Deer crossing signs once were a common sight on Minnesota highways, but not anymore.
Over the past decade, the yellow diamond-shaped signs bearing an image of a deer have all but vanished from state roads. It's mainly because drivers didn't heed the warnings to slow down and look for deer, said Chris Smith, a wildlife ecologist with the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT).
"We didn't see changes in human behavior," Smith said.
Yet vehicle-deer crashes are quite common in Minnesota, particularly in September through December. A MnDOT crash database shows about 2,000 such collisions occur annually, but that doesn't come close to accounting for the actual number of incidents, said Ron Moen, a wildlife biologist with the Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
A better indication comes from State Farm Insurance's annual review of claims filed. Last year, more than 40,000 car-vs.-animal collisions occurred in the state, with a majority involving deer. Motorists in Minnesota have a 1 in 58 chance of colliding with an animal, the insurance company said.
And even State Farm's reported figures may be low, because drivers might only make a police report or file an insurance claim if their mishap leads to an expensive repair, Moen said.
Moen and another researcher working through the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies are about three-quarters through a yearlong study to determine how many deer-vehicle crashes actually happen in Minnesota, and what, if anything, can be done to drive those numbers down.
For the past year, Moen has been driving highways in northeastern Minnesota, including Hwys. 33, 53 and 210, and Interstate 35 from Hinckley to Duluth. When he comes across the remnants of a vehicle-deer crash, he enters the GPS coordinates into a database. Moen said he recorded as many as one deer-vehicle collision every three to four miles on some rural roads.
