MY WIFE'S 18-year-old son, Micah Amey of Colebrook and Pittsburg, was driving up Hall Stream Road when he noticed a deer in a field between the road and the stream, which forms the border with Quebec. It looked like it was headed for Canada.

It wasn't. It turned and bounded right in front of his truck, and the impact sent it soaring into the air and crashing to the roadside, dead when it hit the ground. Micah, a farm kid, had helped with plenty of butchering, but had never taken care of a deer. He stood there looking at it, perplexed as to what to do next. But not for long.

Doug Burns, who was coming the other way and had seen the accident, stopped and called Fish and Game to get the OK, and then whipped out his knife and began dressing out the deer. Pete Bunnell came along, and stopped to help. Someone else stopped and asked if he could have the gut-pile. Soon there was quite a group there, scuffing around and visiting and looking on.

Police Chief Richard Lapoint was soon on the scene. He helped Micah load the deer into the back of the truck where it would be safe and out of sight, and gave Micah a ride to a nearby home so he could collect himself, consider the damage to the borrowed truck, and call his Dad.

Micah, realizing that the sight of the crumpled truck could generate a lot of rumors and worries, went on Facebook to tell everyone what had happened, and that he was all right. "Within minutes I got about 60 messages from people saying that they were glad I was OK, and asking if there was anything they could do to help," he said.

By day's end, Micah and his father, John, had the deer hanging in a barn and skinned out, ready for meat-cutter Danny Mathieu to bone out and wrap for the freezer.

"We'll have a good time trotting that through a number-10 frypan," I told Micah, who seemed suddenly hungry.

This all reminded me about a rainy night when I was living in Jefferson, and there came a knock on the door.

A woman had smacked into a deer just up the road and needed to use the phone. I meanwhile went to the scene, and found the deer dead in an adjacent field.

The woman was from out of state. "Can I have the deer?" I asked the arriving game warden. "Yup."

While the woman waited in her car for a relative to come give her a ride, my son, Mike, and I proceeded to dress out the deer right there in the driveway, under the floodlight, wheelbarrow at the ready for the gut-pile.

From the car I heard a sort of muffled shriek, and an astonished, "My God, they don't wait around up here, do they?"

Nope.

John Harrigan's outdoors column appears weekly. His address is Box 39, Colebrook 03576. E-mail him at hooligan@ncia.net.