned 12:15 am She told the Bride's parents something was wrong. So they were just about to come looking when I arrived , sore and with a right boot full of petrol ! Doing a very slow but safe 40 kph on a broken and twisted bike at 12:45 or there a bouts . the Funeral and Wedding went well ! But I will never forget the last 40 odd kilometers of that night's ride !! Cheers capt !
The example of the pheasant really made me curious about the energy of that impact. I did a quick calculation and some conversions and the numbers are pretty astonishing if I did this right. Is there an engineer or other scientific ‘type’ that can double-check the following or put it into more understandable terms? The energy of a moving object is kinetic energy, and is equal to one half of the object's mass times the square of its velocity: KE = 0.5 × m × v2. (superscript doesn't work) Using the example of the 6 lb. Pheasant (2.72 kg.) strike at 60 mph (26.82 meters per second), I think we should just view the motorcycle and rider as stationary and calculate the energy of the Pheasant striking the motorcyclist. This equals (.5 x 2.72 kg.) x (26.8 meters per second)2 or (1.36 kg.) x (718.24 meters per second) or 976.80 kilogram meters per second. If I’ve done my conversions correctly, this also equals: 9,579.14 newton meters per second, or 12.84 horsepower, or 7,062 foot pounds per second. Conclusion: With enough speed a Pheasant can easily kill a rider. Just think what these numbers look like with a 200 lb. Kangaroo or a 150 lb. Deer. A Moose at 1 mph will kill you, because with it's bad attitude it will just come over and stomp you to death.
Sounds like the roo had a better chance of survival than you in theory, all the best biker suits are made of Kangeroo skin, he must have had one on!
It’s the hitting it up the arse (the kangaroo) that gets me, is this an Aussie perversion ? A bit like the Welsh and sheep baaaahh
In 2010 I did a motorbike tour in Sri Lanka on a 250cc Dirt Bike laden with heavy luggage. Anyways as I was riding through a village, bunch of wild dogs started chasing me. I had the throttle pinned down but damn....I was literately riding in slow motion. One of the dog caught my trouser legs, I panicked and toppled over. Luckily some of the army guys who were stationed saw the drama and came running and chased the dogs away. Those fellas had a good laugh at my expense.
