Driving at night in Colorado, your chances of hitting a deer or elk are pretty high. If you are in a thickly wooded area with a stream that parallels the road (which is almost anywhere in the mountains), you can often see the eyes of numerous deer just off the shoulder. Aside from the trauma of injuring the animal, there is a very real chance of being killed or injured yourself in such a collision with a 200-600 pound animal.
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OK. This is an episode that is vivid in my memory. I was living in the mountains above Denver, the Foothills as we call them, and I was driving down a very busy two-lane road at rush hour just north of Morrison. I suddenly saw ahead of me what seemed at first glance to be a statue of a deer that had tumbled out of someone's pickup truck bed. It was perfectly rigid, and tumbled to the side of the road. As I approached, I saw that it was in fact a large doe that lay on the shoulder, bleeding from mouth and nose and quivering in spasms. I pulled over, watching the animal struggle and not knowing what to do, when a big Ford truck pulled over behind me. The guy got out, and I asked if he had a gun to put the deer out of its misery. He said no, shook his head, went to his truck and returned with a large ball peen hammer. I will tell you that it took several blows to kill the deer.
I will also tell you that, as horrible as this sounds and despite the fact that I know I couldn't have done it, it was the right thing to do for the deer. But it is also something, like a bad dream, that I will never forget.