Avoiding the Antlers

I write this post for the Velvet Antlers blog in the car beside Claire on the way north through the highlands – heading home from work down south. As we leave the southern highlands and climb up onto the stunning barren expanse of Rannoch Moor, I can feel a familiar feeling of worry triggering in my head. What is it?

Antlers!

That is, the sight of them appearing through the windscreen. Gruesome thought I know. So let me explain why I feel the need to blog about it. Since our early visits to the highlands as teenage climbers, we noticed that despite a long hard day’s mountaineering on the north face of Ben Nevis, the most dangerous moments of the day came on the drive home late in the evening. One minute you are driving on a dark and deserted highland road. Next minute everyone in the car would be screaming as we slalom-swerved between some antlered obstacles. Scary stuff.

Now we love the highland red deer enough to name our company after them. The sight of them bounding across the mountains either alone or in their hundreds in huge clans is quite awesome. But the sight of one bounding in front of your car as you hurtle along is not funny.

Where red deer go to learn the green cross code.

Since we became highland locals, we’ve really learned that avoiding them is a really big part of moving about in the highlands if you want to stay safe and hang onto your vehicle! But we also realised that so many folks, like we used to be as outside visitors, are not aware of the danger.

It might seem weird for two adventurous types into rock climbing and mountaineering to lecture about road safety. But let the following facts do the talking. Since living here for less than a year, we have had one serious collision with major car and stag damage (twenty of them ran out in front of Claire’s car at once – we had no chance!). I’ve been in the car during at six separate collisions with Red Deer, one writing off a friend’s car. Most of the people we know who have lived in or visited the highlands have written off at least one car. And we know about one accident that resulted in life changing injuries for the passengers. So forgive us for the warning.

Here are our Antler avoiding top tips when driving in the highlands:

- Winter is worst (we’re not sure if it’s true, but we have been told they come down not only to escape the mountain blizzards but to lick the salt off the roads – anyone know?)
- Rannoch Moor is the worst spot in Scotland and we see accidents virtually non-stop through winter.
- The A83 between Spean Bridge and Laggan, and the Cluanie pass are also virtually guaranteed to see at least one stag crossing per journey. We totally recommend going pretty slow here.
- If you have a passenger, recruit them for ‘deer radar’ duty and keep a look out for antlers bobbing around in the dark next to the road or the shiny eyes in the headlights. This saves so many accidents. Oh, and make sure you clarify that if they shout “DEER!” they mean “BRAKE!” and you don’t answer “Yes dear?”.
- Be super careful when your headlights are dipped. You’ll have no warning to hit the anchors in time if a stag appears in your line of fire.

So next time you are belting along a straight highland road with no other traffic in sight and you get stuck behind someone inexplicably doing 40 – yes, they do know something you don’t.