In desperation I’ve now put deer whistles on my cars. Made a couple trips to South Dakota from Minnesota in the last couple of weeks and the deer are very stupid and love to use the roads. They walk right out in front of the car looking the other way. Seems to me if the sound of a motorcycle won’t scare them away, deer whistles aren’t going to help but gotta try something. These animals are a menace. I did manage to avoid a head on with one and he just scraped my quarter panel. Got the light scratches buffed out and removed the hair stuck in the seam. Incidentally, I was not impressed with the Meguires scratch fix stuff. Seemed like it was just a light rubbing compound with maybe a little glaze in it. So back to my standard method of machine buffing with rubbing compound, followed by swirl remover, followed by glaze, followed by wax and seems to take care of clear coat scratches.
So anyone really know if these things work at all?
“The available studies don’t prove much of anything—some people with the whistle didn’t hit any deer, but in other tests more deer reacted to cars without whistles. Read all about it here.”*
No, they don’t work. Why would they? “We have something that makes a noise. Unlike all the other noises your car makes, this one will make the deer turn around and walk away from the road.” When put like that, it’s pretty improbable, isn’t it.
The whole reason we hit deer is because deer aren’t very smart animals. They hear a strange roaring noise and see bright lights coming toward them, and they march right in front of this bizarre, noisy, bright object to see what will happen. Why would adding a high-pitched whistle on top of that make them change their behavior?
You might want to consider driving lights and perhaps slowing down. You cannot improve deer’s’ visibility to you coming, or change their behaviors, but you can change yours.
Um, I have driving lights and HID headlights. Its difficult to see around curves and hills no matter how slow you drive though. The corn is still low now but when it gets higher, they’ll come flying right out of the corn field and you’ll never see them until they are on the road. Counted a dozen of them on or near the road in a 10 mile section. These things are just a menace and they cut the South Dakota season short because they said the population was down. I think either they can’t count or they all moved over the line to Minnesota.
I was going 35 mph at night on a straight 2-lane when “my” deer came out of a tree line running. The first thing I saw was brown fur 2’ in front of my headlights. I didn’t even get my foot off the gas before hitting it. The car still ran but had the classic “medicine ball thrown into the front grill” damage. $2400 to fix including a new hood. There should be no restriction on deer hunting IMHO.
Deer are mesmerized ( spelling) by the headlights and a whistle is not going to phase them a bit. Something must break their concentration so they will move on, but I never heard thet these whistles did a bit of good. THey do have a short attention span though, so if you travel at 2mph you’ll never see one in the road. By the time you get near enough, he’ll have lost interest and moved on.
Bing;
I think that they just keep moving from state to state.
Two bucks talking; :
Deer #1"Wanna go find some does to the west"
Deer #2 "Naw… South Dakota’s season starts tomorrow"
Deer #1 “Ok…lets go east to Wisconsin”.
I swear that the DNR sends them notices “Hunter Alert Next week”
Also why does the DNR hide all the deer durring deer season and let all the Turkeys out and vice versa.
Hitting a deer can result in a very serious accident. Someone here in the San Jose area was killed a few years back after the deer they hit came in through the windshield and the antlers pierced their body.
There were a lot more deer where I lived in rural Colorado, but there’s still a large number here in San Jose, despite it being thought of as an urban area. Here’s something unusual: In Colorado the deer had white tails. Here, they have black tails.
Them blacktailed deer don’t lift they’re tail when they make raisins…hence the black tail.
Just kiddin. Then there’s Mule deer in the northwest. And Key deer in Florida
We had one in Wisconsin about 15 years ago, where the deer went thru the windshield and into the back seat with the kids. Good thing it didn’t wake up until after the guy got the kids out. The cop shot the deer right in the car it was so injured.
That’ll leave a stain!!!
Sorry George, you’re right that it can be fatal, yet everyone wants wildlife to look at.
Deer are all over Cincinnati, OH. They travel via the railroad right-of-ways and have been seen in the downtown area. I grew north of the city next to a farm and had to go to Pennsylvania to see my first deer as a kid. The back yard of the house I grew up in is now deep in suburbia and has deer in it all the time now.
I believe no one can say yes or no and be absolutely correct. I imagine they work to certain degree.
Back when I was an appraiser and investigating a deer hit I photographed several deer whistles that were clogged with deer hair.
I have never hit a deer (almost did several times) but I have a train horn that blows every few seconds and shotguns mounted on the front of my car that runs off the cam shaft. My neighbors don’t care for it much.
