diff --git a/gitdb/utils/encoding.py b/gitdb/utils/encoding.py
index 4d270af..d8fd59a 100644
--- a/gitdb/utils/encoding.py
+++ b/gitdb/utils/encoding.py
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@
     text_type = unicode
 
 
-def force_bytes(data, encoding="ascii"):
+def force_bytes(data, encoding="utf-8"):
     if isinstance(data, bytes):
         return data