Originally Posted by NuffZed

I investigate accidents for a living and am a certified accident investigator by all north american standards. Armchair second guessing quarterbacks who werent there aside you did the right thing here man. Avoidance maneuvers and braking was 100% the correct thing to do in these circumstances.

Avoidance maneuvers often lessen the seriousness of an accident but not all of them. With large long legged animals like deer, elk, moose which sadly get hit frequently, hitting them directly with a car often results in them coming through the windshield. This often kills, particularly with the bigger ones, or seriously injures the front seat occupants when the front of the vehicle cuts thier legs out from under them and lands them on your hood.

It is a measure of your skill as a driver that you chose the correct action in the split seconds you had to react. Well done. If you had hit the animal directly while trusting entirely on your brakes to avoid the collision I think the results would have been worse.