It is the season for car-deer crashes in Upstate New York. A AAA report shows October, November and December as the peak months for these kind of crashes.
According to the AAA, there were more than 35,000 animal related crashes in 2023 in New York State. The top 10 counties include Onondaga, Jefferson and Oneida. Manlius Police Sargent Ken Hatter said deer mating season makes the roads more dangerous at dawn and dusk.
"They typically move during the early morning or late at night," Hatter said. "They have a hard time judging the speed of a vehicle because all they see is headlights. So that's why they unpredictably will just run in front of you. And like the saying goes, deer and headlights, they kind of freeze. So that's what the best try to do is break hard and safely."
Hatter advises drivers to avoid swerving if they see an animal, because that can lead to more serious accidents, including head on crashes. If you are in a car-deer crash, call 9-1-1, and move your vehicle safely off the road. In Manlius, Hatter said the deer that are killed can be repurposed.
"But one of the things that we try to do, and I know some other agencies as well, is that if there is a car deer crash, then we will call Marsh Mills and we'll have them come pick the deer up instead of calling like the local or state DOT," Hatter said. "So then they'll process the deer and they give that that meat out to homeless shelters."
Hatter also notes that the number of deer car accidents has decreased dramatically since a deer culling program was instituted five years ago.
"I used to see them all the time," Hatter said. "Even just me driving through the town, there was just a ton of deer everywhere and we would get calls not just for crashes but for deer getting caught on fences and you know in people's backyards eating their bushes and different things. So that's gone down dramatically. So it's definitely been a huge improvement and the reduction in crashes has definitely decreased."
