293 The deer dilemma

On our trip to Illinois last week we saw 12 dead deer in the median strip between the east and west lanes of Interstate 70 within the first hour (about 60 miles). The 13th we actually saw run across the east bound lanes missing the traffic and leap on to our west bound lanes where it was hit by a semi truck in front of our van, tossed about 20 ft. into the air like a rag doll, to land in the grassy median. It was a terrible thing to see, ruining the rest of the trip. But we knew what would have happened had a sedan or van hit it--a serious accident involving many cars.

So I looked on Google for “whitetail deer automobiles” to see how serious a problem this is. An article in a 2003 Cincinnati paper reported that the deer population in Ohio is soaring and that in 2001, the state recorded 31,586 deer-car collisions, about 17 percent more than in 2000. Insurance officials said the crashes caused about $63.2 million in damage. I learned as I continued browsing Google that it has its own acronym, DVC, deer-vehicle collision.

Reading other sites, I learned that does live twice as long as bucks, because bucks waste their body fat and become weak and kill each other in fights with other bucks. Another area of behavior we humans share with the animals. I learned that there is a disease spreading among deer called chronic wasting disease. CWD is one type of a broad group of neurological diseases called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE), the most famous of which is bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or "mad cow" disease. TSEs are always fatal.

One web site figured half a million deer are hit by autos (and obviously by trucks), but that more are killed in fences. Dogs, feral and loose running, may kill as many as 10% of the legal harvest according to that author. I saw the half a million figure at several websites, but no one sited a source.

I thought the animals I saw were does, however, the websites I read mentioned that bucks lose their antlers in December and January and have nothing until April when the base starts to swell and grow. Every web site I read said they vary in color from reddish brown to very dark, almost black. But all the animals I saw were a pale blonde.

The heavy truck traffic, and large deer population in central Ohio combined with growing suburban developments between Columbus and Dayton on Rt. 70 obviously are a lethal combination. I didn’t see dead deer anywhere else on the trip.