Watch out for nature's luftwaffa

bluegojoe

New member
A buddy of mine hit this vulture on a ride yesterday and killed it. He said he was near triple digits and it bent the headlight/fly screen bracket on his S4RS. He's lucky it didn't hit him in the helmet.
 
here's a picture of a Partridge that flew into the side of my old SS and then lodged between my foot and shifter. You can see the feathers where he hit. Six months later I rode past road kill just in time for a crow to come at me, I kicked him away before he hit me but at 120 km he was quite dead. He was still on the road the next day when I went back.

BTW, the partridge was tough as hell, even with the butter and mushroom sauce.
 
BTW, the partridge was tough as hell, even with the butter and mushroom sauce.[/quote]

That's because you didn't cook it right. You could have wrapped the bird with a can of mushroom soup, plus the butter, into some heavy duty foil and placed it on top of your exhaust manifold. About a 400 mile day would have it nice and tender.
 
Thanks for the post Ten-6.

Any one elese have photos of killing bird with your ducks?

In 1986 I killed a duck and a crow on my 860. I used to ride fast. But spent all my extra $ on beer, so I never had $ for 110 film, so no photos.
 
Watch out for the birds fellows, a rider was killed here
last year when a turkey came of the mountain upper side and hit the rider in the head knocking him off the lower side of the mountain. We don't have a lot of guard rails round here.
 
Watch out indeed. I've had a few too many bird hits. Amongst other minor hits and close calls; the ST2S had it's windscreen shattered at speed by a blackbird and I hit an owl with a KLR at night on dirt.

My worst hit though was almost a year ago to the day. I hit a sea gull early in the AM on I-84 headed east into the rising sun down to Torrey, Utah to hook up with a group of STx riders for our annual get together. I was on the 1098 and pretty much alone on the freeway, as it was 6 AM; except for a herd of mule deer that appeared to present dozens of silhouetted ears on a low pass. After the mulies i rolled the throttle on for a long straight downhill run with no vehicles in sight and the long valley opening up for 10 miles of loneliness. Lonely, except for something on the right shoulder about a 1/2 mile ahead. Thought it was a bit of light colored trash but as I got closer it started to move. A swung to the left lane as the trash took off right into my path. It was an instant that I saw it was a big seagull. A seagull in the high desert ... I should have been more prepared.

I quickly ducked.

Running along at something well north of a ton, it hit me full on the very top of my Adamo replica helmet and about knocked me out. Saw stars and had that metallic taste in my mouth which I thought was blood at first but was only that taste you get when you screw up a high dive a smack the water with your face. There was significant noise & my first thought was that the helmet or the faceshield was destroyed. After a bit of dazed groping, I discovered that the vented mouthpiece on the Arai had been popped out by the force of the hit.

Never stopped, as the bird must have been killed instantly dead, I was OK, & I sure wasn't going to find the mouthpiece. But if I hadn't ducked and the bird had hit me in the faceshield with my head upright, I wouldn't be typing this now. I'd have either balled it up from either being blind or having a snapped and broken neck.

Yes, birds can be a problem so be careful out there.

Chris
 
I was hit in the neck by a bird while coming to a stop off PCH. The bird survived, hit the ground, looked around for a few seconds, then flew off.

I got hit by a really big moth coming down from Ojai one night. It hit the vent right below the visor. I could taste moth for days, kind of bitter sweet first taste of road kill. Why does the Ojai area have the largest bugs?

I ran into a bee that got around the collar to the back of my neck, where it stung me. That hurt less than the epi-pen shot.

I was hit on the upper left arm by a piece of truck tire on I-5 near Capistrano. It hurt badly enough for me to think it was broken. It wasn't broken, I'm just a whimp when it comes to pain.
 
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