Wake is state's worst in dead deer, dented autos

KNIGHTDALE -- P.J. Reaume never saw the eight-point buck until it smacked into his Chevy.

He never expected a 150-pound mammal to leap a lane of traffic, hooves akimbo, flying over the Knightdale rush hour and onto his truck.

He should have.

Wake County again tops North Carolina in deer collisions, a distinction that dates at least to 1999. No county came close to Wake's 922 crashes in 2006, according to the state's most recent count.

Wake's growth gobbles 27 acres and adds 98 people a day, said Evin Stanford, an N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission deer biologist. So humans drive farther to work on roads that once crossed nothing but deer-friendly forests and farms. Deer creep into suburban backyards to munch hostas and other ornamental plants -- ice cream to a hoofed mammal.

With the state's deer population at 1.2 million, double the number in 1984, and Wake County's mania for spreading asphalt, tension between humans and deer is inevitable.

Drivers often meet deer on the urban outskirts, such as Smithfield Road off the recently built U.S. 64 bypass. That's where Reaume was driving a co-worker home two weeks back.

"It scared me pretty bad," said Reaume, 26, who hasn't repaired the banged-up front end of his Chevy truck. "I had to pull over and breathe a couple of times."

In Raleigh, Coats Auto Body and Paint on South Saunders Street reshapes three deer-dented cars a week. Damages frequently run into the $5,000 range.

The body shop owner, Tana Malerba, tells of a driver who brought in a new Toyota RAV4 torn apart by an eight-pointer. "He said, 'I was just hunting and wouldn't have been able to get an eight-pointer,' " she said. "But he hit one with his car."

Deer and humans alike are prone to wander -- especially in the Triangle. Deer just do it on foot, and if drivers aren't careful, they'll come flying straight at your windshield.