Chalk up another Kill

What the hell is it with bloody pheasants? Do they have some kind of inbuilt suicide mechanism which drives them to wander into the path of several tons of moving car? They all seem to do exactly the same thing:
-Run out from the side of the road and stop in shock in the middle of your lane.
-Overcome said shock and run back towards the safety of the side of the road.
-Remember that they were trying to get to the other side and turn around and attempt to fly there.
-Hit the front of my car at 60mph (or a bit less if I reckon I can slow down without causing an accident).
-End up a twitching lump at the side of the road and occasionally get picked up and taken home - I mean, at least I know it's fresh roadkill!

In case you hadn't figured out by now, I hit one on the way home today...

 

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm roast pheasant

 

Same thing happened to my bro'. Pheasant strike, new 'kidney grill' and new bonnet to his 318 Ci (and they give him a Micra as a run around while they painted it! How I laughed!!!

RIP little Pheas, you died giving me years of pi$$taking fun!

BMW - cars named after their owners from the UK!

 

Yeah, to the grille on the front of the car - a bit like those stupid red noses, but only pheasant shaped...

 

Pheasants are close to nesting now, so if you hit and take home a hen (i.e. phemale) from now on, gut it straight away.

Pal of mine hung one up for a few days before plucking and cooking, not knowing there was an smashed egg in its oviduct. Result = salmonella poisoning bigtime. Bad news.

C*ck pheasants should all be OK.

 

Does anyone know the legalities: doesn't it count as poaching if you hit it and then take it home, but if someone else hits the thing and you pick it up it's carrion?? I think that's right, which would account for some alleged expeditions down some lanes - two vehicles in company one to clout and one to collect! Apparently there's an art to clipping 'em just right...

 

I was driving at f-all-o-clock a couple of months back on a completely (or so I thought) clear, straight road. I don't know what was wrong with my speedo, but it was saying at the time that I was doing 130mph (which of course I wasn't, so it must have been broken). Anyway, as I drove along, I saw something small in the road in the distance and chose to ignore it; that is until I VERY quickly arrived at its location. Both myself and the object of my gaze had the merest blink of an eye to say to ourselves "F..." and just as I realised what it was (because it tried to leave the deck) there was a very satisfying and loud 'THWUMP' and a cloud of feathers, blood and bone slipping passed my windscreen.

For some strange reason, the bird (and they are normally pretty quick off the mark) only had time to get about a foot off the ground before the world ended. I have to admit, I didn't stop the car to check if it was OK because I knew that in another plane of existence, the bird was fine, but I nearly had to stop because I was laughing sooo hard. Cruel or what?

When I got home and opened my bonnet, there was a big ding in the radiator, lots of blood and feathers and some of these were right at the back of the engine bay.



My only regret was that it was not a seagull!

I have since had my speedo, erm, fixed.

Edited to add a bigger pic.

 

I believe they are owned by whoevers land they are on. So if they are on the public highway you should be ok.

 

So just to clear this up, if a pheasant decided to "land" in my back garden, it would belong to me?

 

Mmmmmmmmm, roast Poppy.

 

Yep. Doesn't matter if it was wild or had been reared, Mr Pheasant on your property is fair game (within the season, naturally ).

Roadkill was a bit ambiguous I believe because of it being the public highway. Most of the UK game laws date back a very long way to the days when you were either transported or topped for lifting the Lord of the Manor's game.

BTW is it just me or are there a sod of a lot of badgers ending up as badger pate at the moment?

 

mmmmmmmmmm spit roast poppy

 

A lot of badgers get killed by vehicles in early spring, mostly because they are spending longer wandering further afield by night/early morning, looking for possible mates. Their grasp of the Green Cross Code is tenuous. But they're not rare, despite what the Huggers claim.

If a pheasant lands in your garden, it's yours if it is the lawful open season to "reduce it into possession", and if you also have a Game Licence - and (if you use an air-rifle or suchlike) if you own the sporting rights over your garden. A lot of householders down own the latter, oddly enough.

 

You cross 'em, he'll head them in....

As for birdstrike, that's all very well. I hit a deer on the M4 just after the Newbury junction a few years back - in a brand new Rover 800. The roe was bumped up onto the bonnet and hit the windscreen, which shattered and ripped a gurt big hole in the beast's stomach area, resulting in all kinds of innards and content splurging onto the fascia and front seat.

I had the thing valeted three times but still couldn't get rid of the smell of freshly mowed/freshly digested grass so I sold it at a loss!