Thanks for that report, however not as much fun as reading your blog.

I think they are concluding that if the deer do hear it, they will first evaluate the threat level, then maybe flee.

When I lived in rural New Jersey (yes, there is a rural NJ) I had two deer whistles mounted on the fairly square bumpers of my 87 GTI. The deer never "batted an eye".

Now living in suburban NJ, I am observing lots of deer comfortably habituated to living amongst people just like the squirrels, raccoons, skunks, bears, foxes, turkeys, etc.

I believe the danger lies when a deer is already in flight mode and less likely to be thoughtfully evaluating their surroundings in total. It seems most of the road kill around here is in areas
where their paths are restricted by barriers (fences, median dividers, etc) or on the highways where we have streams of speeding vehicles traveling way too close to each other.

Steve
87 Syncro GL

--------------------------------------------
On Sun, 9/8/13, Alistair Bell <albell@SHAW.CA> wrote:

 Subject: Re: Deer whistles--do they work?
 To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
 Date: Sunday, September 8, 2013, 9:36 AM

 http://www.bioacoustics.uconn.edu/reports/ARLOManuscript326%20FINAL.pdf

 Alistair