It's "whack-a-deer" season

If you live in Iowa, chances are very good you've smacked a deer with your car, or you know someone who has. My wife hit a deer a few years ago, driving the Honda in the evening on a local gravel road hit. She wasn't going fast, about 20 to 25 mph, when the medium-sized

deer ran across the road in front of her, hitting the car in the right front bumper. The deer ran off, seemingly unhurt, and the car, after two grand in repairs, hasn't been quite the same since.

I've had lots of close encounters with deer, but have hit only one so far. Actually, the deer hit me. I was driving down Mount Vernon Road east of Cedar Rapids late in the evening when a deer ran out the ditch. I saw the big buck coming and swerved to the left into the other lane, but the deer bonked right into the side of the pickup. When I got home I checked for damage, but the only mark was a clean spot in the dirt just behind the passenger side door. Driving the same route the next day I saw a dead deer lying along the road. I'm guessing the deer broke its neck smacking the side of the truck.

Got any good deer vs. car stories? John Carlson, columnist for the Des Moines Register, wrote an entertaining column Sunday about deer and drivers in Iowa. 

In the column, Carlson mentions some interesting facts from State Farm Insurance:

• The number of deer-vehicle collisions in Iowa has increased 12 percent in the past five years.
  
• There's a 1 in 105 chance a typical Iowa driver will hit a deer in the next year.
  
• Those are the same odds as being audited by the IRS.
  
• Iowa is fourth in the U.S. in likelihood of a driver hitting a deer, behind West Virginia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
  

Check out YouTube for some car-deer video.