"We thought they were birds," said Frances, 8.

But as she and her 10-year-old brother walked out to investigate, they discovered a gruesome sight: eight dead deer, apparently felled all at once - probably by lightning. Later, not far off, they found another lifeless deer.

The siblings looked over the rotting corpses under Tuesday morning's dreary sky. Wet, cold rain pelted the animals, stretched out in hues of brown, gray and white in the middle of a crop field.

Frances said softly, "It's just sad, nine deer lost."

"It happened in an instant, and it was like we couldn't believe what happened," said John Muir, 76. "We just sat there in shock, not knowing what to do or say."

The couple has lived at 6341 Noffke Drive, on the east side of Duncan Lake in Thornapple Township, for 11 years.

Occasionally, they see deer on farmland across the street, or drinking at the lake, but this was their first up-close-and-personal encounter.

But it wasn't until after the family pulled over and Sherman reached into the cargo area to get a blanket and paper towels that she found the doe inside the SUV. It had soared past two front-seat and three back-seat passengers, but caused only minor cuts and bruises.

"How we survived this is beyond me," Sherman said. "I looked at my boyfriend, and he looked at me. We were both covered in blood."

Sheriff's officials said the Oshkosh woman was going from the White Lake area to Laona through heavily wooded Langlade County Tuesday when the best routing from the GPS sent her onto a road that forked into a snowmobile trail.

Several miles down the frozen path she stopped and couldn't turn around in about a foot and a half of snow surrounding the car.

The report focused on the Mesa mule deer population, the population within the larger Sublette herd that is in close proximity to natural gas development operations. The researchers found a 30 percent decline in the Mesa population during a seven-year period (2001-2007) of intensive energy development.

Energy development at the Mesa site resulted in 1,520 acres of direct habitat loss, primarily at well pad sites, which accounted for less than 3 percent of the Mesa area. Indirect habitat loss, however, extended much farther. The model-averaged estimate predicted that mule deer avoided energy development sites by 2.6 to 7.5 km, depending on the level of human activity.

In the September issue of Deer & Deer Hunting, field editor Les Davenport will investigate another trend concerning Western deer. Be sure not to miss this article, "Save a Mulie, Shoot a Whitetail," on sale at newsstands beginning later this summer.

— Daniel E. Schmidt