I also felt a second jolt which I realized was the rest of the deer hitting my rear driver's side door after the impact with the mirror spun the animal around. Almost immediately, I could smell the very strong scent of deer and I had a frozen image of an explosion of fur next to my face. The sun was setting to my left and I caught a glimpse of the fur cloud in the afternoon sunlight. I pulled over at the first rest stop to inspect the damage to my car. The mirror had snapped off so cleanly that it almost looked like it had never been there at all; only an empty housing was still connected to the car. Even the electric wires had been sheared off as though sliced off with a razor. The only other damage to my car was a shallow depression in the rear door where the deer had hit the car when it was spun around by the impact with the mirror. After I calmed down, I got back on the highway in the opposite direction...

I was worried that it might have been badly injured and suffering, although I do not know what I would have been able to do if I found it writhing around in agony.
As I passed the area where the collision happened, I could see the deer lying near the guard rail next to the left lane and it was not moving at all. I made another u-turn and slowed down as I approached the animal, pulling over on the opposite side of the highway. I got out of my car and approached the deer from the shoulder and it appeared to be dead. The accident taught me a valuable lesson: if I had been driving slower, I probably could have reacted in time to avoid the collision entirely. Since then, I try to remind myself that a little extra speed is not worth the added risk because faster speed means less time to react. The next time, it could be a person wandering onto the road instead of a deer.