Wednesday night was a terrible night for motorists who encountered moose and deer on the road.

One man died after swerving to avoid a deer, and five other drivers were involved in accidents with moose on Maine highways, prompting state police to issue a warning to motorists on Thursday.

Casey Hall, 26, of Readfield died early Thursday when his Jeep overturned several times after he swerved to avoid a deer on a road in Mount Vernon, the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Department said.

The most spectacular moose collision happened in Township 31 east of Bangor.

After striking the moose on Route 9, a Canadian truck driver stayed with his blazing rig for nearly a mile trying to stop it before jumping from the slowly moving vehicle.

On the night of his 44th birthday, Richard Hiltz of Barrington, Nova Scotia, was driving a tractor-trailer load of 35,000 pounds of fresh fish from Harbor Light Fisheries of Woods Harbor, Nova Scotia.

He was heading west at 9:15 p.m. between Wesley and Beddington when he struck and killed a moose, said Deputy Jeffrey Bishop of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, the primary officer at the scene.

The impact caused a fire that engulfed the entire truck within seconds.

Realizing his brakes were gone, Hiltz tried to guide the burning truck as long as he could. He coasted for nine-tenths of a mile before the heat in the cab became overwhelming. He jumped into the darkness, hoping only that the rest of the trailer wouldn’t run him over.

Cars coming his way slowed, too, seeing the slow-moving fireball.

“He did a phenomenal job in surviving,” Bishop said. “He stayed with his truck as far as humanly possible without losing his own life.” Hiltz was relatively uninjured, noting only knee and elbow soreness, plus singed hair, Bishop said.

The blazing truck came to rest in the middle of the road a few hundred feet after Hiltz abandoned it.

The 35,000-pound load was completely lost, as was the truck, as flames burned everything.

The Wesley Volunteer Fire Department responded to the scene, as did some volunteer firefighters from Machias, Bishop said.

The road was blocked for an hour and 20 minutes before single lanes of traffic were opened. The clean-up crew didn’t clear the highway until about 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

As for the driver, he got a ride from another trucker heading to Dysart’s in Hermon, where Hiltz was scheduled to meet another driver from his company. No estimate of damage could be provided.

No one was injured in moose collisions on the Maine Turnpike in Biddeford, Saco, Falmouth and Cumberland, state police said.

May and June are the most dangerous months for motor vehicle collisions with moose, and troopers urged drivers to be especially careful from dusk to dawn, when most accidents happen.

“Despite the fact [moose] weigh in excess of 1,000 pounds, they’re literally invisible at night because of the color, and dusk to dawn is when they’re usually on the move,” said Stephen McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

McCausland pointed out that most of the moose accidents happened in southern Maine, far from the northern wilderness.

“It illustrates a misconception people have that moose are only in the remote wooded areas. Last night was a good example that they are everywhere, many times when you least expect them,” he said.

So far, only one person has died in a moose collision this year in Maine. A motorcyclist was killed on April 24 in Parsonsfield. In 2003, four people died in collisions with moose.

Moose often move into the lower valleys in springtime in search of plants to eat, wardens said. Often the first area to turn green in the spring is the side of the road.

Moose, which are nocturnal, are more difficult to see than deer because headlights illuminate only their legs, and their eyes do not reflect light as effectively as deer’s eyes.