In high school, Shawn Ritchie played fullback on the football team and suffered his share of hard hits. But none could compare to the one he took on Tuesday when his motorcycle collided with a deer while cruising down Interstate 90 at 75 mph.

"I ain't never been hit like that," the 46-year-old oil field salesman from Alice, Texas, said Friday from his hospital bed at St. Vincent Healthcare.

The purple bruises on his knuckles and shaved head and a neck brace are the most evident marks of his collision, which split the deer in half. Ritchie also suffered a broken left shoulder, broken ribs, a lacerated spleen and kidney. His motorcycle, a 2006 Harley Road King, is likely totaled.

"He also has a slight head injury, but we can't tell," joked his friend Justin Buckminster.

Buckminster, who was driving a motorcycle behind Ritchie, pulled his friend to the side of the road after the accident after nearly crashing himself as he swerved to miss Ritchie and one half of the deer.

Buckminster said his friend hit the brakes at about the same time he collided with the deer sometime after 8 p.m. near Greycliff. After the collision, Ritchie fell to the right and tumbled down the pavement, stopping in the middle of the interstate. The bike continued another 150 feet, coming to rest in the borrow pit.

"You need to note this," Ritchie joked. "The bad scrape mark on my head is from him dragging me off the road. I'm just lucky we weren't going down stairs."

"When I got to him, he was stiff and mumbling," Buckminster said. "I thought he was dead."

He grabbed Ritchie by his leather riding chaps and dragged him to the side of the highway. Much to Ritchie's disappointment, the medics had to cut off his leather jacket, a favorite vest and the chaps. He wasn't wearing a helmet.

"We had our helmets on in every other state, then we took them off in Montana because we didn't have to wear them," Buckminster said.

The duo had covered a lot of mileage up until then. From Texas they'd ridden a little less than 4,000 miles through Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington. Friends since they were 3, their plan was to go to all 48 states by the time they reached 48. They've been at it three years. Both are 46.

Now, they're planning on moving that deadline back to age 50.

"The next day in ICU he was trying to decide what color bike to get," Buckminster said.

"I'm trying to freeze his assets," said Ritchie's sister, Shannon Cowan.

Contact Brett French at french@billingsgazette.com or at 657-1387.