Motorists to keep an eye out for deer

The deer in the area on the move, and motorists should take note. Wildlife depredation biologist Greg Harris of the Department of Natural Resources said deer will be crossing the roads quite a bit in the next month.

Harris said that one reason deer are moving now is that many of them have fed on and even lived in corn and bean fields. As these fields are harvested, the deer need to find somewhere else to go and something else to eat.

?Deer are adaptable,? Harris said. ?They will live in CRP ground. They do fine in native grasses. They make use of all available habitat types.?

Harris said the main reason deer are moving is biological.

?The hormones are raging in these young bucks and they?re out there sniffing around for does,? he said. ?The does are not really fond of it, and that gets them moving.?

Harris said the rut, or mating season, picks up steam in late October and peaks in mid-November. He said there is another surge of breeding that takes place in December.

?Bucks start chasing does when they are about 1.5 years old,? he said. ?Once they?re able to grow antlers, they?ll be involved in the chase.?

Harris said does usually stay within a couple of miles of their birth location.

?For a doe, their average home range is about 640 acres,? he said. ?However, when they have put radio collars on bucks, they have found bucks that travel a 20-mile circuit in a 24-hour period. They?re going around and checking on doe groups as they come into estrus.?

Harris said that if a doe leaves her home range, it is often because she is chased out of it by a buck.

?A lot of deer get hit during the rut,? he said. ?People see does run across the road and don?t realize that there are bucks following them.?

Harris said that, as the chase goes on, the fawns that belong to the mother have a hard time keeping up with her.

?I?ve seen this in the timber myself where a buck is chasing a doe and the fawns are bringing up the rear,? he said.

On warm days in the fall, deer will usually just move around in the early morning and evening but not during the middle of the day.

?When it was really warm, like on Tuesday, the deer were probably not moving much during the day,? he said.

Harris said that the deer have already grown their winter coats, so a warm fall day can feel like the middle of summer to them.

?Imagine jogging with insulated coveralls on when it?s 70 degrees outside,? he said. ?If we have high daytime temperatures during the rut in the upper 60s, most of the movement will be nocturnal. If the highs are in the 50s or 40s, then we can expect the deer to move anytime.?

After the mating season is over, deer do not move as much because they are attempting to conserve energy, Harris said. He said that when they do move, it is because they are looking for bedding with cover and also for food.

?They will eat waste grain or whatever they can find in the wild,? he said. ?It?s a tough time for all wildlife.?

Harris said his main piece of advice to motorists this fall is to drive slowly. He said that if hitting a deer is unavoidable, it is better to strike the deer than to swerve to miss it.

?When a person tries to avoid hitting a deer, they may go into the ditch and hit an immovable object or worse, drive into oncoming traffic,? he said.

Harris said it is important to slow down when approaching areas of the road with poor visibility. He also said it was advisable to be especially cautious near wooded areas and other locations where deer could take cover.

He said there are four factors that determine the number of deer versus vehicle collisions. He said that in addition to the number of deer in the area, the other factors are the number of vehicles on the road, the number of miles driver and the speed at which the drivers travel.