Saturday, February 05, 2005

Deer Alert Whistles

Tonight, on the way home, just after dark, I noticed a nice whitetail deer standing on a knoll just beside the road. It didn’t move and I passed without incident. Luckily I didn’t have a deer alert whistle on my car. The sudden noise would likely have spooked the deer into jumping. I know about the claims made by the whistle manufacturers but my experience with them has not been good.
When my work required me to drive late at night through an area of high deer population I used deer alerts but not with much success. I noticed that horses and deer would often react to the high pitched whistle by running. On a straight level stretch that was fine, but when rounding a bend or cresting a hill the whistle would often spook deer into running across the road as often as it caused them to run away. Unfortunately my deer kill with the alerts was much higher than without them. I had never hit a deer prior to my late night driving through this area and the deer alerts didn’t help at all - I hit three or four deer, bumped several, not counting the many near misses! In fact, I quit using alerts and have not hit a deer since. Of course, I do not travel through that area at night either.
If you drive on straight level roads alerts may work for you but don’t expect them to work on hilly or winding roads.

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