I hit a deer once. It was night. I never saw it till it was right in front of the car. I was probably going 45 mph. It bounced off the front of the car and landed at the side of the road. Then it got up and limped off like yours did. It was hard to tell how badly injured it was.
When I was much younger, I got pulled over in some North Mississippi mountains doing 85 in a 70. Cop didn’t ticket me, but said, there were deer crossing and I was going to kill myself if I didn’t slow it down.
I did slow it down thanks to his warning, and within 5 minutes there were deer in the road.
In NH one nite almost hit a moose bull. All I saw was long legs. Huge.