I've only ever hit two animals...a ground hog and a raccoon. The groundhog was literally in the middle of the on ramp to a highway where I had to be at 50MPH because there was no merge area. And the raccoon was on a 75MPH+ highway late at night - a highway that's used by a lot of longhaul truckers. In both cases as soon as I saw the animals I knew I was going to have to hit them because if I swerved I would have either swiped an oncoming car, gone into a ditch, or freaked out a trucker in a very large semi. Feels bad to know I killed them but...no choice in those cases.

However I have come to an abrupt stop MANY TIMES in my own neighborhood because there are a lot of squirrels and crows that think they're invincible. But my 25mph neighborhood is a lot different than a highway, haha.