Story by Craig Nyhus, Lone Star Outdoor News
Results from a study may have hunters lowering their voices in the deer blind or when checking trail cameras and performing ranch chores next season.
Dr. Daniel Crawford, the lead investigator who recently earned his Ph.D. at Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute, co-authored a study to determine whether the sound of a conversational human voice struck as much fear in white-tailed deer as other predator calls and sounds.
What they found was not only did the deers’ reactions to human sounds equal the sounds of other predators — they far exceeded them.
Researchers set up 23 baited sites and trail-cameras on a 30,000-acre Georgia research site, combined with a digital playback system that randomly played audio samples.
The study, published in the international scientific journal Oecologia, found the sound of a conversational human voice struck greater fear in whitetails than other predator calls and sounds tested.
At each site, speakers and cameras were placed 5 yards from the bait, with cameras recording 20-second videos. The 64 audio clips included coyotes, wolves, mountain lions, dogs, humans (four males voices and four female voices) and several non-threatening bird species. The sounds were set to 70 decibels.
An examination of more than 800 videos showed deer were significantly more likely to flee from sounds of coy- otes, cougars, dogs and wolves than the nonthreatening birds. But reactions to human voices were almost twice as likely — as the deer fled from the sound of a human voice more than any of the other large carnivores.
