Did you know that over 13,000 deer are hit by vehicles in Illinois each year? In Jackson County, around 250 to 300 deer are in vehicle collisions every year. While annual variation in the number of deer-vehicle accidents can inform managers if deer populations in an area is increasing or decreasing, these accidents often result in damage to property or vehicles, and even cause personal injuries, including fatalities.
In general, over 40% of these accidents happen around October, November, and December. There’s a simple reason: this is the mating period for deer and they become especially active, mainly at dawn and dusk, and the changes in their hormones makes their behavior, let’s say, more erratic.
And the deer we are tracking around SIU are not immune to these statistics, nor are they immune to their hormones. We are saddened to report that two of our deer (Charles Darwin and Rachel Carson) were both victims to car crashes in November and December 2021 around SIU’s campus.