By Robert Anglen
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ruth Davis of Goshen holds part of the grill from her 2002 Dodge Durango after a 7 a.m. encounter with a deer last week. (Tony Jones photo) | ZOOM |

Every year about this time, insurance agent Ruth Davis files claims for motorists whose cars have been mangled by deer on the highways of Greater Cincinnati.

She never expected one of those claims to be her own.

Davis was taking her 12-year-old daughter to school a couple weeks ago in Goshen when she felt the impact of the deer slam into her SUV almost before she saw the animal. The deer was killed, but no one in Davis' Dodge Durango was hurt. The repair bill, though, was enough to cause some suffering: $3,500.

"I had no time to react," the 34-year-old Goshen resident said Wednesday. "The deer was on the front of the car, and that was it."

It's deer season again for Ohio motorists, and that's especially true in Hamilton County, which at 731 had the highest number of deer-vehicle collisions in the state last year.

"When you get into this time of year, that's when it happens," said Jane Beathard, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. "It runs October through December. The peak is the fall."

That's when Ohio's estimated 681,000 deer are breeding.

Last year, there were 30,306 vehicle-deer accidents in Ohio, according to state records. In those, five people were killed and 898 were injured.

Tuesday night, a 67-year-old New Vienna woman was killed in Penn Township, Highland County, when a deer struck by a pickup truck flew into her car and went through her windshield.

That crash happened around 6:30 p.m. More than half of deer-vehicle accidents occur between 5 p.m. and midnight. About 20 percent occur in the early morning.

Vehicle damage from such collisions averages about $2,000.