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I have a question whether you can use "meet" when you see wild animals.
Someone wants to see a wild deer and perhaps take some photographs of it. When you know a road around which deer are seen very often, can you say this sentence?
You can meet deer around the road.
I think you can go to the zoo to "meet" animals, but I am not sure if you can use "meet" when you are expecting to see wild animals like this.
No, it isn't normal or idiomatic to use "meet" in any of the situations you describe, including the zoo. It can be done, but it would be unusual, and it would typically only be used by a native speakers in order to create an unusual emphasis, comparison with human encounters, or irony. Part of the problem is that "meet" doesn't just mean "encounter" or "meet with," it implies being introduced to a person, having some social interaction with them, and learning to recognize their face so you will know them the next time you see them. There is an implication that the familiarization, future recognition of the individual, and social interaction are mutual, not one way. So, for example, it would be idiomatic to say:
She told me I could use her bathroom, and while I was there I met her cat, an old tom who looked at me suspiciously but clearly didn't want to be stroked.
It would not be normal to say:
I sat down in the restaurant and met the waitress.
You don't really meet the waitress. She won't remember you next time, and you don't introduce yourselves or interact socially except in a very limited way. There would have to be some other reason to use "meet:"
I sat down in the restaurant and met the waitress. Her uniform said Amy on it. I told her I was from out of town and asked if she knew a good place to stay that was cheap. Yes, Johny, that was your grandmother.
I think you can go to the zoo to "meet" animals, ...
No, not really. This lacks almost all the necessary elements: familiarization, future recognition of the individual, social interaction, and mutuality.
Someone wants to see a wild deer and perhaps take some photographs of it. When you know a road around which deer are seen very often,
... you would idiomatically say...
You can see deer on that road.
Sometimes there are deer on that road.
You might run into (encounter, meet up with, cross paths with ...) a deer on that road.
Once in a while you get deer on that road.
Yes, you can use meet to mean "encounter" or "come into the presence of", and it is sometimes used with wild animals, for example
During one of these trips, Vladimir Igorevich met a mountain lion.
However, to "meet" a wild animal implies a surprise or chance encounter, and if you expect to see deer, it would be more idiomatic to say "You may find deer" or "You may encounter deer."
You can use it this way. If you explore the examples at Webster, you will see that "meet" has a variety of meanings. The most common sense is "to become acquainted with," but there are many more.
For example, we can say this of two streets that cross:
Elm Street meets Cherry Street in two blocks.
The literal meaning of the following is that "this" is the place where a tire touches the pavement:
This is where the rubber meets the road.
We tend to use it more when we mean, "This is where your hypothetical suggestion gets tested in reality."
This is a colorful way of explaining where you can board the train:
You can meet the train at the station.
I've chosen most of these examples to illustrate that the act of meeting does not require human subjects or even a sense of awareness.
So it would be unremarkable to say,
I was walking through the forest when I met a deer.
A child of a certain age might be amused by the idea—specifically, a child who has outgrown the notion that animals can converse with people, but who has not yet seen the word "meet" in many contexts.
"What to do if you meet a bear" is so common it's almost a cliché, and "I was walking in the woods and met a deer" is also very idiomatic. In these contexts "encounter" is a direct replacement.
But it very much implies some level of interactivity, and also surprise, so it would be odd for me to hear it in reference to a zoo visit, or distant viewing of birds or wildlife. In those cases you'd use "saw" or "watched".
You can "meet" pretty-much anything, including wild animals, but almost never in a zoo. There, bars and fences get in the way.
You can "meet" not only animals but also bad weather or stormy seas, avalanches or crevasses, rock-falls or simple walls.
You can go to the zoo to "see", to "look at" or to "watch" animals but because of the barriers, you would not "meet" them except, for instance, in the children's petting section, where you could play with small furry creatures without bars or fences.
There can almost never be an "expectation" of seeing wild animals like that but if you do bump into, happen upon or otherwise encounter a wild creature yes, you will "meet."
