Kalamazoo Public Safety Officer rescues whitetail deer from trunk of car

Driver: 'I hit a deer, I figured you'd want to see it'

KALAMAZOO, Mich. – This surely is not what a Kalamazoo Public Safety Officer was expecting when he opened the trunk of a car parked behind a hotel.

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At approximately 2:20 a.m. Tuesday Officer David Miller was on routine patrol, checking parking lots in the 3700 block of E. Cork Street, when he saw a suspicious person sitting in a parked vehicle behind a hotel.  Officer Miller spoke to the man, a Kalamazoo area resident, and had a brief discussion with him.  During the contact Miller's attention was drawn to the trunk area of the vehicle as the man unexpectedly hit the trunk release and stated, "I hit a deer, I figured you would want to see it."

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--The whitetail deer started the Kalamazoo Safety Officers

The vehicle owner claimed to have a dead deer in the trunk, a deer that he had accidently hit with his car on an outlying area roadway.  The man intended on utilizing the meat from the road kill to feed his family.  Officer Miller asked if he could inspect the deer to see if it had been properly tagged and accounted for, the man agreed. 

Officer Miller cautiously opened the trunk and was very surprised to find the deer very much alive.  Sensing freedom, the young deer sprang from the trunk, quickly acclimated itself with it's new surroundings and made a run for it.  The deer fled into a nearby wooded area very much alive and not to be seen again.  The man was at a loss for words, obviously the deer was not as mortally wounded as he initially had thought.

Vehicle-deer crashes are a year-round problem in Michigan, especially during the spring and fall as the state's estimated 2,000,000 deer are most active during these times.  Each year there are more than 60,000 vehicle-deer crashes reported in the State of Michigan.

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