Ask an outdoorsman when the deer rut begins in Pennsylvania and you might hear about the “rutting moon” or the temperature. Ask a scientist and you’ll hear about a data set of deer fetus development. Both will tell you it will begin soon and peak this year in about mid-November.
Ask an auto insurance agent and you’ll hear that it’s already started and shows no sign of slowing down.
PennDOT yesterday released its 2018 report on deer kills by vehicle gathered from the Pennsylvania Crash Information Tool, an online database available to the public. The numbers don’t seem all that bad until you understand that motorists don’t often report their unfortunate collisions with Pennsylvania’s official State Animal.
The report on PennDOT’s district 10 shows 61 deer-related crashes in Indiana County last year, with the most in October, when there were 16, followed by November (8), August and December (7 each).
Of the other counties in District 10, Butler County led with 171 deer-related crashes; Armstrong County had 64, Jefferson County had 62, and Clarion County had 57. The majority of the crashes were in either October (Butler and Indiana) or November (Armstrong, Clarion, and Jefferson).
The rut is not the only factor that causes deer-related crashes. The days are shorter and the nights longer, the harvest makes grains more available, and there are more people in the woods for hunting and hiking.
If you hit a deer but don’t kill it, you should call the Game Commission’s Southwest office if it’s in Armstrong or Indiana County. That number is 724-238-9523. For Butler, Clarion, or Jefferson county, call the Northwest office at 814-432-3187. To get a dead deer removed from the road, call PennDOT at 1-800-FIX-ROAD.
Then, call your insurance agent.
