One of our Cherokees had a close encounter with a deer a few weeks ago.
Student and Instructor were just touching down when the instructor suddenly
shouted "My airplane!" and started a go around. They almost cleared the
deer, which was near midfield, but it glanced off the inside leading edge
and underside of the wing. There was quite a bit of vibration, but they
managed to complete the pattern and landed again, alongside of what was left
of the deer. They discovered the deer's head significantly separated from
the rest of it. The prop was slightly bent, and there was some minor sheet
metal damage to the one wing leading edge and root.

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)

I don't have to like Bush and Cheney (Or Kerry, for that matter) to love
America

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...
"Save the Elephants" wrote in message
...
[...]
I guess the lesson is, be aware of your surroundings! A zebra isn't
likely to get into this kind of trouble in America, but we DO have lots
of
deer, moose, even bears that come to grief every year. [...]

Not to mention turtles (had to avoid one on the taxiway at Orlando
Executive
one time).

Name any animal native to North America, and one of them has probably
wandered onto a runway at some point. Probably even a few non-native
species have found their way to the wrong place too. It's a good reminder
that other aircraft are relatively easy to see, and we still run into
those
when they're in the wrong place at the wrong time; animals are even harder
to avoid, but present a very real hazard.

Obviously there's a limit to how much time you can invest monitoring the
runway edges while you're supposed to be keeping it on centerline,
flaring,
braking, etc. but somewhere in there ought to be *some* kind of "runway
environment scan". Thanks for the reminder.

Pete