Whenever i go to my local hardware store i always see on the counter those deer whistles that you mount on the bumper of your car that “supposedly” scares deer away so you dont cream them…Do they work?? And how would one prove that is DID work?? Sincerly JONPLUC
You might be able to find previous threads using the search engine.
However, the upshot is that independently conducted tests indicated that they do absolutely nothing.
Exactly. That’s a good point Jonpluc. A deer running away from a car could be running for a zillion different reasons.
The person who has never hit a deer and credits deer whistles is alot like the guy who carries a red handkerchief to keep charging elephants away. But there are no elephants around here…see! It works!
I personally know a heck of a lot of cops, and they’ve all taken many, many accident reports of deer v.s. auto where the car had whistles. So I am comfortable saying they don’t work in reality, but only in theory. Think of this, also: At 60 miles an hour you’re covering 100 feet a second. How far away are deer supposed to hear them things? Even if they can hear them 300 feet away (the length of a foot ball field) that only gives the deers 2 volt brain 3 seconds to decide it doesn’t like that noise and stop running out of the woods and onto the highway.
In theory they work, but at highway speeds, I doubt it.
I dissent.
I had a 198x Subaru GL, a slow and ungainly creature which refused to break or otherwise find itself unuseful. Working at a car dealership in Tysons Corner, VA, I collected deer whistles, and lined them up side by side on the underside of that straight bumper until I had an ultrasonic symphony of whistles playing some unheard death march that deer could hear from beyond my sight.
How do I know this? By induction. My car was loud to begin with, and I had trouble with the carbureator, so I kept the air filter open and the spare in the trunk (Subarus keep the spare over the engine block as an energy-absorbing feature that did not save my life when I wrecked it. It definitely did not save my life because I’m still here posting utter crap, despite its being in the trunk, you know, the trunk in the back of the car.) I was missing an exhaust system for two years.
When the car was blatting along through Great Falls roads on various nefarious missions, I saw many deer, some of whom almost became hood ornaments. But when the Deer Symphony kicked in, I never saw another. Ever. Along the same roads, only slightly later, and for a full year. A straightpiped pancake four sounds roughly like an airplane engine, but deer didn’t care about it at all. But the whistles, particularly when I had about a dozen of them attached, those made the deer go away. Either that, or it was the Butthole Surfers I was playing constantly at the time. There’s no accounting for a deer’s taste. Except that deer tastes mighty good.
Apparently they have tested deer’s hearing and they have about the same range as us so they can’t hear them anyway. Forestry workers who have consciously tested them say they see no indication that the deer take any notice.
Too bad, seemed like such a good idea when I put them on my bike.