West Virginia Drivers Face 1 in 40 Odds of Hitting an Animal

A driver in West Virginia carries 1 in 40 odds of an animal collision this year, according to State Farm's newest annual study, which covers July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025. In Nevada, the same event carries odds of 1 in 966. That is a 24-fold spread inside one country, sitting on top of an estimated 1.7 million animal collision insurance claims filed nationwide over those twelve months. More than 1.1 million of them involved deer.

The national average came in at 1 in 139. West Virginia has held the top spot for more than a decade, with Montana (1 in 53) and Wisconsin (1 in 58) behind it this year. Wisconsin climbed from fifth place to third, while Michigan (1 in 61) and Pennsylvania (1 in 62) each slid a spot.

Geography sets these odds, and nothing about driving skill changes the ranking. A commuter in Morgantown and a commuter in Las Vegas can drive the same car in the same way, and one of them is about 24 times more likely to file a claim for an animal strike.

The Number That Moved Backward.

The assumption baked into every autumn deer warning is that the problem keeps getting worse. The newest data points the other way. National odds lengthened from 1 in 128 last year to 1 in 139 this year, and total claims fell from 1.8 million to 1.7 million.

That decline happened while the white-tailed deer population sits somewhere between 30 and 35 million animals, up from roughly 300,000 across the continent at the turn of the 20th century. More deer than at any point in living memory, and fewer claims than the year before.

Insurers have been puzzling over softer strike numbers for a while. When the Highway Loss Data Institute examined an earlier dip in animal-strike claim frequency, its analysts came up empty on a clean explanation. "This is a real head-scratcher," said Matt Moore, senior vice president of HLDI, in the institute's 2023 analysis. One year of improvement is not a trend, and the study period still produced 1.7 million claims. But the direction of the number contradicts the tone of most deer-season coverage.

Ten States, One Pattern.

The top of the table belongs to states with big deer herds, two-lane rural roads, and long stretches of wooded highway.

Odds and volume tell two different stories. Pennsylvania, fifth by odds, leads the country in raw numbers with an estimated 147,000 industry claims, followed by Michigan at roughly 126,000, North Carolina at 88,000, Texas at 86,000, and Ohio at 80,500. West Virginia tops the odds table because it pairs heavy deer traffic with a small population of insured drivers.

At the other end sit Nevada (1 in 966), Hawaii (1 in 907), the District of Columbia (1 in 794), Alaska (1 in 661), and Arizona (1 in 577). Hawaii's placement is the least surprising entry in the study; the state has no native deer highways to cross. Nevada beating it for the longest odds in the country is the quiet upset of the 2025 edition.

Three Months Carry Almost Half the Claims.

The study's own language on timing is blunt: "The months of October, November, and December continue to be the most dangerous for animal-related collisions, accounting for an estimated 650,000 incidents." Those three months represent 41 percent of all animal collision claims in a twelve-month window.

November stands alone at the peak. HLDI's ten-year analysis of 2013 through 2022 found November claim frequency running more than double the yearly average, a spike that lines up with the deer rut, when bucks chase does across roads with little regard for traffic. The same analysis found November animal-strike claims averaged $4,600, against $3,522 for February, because higher speeds and larger animals produce more expensive damage in the fall.

The clock matters as much as the calendar. State Farm identifies dusk to dawn as the high-risk window, the hours when deer move and headlights reach less of the road. Deer lead the study's list of animals struck, followed by a category State Farm labels "unknown," then rodents, dogs, raccoons, and cattle.

The Word on the Policy That Decides Who Pays.

The name of this event misleads people. Hitting a deer is called a collision by every driver who has done it, but on an auto policy it is a comprehensive claim. The Insurance Information Institute states that damage from an accident with a deer or other animal is covered under the optional comprehensive portion of a policy, not the collision portion.

That distinction has teeth. A driver carrying liability-only coverage collects nothing for their own vehicle after an animal strike. And the sorting rule cuts one more way: a driver who swerves around the deer and hits a tree or another car instead has produced a collision claim, a different coverage with, in many cases, a different deductible.

West Virginia's 1 in 40 works out to 2.5 percent of the state's insured drivers filing an animal collision claim in a single year.