Authorities are warning about a rise in vehicle crashes involving deer, along with some unusual reactions from drivers caught up in these encounters.
The Irish Deer Society this week confirmed it has dealt with 104 road accidents involving the animals in the past 18 months – an increase of around 30 per cent in four years.
In response, society member and wildlife advocate Peter Windsor has launched training programmes for volunteers, who in more than eight out of 10 cases, are forced to humanely dispatch severely injured animals.
The remaining cases involve deer that are already dead or have managed to flee the scene.
However, Mr Windsor also expressed concern over some unusual behaviour by motorists involved in deer collisions.
He told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘Deer do appear in schools – and I’ve had them in people’s sitting rooms.
‘I had a case where a guy had hit a deer on top of the Wicklow Gap, and he just stunned it.
‘This guy thought that he’d throw it in the back of the Jeep and bring it home.
‘He brought it home to his mother’s and put it in her sitting room.
‘The mother rang me a couple of times, pleading with me to get rid of it.
‘But he got wind that I was coming, so he hid it in his granny’s house.
‘We eventually found the deer there. It was sitting on the plush carpet beside a big leather chair.
‘They had the fire on for the thing. And it had gone to the toilet all over the place.’
While this was an extreme example, Mr Windsor said it highlights a growing problem as the country’s growing deer population are involved in more road collisions.
‘People put them in the back of their cars or vans… usually when they’re [the deer] stunned and they go to bring it home, and then the deer wakes up in the back and is jumping around.’
‘We eventually found the deer there. It was sitting on the plush carpet beside a big leather chair’
The wildlife expert stressed motorists who hit a deer are legally responsible for the animal afterwards and must decide how it is dealt with, whether by contacting wildlife groups, specialist volunteers or a veterinary practice.
There is no single census for the Irish deer population, but researchers estimate the current numbers are around 600,000.
Population growth is often measured through annual cull figures.
The last confirmed national record was 78,175 deer culled during the 2023-24 reporting period, up from 55,008 just two years earlier.
While there is no official figure yet for 2025-26, estimates suggest the management of invasive deer populations is up by 37 per cent.
And the increase in population is mirrored in the rise of road collisions involving deer.
Wicklow remains the country’s deer hotspot, accounting for around 60 per cent of the Irish Deer Society’s callouts.
Tipperary and Galway are the next highest (nine per cent each), followed by Kerry, Meath and Cork (seven per cent each).
However, it’s not just rural areas that have seen an increase in numbers – and just this week, the society was called out to the water treatment plant at Ringsend in Dublin city centre to relocate a young deer who’d somehow found himself inside the facility’s perimeter.
A young deer wandering around the water treatment plant in Ringsend in the centre of Dublin
Mr Windsor said collisions involving deer have long been a fact of life in rural Ireland but their growing population and heavier traffic has made the road accidents increasingly common.
He told the MoS: ‘In 2020, we had two million cars on the road. In 2026, we’re going to have three million.
‘Then add in the explosion of the deer population and the two are starting to meet quite constantly.’
Mr Windsor believes the problem intensified during the Covid lockdown, when deer management activity slowed significantly.
‘Covid was huge. I think it was three to four years, and there was no deer, or very few deer shot in the country, so the deer population exploded.’
Another photo of the young deer wandering around the water treatment plant at Ringsend
To deal with the increase in incidents, the Irish Deer Society has set up training courses for volunteers.
‘It clicked with me that this is obviously an issue, so I set up a training course to train lads all over the country to deal with this kind of thing,’ he said.
The Irish Deer Society currently has around 60 trained volunteers nationwide, with another 30 due to complete training this month.
Mr Windsor estimates only around one in five deer involved in road collisions survives.
‘Cars are heavy, so more often than not, they’re quite badly injured,’ he said.
The wildlife advocate also believes better public awareness and slower speeds will help reduce the number of collisions.
‘The biggest thing is probably to get people to reduce speed.’
‘Dip your headlights, switch on your hazards, or even turn off your lights.
‘The deer run away nine times out of ten. They’ll just run away.
‘You switch off your lights and they’re gone after about 30 seconds. A lot of people don’t realise that.’
Mr Windsor said drivers can often make matters worse by chasing deer along the road.
‘I had a guy on to me the other day, and he was giving me this and that over what he was doing… he put up his own video, and he was actually driving up the road behind these two deer, making them more and more agitated.
‘The more you make them agitated, the more likely they are to do something stupid, either jump on your car, or jump out into somebody else’s car.
‘Deer are unpredictable once they get stunned by headlights. They’re blinded.’
