Hokio Beach: Motorbike man miraculously walks from midnight crash with wild deer on way to Wellington

Hokio Beach man Mike Shirley said he hit a deer while riding his motorbike on his way to work.

A Hokio Beach man claims he is lucky to be alive after hitting a wild deer with his motorbike at high speed at midnight.

But while Mike Shirley is counting his lucky stars that he walked away with only minor injuries, he said he’s left counting the cost of the collision.

Shirley, 56, was on his way to work as a bus driver in Wellington early Monday morning. He said the deer jumped at him out of nowhere on a stretch of Hokio Beach Road near the Arawhata Road turn-off .

He said the wild deer would have died on impact and couldn’t believe the only injuries he sustained was a sore shin and a couple of sore fingers.

Hokio Beach man Mike Shirley said he hit a deer on his way to work on his motorbike.

The thing that hurt the most was that he had only purchased the Aprilia 750ccc bike just a matter of hours earlier, paying $3800, and was planning on insuring it later that day.

“It’s a write-off,” he said.

“I only had the bike for about six hours. I went into town and got some gas and got ready for work.

While he was an experienced motorcycle rider he said he simply had no time to react to avoid colliding with the deer.

“It was just...boom,” he said. “As soon as I clamped my eyes on it ran in front of me, in an instant. I’m bloody lucky”.

Shirley said he was able to phone the police immediately to file an incident report. Police attended the scene and watched over his bike while he returned with a trailer to load up the bike wreckage.

He later drove a car to work.

Wild fallow deer were more likely to be seen on New Zealand roads in autumn months like April and May. It is mating season. They are most active from sunset to midnight, and around sunrise.

They can come down from the Tararua Ranges and have been seen along the region’s beaches. Though quite small, they can weigh up to 90kg and are nice eating.

Warnings exist for motorists travelling at night to take extra care during autumn, especially motorcyclists, as deer have minimal road sense and freeze because a motorcycle headlight on high beam can blind them.

The advice is generally to sound a horn. If there is no avoiding a collision, then it is always better to hit the deer than try and run off the road and hit something like a tree, or swerve into oncoming traffic and have a head-on collision.

Motorcyclists should do as much of their braking in a straight line as possible. To brake while turning increases the risk of accident.