Bam! Out of nowhere something slammed into his gold 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara SUV, jarring the vehicle and shocking his senses.
“It was a total surprise,” the 66-year-old disabled
A white-tailed deer’s head had bashed in the SUV’s front-left corner, knocking out a headlight and leaving a gash above the tire. Seiler never saw it and said the deer must have been running full-stride. The force of impact slung the animal into his door, denting it — and then the deer darted off.
It was about 10 p.m. Seiler pulled into a nearby gas station and surveyed the damage by the light. He got back behind the wheel and drove the rest of the way home with one headlight and a scraping tire. The repair would cost $2,800.
“It made me sorry we had a $500 deductible,” he said.
The experience was more shocking than scary, he said; it was totally unexpected.
But perhaps Seiler — a deer-crash veteran — shouldn’t have been surprised. Before retiring, he drove a semi-truck for McKenzie Tank Lines, hauling petroleum and, occasionally, thumping deer. Unlike the SUV, though, the deer he hit in the semi-truck didn’t leave such an impression.
“You don’t even notice them in that” truck, he said.
Once a deer ripped the front bumper off his semi-truck when he collided with it on State 388, between State 77 and U.S. 231 about two or three years ago. That one also kept running.
His latest experience made him more cautious when driving rural state roads, more alert to the docile, wide-eyed creatures he sees along State 20, State 81 and U.S. 331. He’s concerned by their numbers and said the population may be too large in the Panhandle, a place where hundreds of others have similar experiences each year, according to state crash data.
“I would guess there’s too many, and I always worry about one coming through the windshield,” Seiler said.
Frequent accidents
Seiler’s experience isn’t an anomaly. Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. J.D. Johnson oversees a six-county district that averages more than four animal-related crashes a week in the Panhandle. The district includes Bay, Calhoun, Gulf, Holmes,
“Deer, hogs and bears … that’s what these people run over most of the time,” Johnson said.
It’s mostly deer, though, a problem that plagues his rural counties — essentially the entire district except for southern Bay.
Johnson said deer are constantly getting hit. Sometimes they graze along the roadside and cross in a car’s path; other times they happen to be running and hit the road at the wrong time. During the winter hunting season, dogs catch their scent and flush them out into traffic.
“I’ve been on (the force) for 30 years, and it’s been a continuous problem,” Johnson said.
His troopers work nearly all crashes in the district, one where animal accidents are prevalent. In more developed parts of the state, such as
“They have a tendency to say, ‘Well, I didn’t even realize that deer was a problem,’ ” he said.
Johnson tells them to be happy it isn’t a northeastern deer, which can weigh 200 to 300 pounds, significantly larger than the local white-tailed deer, which are lucky to crack 100 pounds.
No fool-proof method exists to avoid the deer, but ways exist to mitigate risk, Johnson said. Drivers should avoid speeding and use high-beam lights where possible, he said.
But that’s still no guarantee.
“Is it preventable? I haven’t seen one that’s preventable yet … when a deer decides to run out in the road,” Johnson said.
Deer management
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) oversees the state’s deer, but car wrecks aren’t the driving force behind population management. The state is “always concerned” about deer’s negative impacts, said Cory Morea, FWC’s deer management program coordinator, but that includes depredation — eating crops, destroying property — not injuries and death from vehicle crashes.
Morea pointed to a 2002 survey, where FWC asked if residents were involved in deer-vehicle wrecks, as evidence the state took an interest in the problems. The survey also asked about other negative deer impacts.
The state official downplayed the crash problems, however, citing a State Farm insurance study that ranked
Morea, however, acknowledged the Panhandle has the most deer-vehicle wrecks and deer depredation problems. He said he didn’t know how the Panhandle would fare if it were isolated from the rest of
“It’s difficult to say for sure,” he said, adding, “
State Farm’s most recent data, though, predicted deer-vehicle crashes would increase by 21 percent from 2005-06.
Morea said FWC isn’t considering any plans or policies to reduce the risk of deer-vehicle collisions. He said the state can do little outside of population management and encouraging driver safety.
“They’re wild animals and they roam, and a lot of times there’s good forage along the roadsides, and so that can oftentimes create a situation where a lot of deer can be seen along the roadside and some of those get hit,” he said.
FWC stays on top of the negative deer impacts, talking to hunters and farmers, and tweaking bag limits and hunting seasons based on the feedback about every five years, Morea said.
He touted a current plan to divide the Panhandle’s Zone D along Interstate 10 and manage each side’s deer population differently.
Morea said the statewide deer population has been “relatively stable” or even shrinking in recent years. Droughts cut the number of fawn births, and illness — hemorrhagic disease and bluetongue virus — thinned the herd in 2012 and 2013.
Over the last two decades, the deer population grew, but Morea said he didn’t know by what percent.
I-10 fences
For years, the state traffic agency has employed its own strategy to limit deer-vehicle crashes. The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) erected wildlife fencing along I-10, keeping deer and other wild animals off most of the busy freeway. The fence includes openings, though, so the deer’s movement throughout the region isn’t totally impeded.
The state doesn’t block off the entire roadway and cut the deer off from roaming; instead, it wants to force them to cross at the safest possible locations, said Ian Satter, FDOT spokesman.
“Those fences actually funnel them to one specific point,” he said.
The access points have optimal visibility for drivers, giving them the best possible chance to react if deer are on the highway, Satter said.
The fencing runs along both sides of the interstate, and in urban areas sound walls keep the deer off the road. In other parts of the state, FDOT dug tunnels so alligators could pass without problems, Satter said.
Across the Panhandle, fencing or sound walls flank I-10 from the state line past
For example, a recent Holmes County repaving project included 24 miles of replacement fence, costing $7.28 a linear foot. Based on that price, fencing along both sides of the entire I-10 stretch of the Panhandle would be about $19 million. Sound walls, of course, would be more expensive.
“The wildlife fences are put into place because we do have these rural areas along I-10,” Satter said. “Anything we can do to make the roads safer … that’s our number one priority.”