At approximately 6 a.m. March 16 our son left home to go to work in Waterloo. Less than two miles from home he struck one of the Department of Natural Resource’s overpopulated deer. At 11 a.m. trauma doctors in Iowa City worked to save his life. He had a ruptured spleen, several broken ribs, a collapsed lung and head and facial injuries so severe my wife and I could not recognize our own son. He also sustained a traumatic brain injury from which he may never recover.

Our son lives on the Black Hawk-Bremer County line north of Dunkerton. These counties are two of the 26 counties the DNR allowed no does to be killed the first shotgun season. Healthy does produce one to three offspring each year. We have a film of more than 200 deer in one field a mile east of our son’s house, yet the DNR claims the herd numbers are down by 35 to 38 percent. It claims deer-related crashes are down also, but the body shops say they have had no reduction in their business. It looks like someone is putting false information out. I can only guess who that might be.

Every driver, every motorcycle rider, every passenger should have the right to expect safe travel on Iowa roads. Because of the overpopulation of the deer herd, no road in Iowa is safe. Iowa ranks third in the nation, third, for deer-related accidents. The DNR’s deer kill and sometimes cripple people for the rest of their lives. There is something wrong when greed, money and sport shooters can drive the DNR to supply more deer for them that takes precedence over public safety.