Deer Strike at Leesburg, VA (KJYO)
The flight home from my night currency landings at Winchester was uneventful. The landing, on the other hand, had a bit of a surprise in store.
Rounding out on final, I had the numbers nailed and came in over the threshold right at 65 MPH indicated (yes, MPH, not knots). Just after the nose gear touched, I saw a shadow cross the center line from right to left and into the beam of the landing light: Deer! A split second later came a thump and a slight pull to the right which was easily corrected.
The engine remained running fine with no unusual vibrations or noises so I pulled off the runway at the first turn-off, cleaned up the aircraft and scanned around for damage. As my scan came to the starboard horizontal stabilizer, I saw in the faint light bent metal and busted fiberglass. It was painfully obvious the thump I'd felt was not something being run over by my landing gear as I'd desperately hoped, but rather a second deer.
I parked the plane in its usual spot and assessed the damage. Sure enough, the starboard stabilizer had its leading corner .jpg)
.jpg)
busted and bent back with the rear corner twisted back over the trim tab. It was also twisted back enough that the corner connecting to the empennage was pulled out almost 2 inches. There was wrinkling on the starboard side of the empennage and vertical stabilizer and the beacon was knocked loose from the fiberglass cap. Well, "knocked loose" may be a bit of a misnomer as there was a bit of fiberglass still attached to the beacon which was left hanging by the power cords. The damage to the port side was worse as the force of the impact evidently twisted the entire tail section to the port side. Also, the impact appears to have severed at least one of the control connections as the control lock was in the yoke, but I was able to move the elevator almost from stop to stop.
I walked back to the scene of the impact to pull the carcass off the runway - after all, there's no sense leaving it there for the next poor soul to land - but there was nothing on the runway. Not even a blood trail. The only apparent evidence of the culprit was the appearance of two pairs of green eyes reflecting my flashlight beam at the edge of the woodline west of the field and they ran off when I approached. After the damage done to the plane, I was hoping to have something to at least kick.
All things considered, I was lucky. This may end up being minor compared to the damage that could have been caused had the first deer struck the prop.
I've posted still photos here.
The video enclosure shows the first deer, a couple slow-motion replays of the strike, and the initial damage assessment.