Back in the day, 4 of the O.G. Meatheads got themselves an apartment just a few minutes outside of town. It was the biggest piece of shit I have ever seen. It was something like $350 a month total, split 4 ways, everything included. It was two stories, but some of the rooms didn’t even have drywall, there was no shower (just a really old tub) and it was run down and sleazy – we affectionately named it the “Crack Shack”. It was the party place for a couple years! I have many great memories there…

Anyhow, I had brought a girl that I was mackin on out to chill at the Shack one night. It was just a laid back night, no heavy drinking… just cards, Xbox, smokin, etc. It was getting pretty late so I was ready to take off. Roland, who lived there, asked me to drive his girlfriend home. It was the complete opposite way that I was going, but I agreed. So, the 3 of us hopped into my car (I was driving my 1991 Integra sedan winter beater) and headed out towards South Ohio. I was cruising along at about 100km/h coming up a hill (right before the Pitman Rd. for the Y-Townies) when I saw a flash of white jump down into the ditch. It was a deep ditch, so I had a bit of time to react. I swerved to the left and, sure enough, up out of the ditch came a decent sized doe (a deer… a female deer!).

POW! It slammed into the passenger side of my car! Both girls screamed and I looked over just in time to watch the deer’s tongue smear across the passenger side window. Gross! I slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop a couple hundred feet up the road. I was pissed!! Mostly because I had just installed some imported Japanese one piece headlights on my car (worth more than the car itself), and I was sure they must have been smashed. I looked in my rearview and I could still see the deer lying behind me on the side of the road, surely it was dead…

I got out of the car to inspect the damage, and I was very pleased to find practically none! I had lost my passenger side mirror and there was a small dent on the door… that was it! I don’t know why, but I decided to go back and check on the deer. It definitely looked dead. I had my camera with me, so I took some pictures of the damage and of the deer. I handed my camera to one of the girls and crouched down next to the deer to get a picture. Before it went off, the deer came to and kicked me square in the ass! It gave us all a good little scare! But, once my heart rate came down, I started to feel kinda bad for the animal. The thing obviously had a broken neck. It couldn’t get up, and it was just thrashing around on the side of the road. It needed to be put out of its misery…

I grabbed my cell phone and called Roland. I told him that I hit a deer, broke its neck and now it was flailing around on the side of the road. I asked him to grab something to finish it off with and bring it out to me. About 5 minutes later he showed up in his truck. We lit a smoke and discussed the situation.

“What did you bring?” I asked him.

“Uh, well… nothing really. I just came right out. I think I have a knife in the truck though…”

Fucking great. He goes to the truck and comes back with his “knife”. It was a fucking tiny Swiss Army knife that couldn’t cut warm butter. But, it was all that we had.

Now, keep in mind, I am more of a city boy then a country boy. I grew up in a hicktown, but I’ve never killed anything, I don’t own anything camo, I don’t hunt, hell… I don’t even own a doe skin (a plaid jacket)! But, this was my mess, so it was up to me to finish it off. I took the butter knife and timidly jabbed it into the deer’s neck. It wouldn’t slice, so I just stabbed it repeatedly. Eventually, the thing stopped moving. Whew. I felt bad, but at least it was all over… I thought. Then with a big gasp, the thing started to gurgle and breathe through its goddamn neck hole! Fucking shit. Just my luck… I try to kill the thing and end up giving it a perfect field tracheotomy. I wasn’t going to stab it again, so we tried to come up with a quicker way to finish it off.

Looking around, all we could find were some decent sized rocks – maybe the size of a tennis ball, or a little smaller. I told Roland that it was his turn, so he took the rock and gingerly threw it at the poor deer’s head. THUNK! Nothing. I took the rock and threw it a little harder. SMACK! Still alive. Before long we were climbing up onto the tailgate of his truck and jumping down with rock in hand throwing it as hard as we could at the damn thing’s head. It would stop breathing, sometimes for what seemed like minutes, only to gasp and start back up again. For fuck sakes.

It became obvious that the rock wasn’t going to end it so we started digging around in the back of his truck and eventually found the perfect weapon: a 3 foot length of 2×4 with a nail in the end of it! Perfect!
Again, we started off kind of timid, with a few light smacks, hoping to end it gently. No dice. We ended up going shot for shot with the damn thing for about 20 minutes before we could actually confirm that it was dead. It started off with me wanting to put the thing quickly out of its misery… and almost 2 hours later after a pocket knife, rocks and a 2×4 with a nail in it… the deer was no longer suffering!

Now that the damn thing was finally dead, we threw the carcass in the back of Roland’s truck and he drove it back to his dad’s house. I drove the girls home (yes, they were there to witness all of this… and weren’t overly pleased about that) and then headed back to Roland’s fathers.

His dad is a professional meat cutter, so he gave me a crash course in how to skin a deer. I even cut out its tongue and removed its jaw bone myself. I had to take the jaw bone to the Department of Natural Resources to report the death and get a certificate allowing us to keep the meat. Roland Sr. cut it up and gave me a BIG bag of amazing deer steaks and kept the rest for himself as payment for his time.

It was actually the first time that I ever had deer steak, and it was fucking wonderful! Even though it was technically roadkill!