# Why do so many deer get hit by cars? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 9, 2004, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919 "2004-11-09T23:15:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/41 "2004-11-12T18:56:46Z")
> [@Bewildebeest](#): > > Four of my family members have struck dear, all between mid October and early December. I see them year round. ---
**Author:** ![ltfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@ltfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ltfire)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/42 "2004-11-12T21:08:51Z")
A buck in rut is like a teenager in a whore house. He’s not looking for one doe, he’s out to nail every one in his territory. Conversely, does in estrus will tussle with other does for the head of the line position. As I said above, concerning deer trails, when the hunting season begins…and it is purposely scheduled for the rut…all well traveled paths are out. These maniacs, bucks and does, run slipshod thru the woods, heads down, looking for the SCENT. A road with traffic? They throw caution to the wind. They smell sex on the other side of that road? YOUR problem, not theirs. When the rut ends, the bucks go one way and the does go the other, never to fraternize again, until next season. So, yes, more are hit during the rutting/hunting seasons. …Wrote the above last night and didn’t post it. I was out with the bow this AM, and watched a horny doe chase a six pointer around the trees like I was watching two kids playing. She’s in estrus, and he’s not reached the rut stage. Interesting to watch. (couldn’t get a shot). ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2004, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/43 "2004-11-12T23:22:13Z")
Another reason you see so many deer roadkill is that, not only are there too many deer, there would be more deer _anyway_ - there’s always a lot more herbivorous prey animals than there are of their predators and such. So you’re going to see more dead deer than wolves every time, just by probability. Also, a dead deer is a big animal - you might not notice a very dead squirrel by the side of the road, but you’ll see Bambi. And you might not say anything about hitting the squirrel, but hitting a deer will mess your car up - it’s more of a big deal. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/44 "2004-11-13T00:29:29Z")
> [@Bewildebeest](#): > > Well I don’t have a cite, but have you ever heard of anyone hitting one outside of the rutting season? I certainly haven’t, nor have I seen dead ones beside the road any other time. I don’t think there’s a month out of the year that I haven’t seen dead deer by the side of the road. I’ve hit two of them. One was in November (during the rut) and the other was in June (definitely _not_ during the rut). ---
**Author:** ![easy\_e](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/eb8c5e/32.png) [@easy\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/easy_e)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/45 "2004-11-13T00:59:35Z")
> [@Boyo Jim](#): > > That is the SOP in WI. If you clip a deer with your car (or believe it or not, with your airplane), the meat is yours if you want it. I don’t know about the cop help, though. If the driver doesn’t want it, someone else can claim it. The sheriff or deputies used to call my grandmother if the driver didn’t want to claim a deer killed in an accident because they knew she’d make use of the meat. ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/46 "2004-11-13T02:24:32Z")
I hit TWO little does ☹ with my car in Vermont in the middle of May. Totalled the car and scared the hell out of me. This was in downtown Rutland, around 6:00 am (leaving a campsite). Only six-lane road in VT, I was in the sixth lane, they crossed all five lanes to be hit by me! ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/47 "2004-11-14T00:21:58Z")
> [@CC](#): > > There would be no reason for deer to consider cars to be “predators.” Such judgements, if you were to call them that, are built in over millions of years of survival. Cars have posed a danger to deer for the last 100 years, maybe. Maybe I should have been more careful in what I said, but I think there’s a grain of truth in there. How about this phrasing: When a deer encounters a car, the large, noisy, bright object elicits a fear reaction probably not unlike the reactions deer exhibit when confronted by predators. ---
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [November 14, 2004, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/48 "2004-11-14T22:46:44Z")
> [@ltfire](#): > > A road with traffic? They throw caution to the wind. Respectfully, your argument fails to hit the mark because I see deer on the road at all times of the year, and dead along side the at all times of the year as well. ---
**Author:** ![Omar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f0a364/32.png) [@Omar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/49 "2004-11-15T00:56:21Z")
My anthropology teacher in college taught us that deer and rabbits had stereoscopic vision. I think a part of that definition was having eyes on either side of the head. She said that at night, with bright lights, this type of vision was a factor in their demise. Someone can correct me here if she is completely wrong. ---
**Author:** ![ltfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@ltfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ltfire)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/50 "2004-11-15T01:34:11Z")
> [@js\_africanus](#): > > Respectfully, your argument fails to hit the mark because I see deer on the road at all times of the year, and dead along side the at all times of the year as well. I agree that they die at all times of the year. The point I was trying to make was that during the rut, they are ‘blinded by passion’ if you will. Kind of like a teenage boy during puberty…his brains are in his dick. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/51 "2004-11-15T01:43:01Z")
The Iowa Department of Transportation has started a new PR campaign this fall called “Don’t Veer for Deer.” The theory is that it is a lot safer for drivers and passengers to just hit the damned things than to try to avoid them and end up doing a couple end over end flips down the road ditch. I doubt this is a good practice on motorcycles. An acquaintance is still in a semi-comatose state after hitting a deer on a motorcycle more than a year ago. For cars, and especially for trucks, pick-up or semi-tractor, it is better to accept the property damage than to put life and limb at real risk trying to swerve around them. A meeting engagement between a 200 pound Whitetail and a semi hauling 80,000 pounds of Number Two Yellow Corn doing 65 mph is a losing proposition for the deer and hardly bothers the semi. It tends to leave a purple splotch on the highway and a feast for the coyotes and racoons and crows and buzzards and eagles scattered for a hundred yards down the shoulder. Yes, corn fed deer often reach 200 pounds. ---
**Author:** ![spingears](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ebca7d/32.png) [@spingears](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spingears)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/52 "2004-11-15T01:58:02Z")
> [@Boyo Jim](#): > > Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understood that deer have realtively sharp senses and quick reflexes compared to humans. Don’t they see these big things are making noises and charging at them? Why don’t they run away? Wouldn’t that be their response to a charging predator? > Of course I have nearly clobbered crazy-ass squirrels which pull stuff like running 3/4 of the way across the road and then spinning and running back the other way. > Personally, while I’ve seen deer next to or crossing roads, I’ve never come close to hitting any. So tell me more about their behavior, please. Probably because they are blinded by the head lights. As the bright gets past their range of vision they jump just in time to be hit by the hood or they hit the windshield. Crossing the western praries at night you may see jackrabbitts running toward the cars and many get hit by the area of and around the front wheels getting their brains knocked out. A new meaning to the phrase ‘hare brained.’ ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/53 "2004-11-15T02:23:59Z")
> [@](#): > > A road with traffic? They throw caution to the wind. They smell sex on the other side of that road? YOUR problem, not theirs. Actually, when I’m hurtling down the freeway at 80 mph, toward a horny doe, I’d say it’s both of our problems. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JMS\_CCT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/bbe5ce/32.png) [@JMS\_CCT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JMS_CCT)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2004, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/54 "2004-11-15T22:07:41Z")
> [@Boyo Jim](#): > > Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understood that deer have realtively sharp senses and quick reflexes compared to humans. Don’t they see these big things are making noises and charging at them? Why don’t they run away? Wouldn’t that be their response to a charging predator? > > Of course I have nearly clobbered crazy-ass squirrels which pull stuff like running 3/4 of the way across the road and then spinning and running back the other way. > > Personally, while I’ve seen deer next to or crossing roads, I’ve never come close to hitting any. So tell me more about their behavior, please. I have a lot of experience with this. I used to do a lot of driving in the Texas hill country where there are scads of deer. Despite high fences on roadways, they were quiet prevelent on the roadside at night. I have personally hit and killed three deer–one in broad daylight. The thing crossed the road several hundred yards in front of me, then–as I approached it–turned around, and just as I got to it, attempted to jump my car, landing smack in the middle of my windshield. I was going 60 MPH. The windshield held, and I’m lucky to be alive today. I hit another one that did about $2500 damage to the front of my car. Here’s what I’ve been told about deer and how to avoid these kinds of mishaps: They have extremely sharp hearing, and a very keen sense of smell; but lousy depth perception. Changes in sound can startle them and cause them to react–like a change in the sound of an engine when slowing down–like jumping in front of a car, which they have trouble judging exactly where it is. So, if you see one on the side of the road, maintain speed. This doesn’t always work. I ran over one that just busted out of the shadows in front of me–I never saw it. It actually dove under my car, and I thought I had escaped with no damages, but I was mistaken: $1000 to replace the AC radiater which was punctured by a little screw the deer hit and jammed through it. Such is life! ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/55 "2004-11-16T01:51:59Z")
> [@Shirley Ujest](#): > > [hijack] > > How come the plural of deer is not deers? > > [/hijack] Simple explanation: Because it just is! 😛 Complicated explanation: In English, and other Germanic languages, it’s the same reason why the plural of “child” isn’t “childs” (unless you’re Weebl). You can’t put a voiceless fricative, [s], after a voiced stop, [d r]–it forms an illicit coda structure, which basically means it’s a no-no. Hence the irregular forms, “children” and “deer”. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/56 "2004-11-16T01:53:37Z")
> [@Kythereia](#): > > Simple explanation: Because it just is! 😛 > > Complicated explanation: In English, and other Germanic languages, it’s the same reason why the plural of “child” isn’t “childs” (unless you’re Weebl). You can’t put a voiceless fricative, [s], after a voiced stop, [d r]–it forms an illicit coda structure, which basically means it’s a no-no. Hence the irregular forms, “children” and “deer”. …Which makes no sense at all. Carry on. :o ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/57 "2004-11-16T04:03:31Z")
> [@Boyo Jim](#): > > Now I’m starting to think about which animals you DON’t see dead on the highway. > > I don’t think I’ve ever seen a run over rabbit. Or crow. Actally, pretty much any bird. > > I’ve seen a lot more cats run over than dogs. But maybe the dogs are bigger so get shoveled off the roads faster? Probably not, I don’t recall seeing any loose dogs in my neighborhood, but quite a few free-roaming cate. I’ve participated in the following inelastic collisions: 1. Bird (The boot heel of New Mexico) It flew right in front of me while I was driving at 70 mph. It happen too fast for me to slow down and let it veer off to the side. I look at the rear view mirror and saw an explosion of feathers. It was strangely beautiful and very disturbing, because of the unexpectedly round symmetry. 2. Rabbits in the Mojave-- While driving to Death Valley with my father early one morning, he and I kept seeing rabbits running all over the road. I told my dad, "I going to (thump) slow (thump) down to avoid (thump) hitting … (thump). It was horrifiying :eek: Still gives me the willies to this day. 3. Prairie Dogs-- Their “flats” were on both sides of the road; an underground walkway could have saved at least two lives when I was driving through. 4. Chipmunks – smarter then squirrels, but not much. 5. Groundhogs-- I’ll see 'em every day looking at the cars driving by. You figure of all the rodents in the world, their brains have evolved to the point that they can actually say to each other: AVOID CAR—DANGER! But a few decided that a game of chicken would be fun. 6. Squirrels – Lost count (kind of a tangent: I remember seeing one hang for a couple of years off of a telephone pole’s high tension lines when it decided to climb from one line to another. Squirrels don’t know the meaning of three phased current.) 7. Deer – Not quite; my mom missed one by about a foot prancing through the air. Had she hit the deer , we would have been wiping deer fur and windshield glass on our face. This was out in California. There, the deer are relatively small; in eastern TN, more than once I’d seen a sub-compact get totaled by the “monster” deer I saw (I never drove more than 35 mph at night along that country road by the apple farms; you had squirrel brains if you did). No dogs or cats yet. But that’s more out of luck. I never have gotton use to it. It bothers me when I hit the animals, but you haven’t lived until you’re riding with grand kids and you wack a squirrel with the car. :rolleyes:. Stupid Squirrels! ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/58 "2004-11-16T04:59:29Z")
> [@Omar](#): > > My anthropology teacher in college taught us that deer and rabbits had stereoscopic vision. They _lack_ stereoscopic vision - or else have it over a small part of their field of view. Humans and most predatory animals have eyes in front of their heads, and can see stereoscopically over much of their field of view. Herbivores typically have eyes on the sides of their heads and see a wider field of view at the expense of depth perception. ---
**Author:** ![Omar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f0a364/32.png) [@Omar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/59 "2004-11-16T05:48:11Z")
> [@cityboy916](#): > > They _lack_ stereoscopic vision - or else have it over a small part of their field of view. Humans and most predatory animals have eyes in front of their heads, and can see stereoscopically over much of their field of view. Herbivores typically have eyes on the sides of their heads and see a wider field of view at the expense of depth perception. Thanks for the correction. I knew I would remember something wrong from that course. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2004, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919/60 "2004-11-16T13:59:44Z")
I’ve heard one other factor as to why deer are often hit in the fall (at least in the Northeastern U.S.). One November we were driving on a fairly rural road on Eastern Long Island, and a deer seemingly wandered out in front of our car, and we managed just to clip him with our fender. When we stopped in at the diner down the road, the folks there said that it was likely that the deer had been eating old fallen apples that had fermented, and thus had gotten drunk enough to stumble in front of our car. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-so-many-deer-get-hit-by-cars/273919.md?page=4)