If you live near a wooded area where deer are abundant, you will see these so-called deer warning whistles mounted on car bumpers. Do they actually work? Supposedly they emit a high frequency sound the deer can hear, but not people. I’ve usually seen them mounted on front bumpers just ahead of the grill or headlights. Seems that, if you are travelling at a high speed (as you would on a country road), that the sound would not be able to travel FOWARD to warn deer that you are coming. Granted, your car wouldn’t be travelling faster than the speed of sound, but if the wind is blowing into the device from the front AND is being blocked by the front end of your car, the things would be useless.
Being a long time deer hunter, I will give my WAGs:
if a deer can’t hear a car coming without the whistle, it is deaf. Can YOU hear a car coming? Can a dear hear better than you?
Dear do not naturally warn each other at high frequency. Why would high frequency be good? I believe
they tell you that it emits a frequency that humans can’t so that you don’t wonder why it doesn’t make any sound.
Not only can a dear hear your engine, he cant see your car. So why do they get hit? Not all of them do, but think about it, just how many cars do they have to dodge in the woods? THey recognize a lot of things as dangerous, but they might not know what a car is. Their natural inclination is to stop for a second when scared. Then…too late.
Don’t waste your money until you see a valid test on these things.
Also, as a general rule, anything that promises to control pests (and I guess deer now fit into this definition) through ultrasonic sound or vibrations is usually a crock. Hell, check this out:
Based on anecdotal evidence, whistles worked when they first came on the market but have ceased to be very effective for the last few years. My guess is that at first they produced a strange new sound that caused Bambi’s Mother to freeze up until it was gone, rather than gamboling onto the pavement just ahead of your right front fender. The freeze up was not because the whistle reached some secret place deep in the poor excuse deer use for brains, but because it was something unfamiliar. Now that everybody and his brother have deer whistles, they are not strange and the deer treat them with the same disregard they extend to motor traffic generally.
I have them on my car, and I’ve never hit a deer. Ergo, deer-whistles prevent deer collisions. I think this is part of the marketing used to sell these things. Most people will never see a deer on the road, much less hit one. So how will you know it’s working? If a deer can’t hear your car or see your headlights, you’re going to hit it, whistles or not.
I also have a magic rock that wards against bear attack. So far, so good.
It’s like this. Most North American Deer’s ear canals are built differently than those of human beings. They are attuned to different frequencies and so hear things we cannot- much like dogs, or 2nd grade teachers.
When you mount one of those devices on the bumpers of your car, something interesting happens. The device doesn’t emit a high-pitched whine as you might think. Rather, it pumps out " Doe, a Deer" from “The Sound of Music” over and over again, as you churn down the highway.
Such mellifluous tones are a tonic to the careworn ears of most deer. What they do is, they hear the song comin’ down the highway. They wander in close to the rumble strips on the edge, but DON’T enter the roadway. They just lean in closely to listen to the beautiful music, and bap- you take off their head, sparing them a painfully slow death and sparing your car severe damage that MIGHT have been inflicted by hitting them in mid-flank.
You got any other nature-related questions, you just let me know.
No, they don’t work. We have an article in our paper every year at this time on this subject because a) we have tons of deer in our area, and b) it’s mating season, and more deer get hit between October and December than the rest of the year combined, since they are more mobile now than at any other time. The hearing ranges of deer are similar to ours, so a high frequency sound means nothing. And deer are just strange, too. I’ve had plenty of times when I’ll be driving down the road that leads to my little neighborhood and I’ll see deer in the woodsy areas surrounding the road. They see my car, freak out, and run across the road right in front of me. If they’d stayed where they were, or, like most animals with an ounce of sense, ran in the opposite direction, they’d have exactly no chance of being hit.
The only thing that I know of that will help as far as not hitting deer is slowing down and staying alert to what’s on either side of the road. At night, which is the most dangerous time, I look for the reflections their eyes make - if I see little green disks bobbing alongside the road, I slow way the hell down until I’m past.
DAVEW0071:
but if you mount them backwards on the REAR bumber, it’ll attract them AFTER YOU’VE GONE BY [sub]who cares about the guy behind you?[/sub]. Just apply a little logic, will ya?
I’ve often imagined it just pissed them off. How would you like some asshole running around work blowing a referee’s whistle? Maybe some can’t take it any more and use your car as a means of suicide.
I hit my melodious “dixie” horn to scoot a deer off the road one time and it stopped in the middle of the road to perk it’s ears up at this little oddity. If I had just kept charging at it quietly, it would have casually walked out of my way. Making a deer stop and take notice can be a bad thing.
From what I’ve seen, the only sure-fire way to get a deer to move out of your way is to flash your lights repeatedly while honking your horn and locking up your brakes causing a cloud of tire smoke under your car as you slam into the legs of the deer causing its body to roll over your car. About two seconds later, the deer realizes that it is in danger and, if capable, scurries off to the woods.
I have never hit a deer and I don’t use the deer “whistles,” therefore I can logically conclude that the whistles actually cause deer-car collisions. But I’m from Wisconsin, we need to come up with a way to avoid hitting a Deere on the road.
