What about this poor guy????????????
Outbreak of elk-vehicle collisions raises concerns
11/3/2006, 2:28 p.m. ET
The Associated Press
VANDERBILT, Mich. (AP) — Collisions between motor vehicles and deer are a familiar — and dangerous — problem. Now elk are getting into the act.
A rash of crashes with elk happened recently along Interstate 75 in Otsego County, leaving many vehicles damaged and some people with minor injuries.
Brian Johnson, a long-haul truck driver from the central Upper Peninsula, hit a bull elk early Oct. 9 in the southbound lane of I-75, a few miles south of Vanderbilt. The crash caused massive damage to his rig, estimated at about $15,000.
"I popped up over the hill and they were running every which way, and there was nowhere to go," Johnson told the Traverse City Record-Eagle for a story published Friday.
Johnson said the wreck took off the right side of the hood, bent the front axle and may have bent the truck's frame.
"The rack caught a hold of my mirror and bent the door out, if you can imagine," he said.
When he told fellow truckers what happened, they assumed it happened in the West, not the Midwest. But Michigan's northeastern Lower Peninsula is home to an elk herd that the Department of Natural Resources estimates at 800 to 900.
Other collisions between vehicles and elk were reported on Oct. 19, Oct. 29 and twice on Oct. 30. Most were near Vanderbilt.
"For some reason, they keep going back and forth at that spot," said Brian Mastenbrook, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Natural Resources.
State police Sgt. Denny Reynolds said crashes involving elk weren't uncommon this time of year — about 20 of the animals are killed in crashes annually — but the recent outbreak was cause for concern. Bull elk can weigh about 1,000 pounds.
DNR officials flew over the area Wednesday and spotted about 10 elk less than a mile from I-75, Mastenbrook said.
Michigan had 62,707 deer-vehicle crashes in 2004, causing about $125 million in losses. The state had 58,741 deer-vehicle crashes in 2005, according to the Michigan State Police Office of Highway Safety Planning.
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