State Farm Insurance ranks South Dakota as eighth in the nation when it comes to vehicle-deer accidents.

By using information from damage claims that have been filed with the company, State Farm found that the chance of a motorist hitting a deer in the next year are 1 in 119 in South Dakota.

West Virginia has the worst rate of deer accidents. Motorists in that state have a 1 in 57 chance of hitting the animals.

The state with the fewest number of deer wrecks is Hawaii, where the chance of hitting a deer is 1 in 16,624.

State Farm's data showed the total number of deer-vehicle collisions across the nation increased 6.3 percent in the past year.

State Farm policyholders were involved in 205,121 deer-related collisions between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. That compared with 192,877 deer crashes in the previous 12-month period.

The average cost to repair vehicles involved in those incidents was about $2,900, up 3 percent from a year earlier.

The insurance company said Iowa ranked fifth in terms of deer accidents, Montana was seventh, North Dakota was ninth, and Minnesota was 10th.