Wyoming motorcyclist dies after deer collision on Albany County highway

A deer crossing on Wyoming Highway 34 turned fatal for a 72-year-old Wyoming man west of Albany County, where Thomas Ranz died after his motorcycle struck the animal shortly after 3 p.m. on April 21.

Preliminary crash information listed by the Wyoming Highway Patrol said Ranz was riding west when a deer ran into the road. The impact threw him from the motorcycle, and he came to rest in the roadway. No other vehicles were involved, underscoring how quickly an animal strike on an open rural highway can become deadly.

A legacy obituary identified the rider as Thomas Jay Ranz, known as Tom, and said he died of injuries from a motorcycle accident. The listing said he was born April 21, 1954, and died April 21, 2026. For a family and community that knew him as a Wyoming resident, the crash was not just another line in a fatality log. It marked the loss of a local man on a road many drivers and riders use as a familiar route through Albany County.

The crash also fits a larger Wyoming pattern that has made wildlife collisions a persistent public-safety problem. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department says drivers are involved in more than 7,600 wildlife collisions on Wyoming roadways each year, and 80% to 85% of those crashes involve mule deer. The Nature Conservancy has put the state’s current five-year average at 7,656 wildlife-vehicle collisions annually, with about 5,500 involving mule deer.

The Wyoming Wildlife Federation says more than 6,000 deer, pronghorn, elk and moose are hit on Wyoming roads each year, costing nearly $50 million annually in damage, injury expenses and wildlife losses. Risk rises in spring and fall, when mule deer move along traditional routes between winter and summer ranges. On open stretches like Highway 34, that migration pattern can turn a routine ride into a life-ending collision in seconds.