Wednesday, June 15, 2011

not really how I planned to spend my evening...

Got a call that my Holsteins were out, and so drove down to the island to check on them.  Sure enough, they were out, so I herded the slowly up the road, and then into the driveway.  As I was moving my cows across the road in front of my place; one of them got hit by a guy speeding down the road.  As is typical on my little island, the fellow immediately fled the scene

But when you hit a 1200lb steer at 45 mph, well, there's a trail of parts  that makes it easy to find the house. 

The impact broke off the left rear leg of the steer.  I put it down, and then skinned it and  field dressed it on the road.   Pouring rain, and pretty cold.   Pretty good conditions for field dressing, actually. 


The road in front of my farm is posted at 25mph; this guy was going 45 or so.  The cow got thrown 120' or so. 

What was interesting was that the pickup trucks front bumper wasn't touched; the impact was pretty much the engine, hood and windshield.  The deputy who responded said it looked a lot like a moose impact -- which makes sense, as my $5 calfs are really huge now.  

The fellow had a suspended license, no insurance and apparently drank quite a bit of alcohol when he got home -- stress from the accident, I suppose. 

I'll look at the carcass tomorrow in the daylight to see what I can salvage.

5 comments:

sheila said...

Oh, I love the no insurance part. Priceless, you won't even be able to get the deadbeat to pay for damages. Hope he gets to some time in jail so at least humans can be safe for a while from the drunken menace.

Bruce King said...

Well, the end was quick for the cow, and while he doesn't have insurance, if I measure my loss against his, I think I'd take my end of that bargain. No human was hurt, but his pickup truck is totaled, and with no insurance -- well, sorry dude.

People rip up and down the road in front of my farm all the time -- with the dog park, my operation and the other farm across the street there's always someone or something going on in the road. Wish that he had slowed down a little. No brakes at all before he hit the cow.

Swept the road this morning. All sorts of truck pieces.

Snowi-Ella said...

That's awful. I live in Lochsloy now, and it's pretty peaceful out here... but we get a lot of people like that. My landlord has electric fences up around his pastures, and they seem pretty strong... his cows never get out, thankfully.

Do you ever get emotionally attached to your animals? Because if so, what a terrible way to lose one.

Robin said...

Guess on the bright side you were there so the meat didn't get wasted. That would have been even more annoying.

Kevin Kossowan said...

Wow. You have bad luck with folks hitting stuff. How odd.