Oregon drivers hit more deer than those in Washington, California

Oregonians are the best in the West at a lot of things: ice cream, athletic shoes, cheese, pocket knives. And now it seems we’ve got one more best thing to add to the list: driving cars into deer.

According to State Farm’s 15th annual deer claim study, Oregon drivers are more likely to hit a deer than drivers in Washington and California.

“One out of every 254 Oregon drivers will collide with a deer,” read a press release sent out Wednesday by the company.

That’s compared to one in 356 for Washington residents and one in 1,117 for Californians.

To find the numbers, State Farm said they used “claims data and state licensed driver counts from the Federal Highway Administration” to calculate “the chances of any single American motorist striking a deer, elk, moose or caribou during July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.”

Of course, their findings could be directly related to deer math. According to the website Deer Friendly, Oregon is also No. 1 in deer per capita.

The estimated deer population for Oregon in 2015 was 540,000, while Washington had 330,000 and California had around 649,000.

Oregon’s population is 4.09 million, meaning that there are about 13 deer for every 100 people in the state. Washington’s population is 7.29 million, which works out to about 4.5 deer for every 100 people.

And massive California’s population is 39.25 million, which means there are fewer than two deer for every hundred Californians.

In the grand scheme of deer-car collisions, Oregon isn’t even that bad. It’s 37th nationally, according to State Farm.