That article is seriously lacking in timespans. I just had to do way too much math to figure out that the 1 in 52 odds of hitting a deer is a per year number as compared to a during your life number. I originally assumed it was a per year number, but the comparison to writing a New York Times best seller threw me off.

(It turns out the NYT best seller number is a per book number -- about 0.5% of books that are written are NYT best sellers.

(In terms of deer, there are about 2 million animal collision insurance claims in the US per year, so about 0.5% of the US population files an insurance claim for hitting an animal each year. Since the stats given are that there's a 1% chance for Americans to hit a deer, elk, moose, or caribou, it seems more likely that only about half of them file insurance claims, as compared to assuming there's only 1% odds of hitting a deer-like animal during your life but that many times more Americans are filing animal collision insurance claims for hitting non-deer-like animals. Assuming that's right, the 1 in 52 number for Pennsylvanians must be annual.)