I've just ran over a pheasant :(

We had one stuck in the front grill of the car a few weeks back. Some drivers flashed at us (we hadn't realised it was stuck) so we pulled over, wrung its neck and had it for dinner later that week.

We were on a A road and I don't know what speed we were travelling at, probably 50-60 mph.

As an aside, this is a narrow (have to pull into passing places or off the road if another car comes along) country road I sometimes drive on. On certain stretches I will do 50-60 mph as visibility and the condition of the road is very good. On some country roads it is safe to drive faster, on some it is not.

I narrowly avoided one today you were probably behind me it was dithering

I would drive 50mph on that road.

Poor stupid pheasant but I can't talk because we went through a period where I swear our car was a creature magnet. The worst was a deer that was standing on a hill next to the motorway. The stupid thing decided to dash into the 70mph traffic, hit the car in front of us and then bounced towards (dead, I assume) us like a football, onto the bonnet and windscreen before rolling off. I was pregnant at the time and screamed, "brace!" at DH as I watched this deer bouncing along the motorway towards us.

We spent weeks picking bits of deer out of that car.

Another pheasant story when I was a teenager a friend of my DB's had a DF who went on shoots beating the pheasants out. Anyway said friend offered free pheasant to my stepdad almost weekly....

They were hung normally in leanto but one dark night I came home from college and came across one hanging in the porch outside the front door dripping blood out of a hammer horror story, my brother was inside in the hall and I heard him cackling at my screams.... Evil sod!

No you're normal! My mum ran over one years ago when we were kids and on way to friends and got stick for ages from my stepdad about not picking it up to eat it! Ugh!

Not terribly useful without seeing how their stats were collected. As a mathematician I take most things with a pinch of salt unless I can read further and see for myself.

They go on to describe the road as "The seven-mile stretch of tarmac winds its way through the Peak District National Park. Bounded by dry stone walls or bare rock faces for the most part, its sharp bends, uphill climbs and steep falls from the carriageway make it nine times more risky than the average ‘A’ road, the report says."

What is the level of use compared to the average A road, is it the only decent road in town, is it the only route for farm traffic and haulage lorries/heavy loads, etc., etc.. So it could be the most dangerous rural A road in Britain because it is the busiest rural A road of its type - a quote like that means nothing on its own.

The point is that currently the NSL applies to these roads and that is what we do if conditions are favourable. Lowering the limit on the road OP was on wouldn't have 'saved' the pheasant as the odds on lowering it below 50mph are nil.

Shame, it'd have tasted great.

From this site: knowledge.allianz.com/mobility/transportation_safety/?2728/Lowering-speed-limits-rural-roads-to-improve-road-safety-UK

“Because there is less traffic, some drivers feel a false sense of security on rural roads,” says Sarah Martin from road safety charity Brake, which works together with Allianz in the United Kingdom. “Crash statistics show that, per mile travelled, rural roads such as the A537 are the most dangerous places for all kinds of road users, and the majority of vehicle occupant deaths happen on these roads.”

worse

Never mind Eve , worst things have happened on this thread - like the 'poor pheasant', 'you are disgusting OP' and all the , , stuff.

I'm even more embarassed coalscuttle, it wasn't even August, it was around this time of year, so I've got the total wrong end of the stick there! Whenever I heard Glorious 12th I thought it meant Pheasant shooting

I think the posters here don't have any understanding as to how speed limits are set. Transport research in this country is excellent (hence we have some of the safest roads in he world) speed limits are set based on historical data and current circumstances for THAT road. And they know far more than the posters here. It would be astoundingly arrogant to argue otherwise.

kangaroos are stupid too

you see lots of dead ones next to the road in Australia

and while driving on a track through a wood one hopped in front of us and just stared I was terrified it was huge quickly wound up my window then it hopped away

got to love MN and those who can not help but pick and pick a story apart not matter what it is about

I've told this on here before...

Middle of the city, rush hour on a friday afternoon and I hear a rhythmic 'thump, thump' in the traffic. Driving down the road (slowly because it's rush hour) is a woman in a red car with a whole pheasant firmly implanted somehow between bumper and wheel arch. With every turn of the wheel the pheasant is hitting the bodywork, causing more damage and the rhythmic thumping noise.
Several people tried to get her attention but she was completely oblivious. To this day I'm baffled as to

1. How she'd hit a pheasant in the middle of the city
2. Even if she'd come from countryside she'd have had to have driven at least 6 miles with it stuck where it was

1. How the hell did she not realise something was a bit 'off' with the steering for potentially six miles?

Very weird.

I killed a fox once, driving on the A3. It ran out onto the carriageway at night. My husband could tell that I was instinctively going to swerve and gently told me not to. I hit it squarely and probably killed it almost instantly as it was on a 70mph section and that is what I was doing.

On a narrow country lane, doing 50, they usually move out of the way but this one stayed right in the middle.

A lot has changed since you wrote this. I think you thought it was funny and then when people pulled you up on the speed for a narrow country lane you tried to convince everyone it was in fact an A road and even went so far as to photograph it - god almighty, that's the big joke.

I did a speed awareness course recently and they told us that something like 80% of accidents happen on urban and suburban roads at 30mph zones but 60% of deaths happen on rural roads in national speed limit roads. Although they think mainly due to the fact that it takes longer for someone else yo cone sling and raise the alarm

In fact I can't think what you could possibly have seen that involved horses, plus fours, landrovers and spaniels in August in the Cotswolds?!

A long time ago, I used to have to sit through inquests as part of my job. I'd say at least half of the fatal road traffic accidents I heard about were people who'd swerved to miss pheasants and bunnies.

Don't feel crap. If you'd swerved, you could have died. Pheasants are beautiful things, but they're not worth dying for.

If it makes you feel better, I killed a crow on a driving test once. The examiner told me to drive on, so I did and I squished it. Then I failed for taking both hands off the wheel as I shouted, "Oh no!".

EveDallas the glorious 12th refers to the grouse season. I can assure you there are no grouse in the Cotswolds!!

Single track too and my horses are at the end of it so it is 4 x a day minimum for me.

Thing is though that the amount of them being killed must depend on the estate's proximity to national speed limit roads etc., etc..

The road I kill the most on is spanned by an estate at either side with feeders within 30 feet of the road at regular intervals. The road has bends, but has mile long straights and is 5 miles long (I know this because I ride my bike along it too).

I am not going to drive at 30 mph just because there might be a pheasant without any road sense somewhere along the 5 mile stretch, in fact, thanks to this thread, I noticed that I was doing 55mph this morning.

Stupid - I don't think so, I could see a mile ahead on a lovely sunny day.

The 7 in a weekend was because we chose to visit my sister in her deepest darkest Cotswolds village on the Glorious 12th (not so glorious for the pheasants) and the bloody things were jumping out at us from the hedges. This was down single track roads, and I doubt we went over 20mph throughout - what with the amount of Land Rovers, Springer Spaniels, men in plus fours and horses all over the place.

We killed 7, but I reckon we probably swerved for about 30. We avoid it like the plague now.

i never see phesants in london only foxes. Well maybe you provided a meal for a hungry animal or human some people eat road kill