A funny thing happened on the way home one day. I was riding shotgun in a friend’s car back to Fort Stewart Georgia where I was stationed the last 9 months of my time in the US Army.
My friend had just bought a “new to him” BMW and he was very proud of his new ride. It was early in the morning, I was sleeping and was shaken out of my slumber by the sight and sound of a large mass crashing into the windshield and tumbling up and over the car.
My first instinct was that we had hit someone, and immediately my medical training kicked in. As I was waiting for him to come to a complete stop so I could exit the vehicle and assess the patient, my friend started yelling repeatedly, “We hit a deer!”
He pulled over and there was no doubt that the deer was dead and so was his new car. The engine was displaced and every fluid the car had was spilling onto the side of the road.
As I was trying to console my friend who was grieving the loss of his new car, a man in a small truck drove up to see if we needed help. We told him what happened and he offered to drive us to his place of business where he operated a small trucking company and could get us a ride home in one of his trucks.
I mentioned in the beginning that a funny thing happened, and this is where it all began. Of course if you were my friend who lost his new BMW, then there was no humor anywhere in this experience.
Our new friend motioned for us to jump in the back of his truck and as we were climbing in, he asked, “So where is the deer you hit?” We motioned back to the point of impact and he drove back to inspect the animal. When we arrived, we were amazed to see a beautiful 9 point buck. With the exception that the animal was as dead as dead could be, you could hardly tell that he had a run in with a fine Bavarian automobile.
Our new friend then asked us to help him load the deer into the back of the truck, where the three of us rode back to his dispatch office. The whole way there my friend was crying inside and had to stare at the dead deer that had totaled his car.
Once we made it back to the dispatch office, our new friend found us a warm place to sit while we waited for our ride. In the meantime, he started calling his friends on the phone, and we could overhear him telling one after another how he woke up early that morning and decided to go hunting, and how he bagged himself a beautiful 9 point buck.
It was hard not to laugh, and I can assure you, my friend who lost his car was not laughing at all.
To this day, I often wonder if that trucking company halfway between Hinesville and Savannah Georgia still exists, and if it does, is that 9 point buck mounted on the office wall.
This memory of a lifetime is probably a story that gets told on a regular basis by at least three individuals. Me, my friend who lost his car, and the trucking company owner who bagged a 9 point buck one early morning. I would wager that we all tell it just a little different.
This story reminds me of how important it is to remember that we all look at things from our own perspective, and also, if some guy in Georgia shows you a beautiful mount on his wall, he might not be as good of shot as he claims.
Robert Mayo - Professional Auctioneer, Auction Educator & Public Speaker 