Donald Archinal didn’t see the deer until his car slammed into it.

“There wasn’t any way I could avoid him,” the Lawrence resident recalled of the big animal that seemingly came out of nowhere.

It’s a story more Douglas County motorists are telling than ever before.

Some survive with dented fenders and broken glass, such as Perry resident Greg Thompson, who hit three deer in the past three years — all while driving the same car.

But others haven’t been as lucky. A Topeka woman died Nov. 27 after her car hit an injured deer on Kansas Highway 10 near DeSoto.

A check of traffic reports showed that in the last two months of 2002, about 40 percent of all auto accidents reported to the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office involved a deer.

Now, a plan from the state Department of Wildlife and Parks aims to cut down the number of accidents by loosening deer-hunting restrictions between Topeka and Kansas City, Kan. — the area of the state most plagued by car-deer accidents. The department’s appointed seven-member commission is expected to vote on the plan by April.

“We are going to propose lengthening seasons and increasing permit availability so that there will be seasons in that area when there aren’t seasons in the rest of the state,” said Lloyd Fox, a big-game specialist for the wildlife department. “This may be the best alternative currently available for controlling deer numbers.”

The hunt for a solution

The plan would create an “urban deer management unit” distinct from the state’s 18 other deer-management units. In Douglas County, the unit would be bounded roughly by U.S. Highway 56 on the south and Highway 24 on the north, Fox said.

Douglas County averaged 49 deer-related accidents per 100 square miles each year between 1997 and 2001. Only Wyandotte, Shawnee, Johnson and Leavenworth Counties had higher averages.

Perry resident Greg Thompson has hit three deer in the past three years with the same car. On Friday, the damage was still evident on the car's front end.

It remains to be seen how hunters and land owners will respond to the looser restrictions — and whether the number of accidents will decline next winter.

“It’s a matter of getting hunter interest and landowner permission to get the right combination of hunting pressure on an individual area,” Fox said. “The goal isn’t to eliminate deer but to get the deer population at a level that people can tolerate the damages and inconveniences deer occasionally cause.”

If the plan goes through, a hunter probably would be able to shoot a maximum of six deer in Douglas County next hunting season, Fox said, compared with four last season.

Also, the plan probably would add a month of bow hunting — the least popular type of hunting — and nine days of firearms hunting in this area, Fox said.

Fox said he expected the changes to attract hunters who didn’t live in the Douglas County area. He knows there’s not an easy solution to the problem.

Other factors

The growing deer herd and increasing development of rural land aren’t the only factors causing the increase in accidents. According to the Kansas Department of Transportation, the trend toward higher speed limits statewide is one reason motorists today are seven times more likely to collide with a deer while driving than in 1980.

In 1980, there were 1,395 deer-auto crashes statewide, and in 2001, there were 10,184 — or 13 percent of all accidents reported.

¢ Kansas Highway Patrol – Deer whistles don’t work¢ Kansas Highway Patrol warns of deer

The accidents peak during November and December, the months when deer are busy mating and building up fat reserves for the winter, according to the transportation department.

Fox said some people wouldn’t be satisfied with the idea of longer hunting season and would call for more drastic measures — sharpshooters, for example. Animal Outreach of Kansas, a Lawrence-based animal-rights group, advocates shooting deer with contraceptive darts.

But some people are so fed up with deer they’ve called for organized kills in wooded areas near busy roads, said Scott Hattrup, a member of the Kansas Sportsmen’s Alliance who lives in Johnson County.

“If the goal is to exterminate deer from urban areas, I think you need to have targeted hunts at the times of year when deer are known to be active but are not traditionally hunted,” he said. “The conservationist in me says that we still need to leave a few.”

Thompson, the Perry resident who’s hit three deer with the same car — his wife calls the vehicle “The Deerslayer” these days — said he’d like to see the state make it easier to get a hunting license and deer tags. Still, he said it’s a good idea to loosen the hunting rules.

“I don’t have a big desire to get more than one deer,” he said. “But there are a lot of people who stock their freezers the entire year with venison.”