Deer Intelligence and the 4-way Stop

I have tried to answer the question “How Smart are Deer?” for most of my hunting career. I know they can’t be THAT smart. However, the thought has been rolling around in my head since I did that last piece about Ken Nordberg. I was on my way to work this morning, and I saw something that provided me some insight. I wish I had been aware enough at the time to have taken a video, but I was well down the road before I realized the significance of what I had seen.

During the week, I stay in town on the north side of Cincinnati. I grew up there. The place is inundated with deer. They are starting to allow a limited amount of bow hunting, but the boogers keep breeding at a rate far beyond the rate that the cars and the hunters can stem. Most days I have at least one close encounter with one or more deer. They may be in a neighbor’s yard, crossing the road in front of me, or standing in my own yard staring at me. I have been here nearly a half-century, and I can remember when finding a deer track in the woods was rare treat. Now they are about as numerous as the dang squirrels and rabbits.

One place I frequently see deer is where my little Cul-de-Sac crosses the main road. It is a simple 2-laner running through a margin of farm-turned-to-suburb on the edge of town. . Speed limit is 35 MPH. There are a few stop signs to break up the flow. Traffic is brisk during morning and evening rush, stacking up 2-3 cars at the signs. The deer have always been using a corridor about 100 yards to either side of my road to cross the main road. What I realized is that the path they are using has become increasingly compressed. For the past couple years, they have been concentrating their crossings closer to the corner. This morning I finally figured it out: they are using the crosswalks!

I came up to the 4-way stop in my truck. The matriarch of the 4-deer herd was already across, standing at the left hand corner on the far side. Two daughters and a fawn were on the near side, next to me. They crossed the main road in the crosswalk to my left and then waited to see what I was going to do before crossing in front of me on the other side, following the lead doe. I realized as I was watching this that I had seen nearly the same thing happen last night as I was coming home, but I had pulled through the intersection before seeing the matriarch cross the second time. KYHillChick sees them doing this. Angus sees them crossing there going to and from school. It is not just this herd either. We have seen others and we have also seen solitary bucks.

The crosswalks have been there probably 50 years, but it was only about 3 years ago that they finally put up stop signs. Before that, it was kind of a free-for-all. One old guy had volunteered as a crossing guard back when we first moved into the neighborhood some 40 years ago, but he died during Reagan’s first term. The traffic has gotten progressively thicker over the years. The city finally broke down and threw up a 4-way stop. The deer have adjusted. I’m sure they do not read signs, but they are pretty car savvy. What is really remarkable is that they never cross diagonally. It is always within a few-feet of the crosswalk, and they always stop and look both ways. They also treat the crossing as a two-step operation. You would think these beasts would just scamper to the other side in one swell foop. Nope. The crossings are fairly meticulous. I’ve seen parts of several. This was just the first time I saw it all happen in one session.

I think part of what kept me from seeing the profundity I was witnessing was the matter-of-fact way they went about it. These deer have recognized some benefit inherent in crossing at the crosswalk. Mind you, everywhere else, the deer in our neighborhood are notorious jay-walkers. They could care less about where they cross the pavement, or whose yard they trespass. They do not seem to give a wit about anything. Dogs do not bother them. Pedestrians do not faze them. I watched a lady with a yappy dog try to shoo some out of the way the other day and the deer were not budging. Something got them focused on this particular intersection. What is even more odd about all this is there is another 3-way stop with a flashing light 300 yards down the way. That one has been around longer than 40 years, and the deer have never shown the slightest interest in that crossing.

Deer are not like people. I do not for an instant mean to anthropomorphize them. However, I find it interesting that these deer have empirically witnessed the effect on the cars’ behavior at the new stop signs in this location, and they have exploited the crosswalks as a result. I report this to give you an idea of what we are encountering in the woods.

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