How much outside noise do you have your spot?   How do you think it impacts the animals movements?

We always have people off in the distance shooting.  Cars going by up front, airplanes coming and going. People talking off in distance. Doesn't seem to bother the animals.  It is all flat here and sound travels a long way.

Last Saturday was the final day of deer. Starting around 3 pm the following happened.

   A guy down the road started firing his BMG. Shot until dark.

   Another guy started shooting Tannerite, 5 large explosions.

   3rd guy broke out his full auto toys and shot til dark.

We still saw deer moving.

Events like you experienced always help me.  Deerz will go the other way of the ruckus.

A friend and I for kicks and to see reactions one day over the course of a couple hours, flew his Phantom drone over pigs and deer within a few feet over their heads. Not one looked like it cared as they continued eating and rooting never looking up or around. Obviously, animals do not fear noise from above.

I've had deere walk across my gun range while i was just changing mags.
Also cats, birds and squirrels.

All things considered, if this is in a rural setting, this is my kinda area.

When I lived in the city, I often heard shots on the next street over.  
This concerned me that the "DinDos" were either randomly shooting up in the air whilst filming a short vid for Worldstar or they were taking shots at the house behind mine again and were likely to miss, hitting mine.

Where I live now, the Tannerite is likely me, the BMG and full autos are likely two guys at the end of our road maybe a half mile or so past me.
I'm ok with this type of noise.  It does not seem to disturb the deer that frequent our back yard or the surrounding pastures..

I’ve had fork horns watching me cut shooting lanes with a Stihl.

I've had deer and coyotes follow me when I was cutting shooting lanes.

I was using a Kubota tractor with brush cutter.

They walk about 50 yards behind.

I’ve found that deer for some reason can’t seem to figure out that the buzzing drone noise is above their head. Like the sky is some blind spot.

I’ve hovered over deer out back, slowly lowering, and they whip their heads around looking for the noise but never look up.

I often hunt very near a popular rv camp spot. The deer don’t give a damn about what happens on the trail or in the areas humans are “supposed” to be.

They don’t care about the distant gunshots or dogs barking. They’re pretty well on time, once you get a feel for their pattern.

Normally they’ll let you get about 10yds in the brush before they run, sight unseen.

The private wood lot I hunt, it’s more like 25yds before they bolt, but they walk around a lot “easier”, due to less hunting pressure. Oddly they have almost no schedule or rhythm that I can pick up. They also tend to wander in circles, whereas the public deer seem to never wander, they always have the same gross movement.

At work we often have to call a hold fire at the range so we don't shoot deer as they cross the range.

I hunt in fairly busy area, the deer are very used to the noises.

deer are weird animals.  we have a LOT of deer where i hunt.  not unusual to have 30 deer in a field at 5pm so i get to observe several hundred a year.  it depends on the individual deer and how dumb they are. the younger the dumber. older bucks will have more of a reaction than anything else.

gun shots might make them look up but unless it's real close usually doesn't affect the field.  individual animals may react.  if several deer bolt it will have a chain reaction.  on the other hand i have shot a deer in a field and had a yearling on the other side of field not even budge.

4 wheelers it depends on the deer.  if it sounds close like within 200 yards most will book but usually come back within an hour.  on the other hand, sometimes you will ride by a doe or yearling on the side of the road and they will just stand there while you go by.

trains within 50 yards have no effect on any deer other than looking up.

cars on the road no effect.

dogs are a problem.  if they can be heard all deer will start getting nervous and unass the area.

interestingly i had a field clear saturday because some kind of bird started going off but they all came back within 20 minutes.

walked in a field the other day and 2 bucks were in the back end, one left when i showed up the other watched me walk 100 yards until he left.

sometimes a field will clear for no discernable reason.

Deer reaction to any disturbance is associative.     The locals around my small holding generally ignore both me and my dogs.............they'll move out of the way for a vehicle, then come right back to what they were doing.  Now, my dogs are hunting dogs,.....walkers mostly and are trained to run the hell out of deer....still, even tho they raise hell when those deer get close to their pen the deer do not react as they've never been driven by dogs!     Ordinary upkeep noises might garner a looksee by those deer but little more relative to vehicles and tractors...............that said, a lease I once hunted was fairly hard pressured....deer thereon would spook at the mere sound of a vehicle that stopped near their locale................a dropping tailgate accompanied by dogs barking was a sure thing to get any deer in earshot to clear out of dodge.........posthaste at that!!

They ain't stupid, they know what a threat is and they react accordingly!            

In point of fact, just this last week I was testing some rather loud handloads in a rifle off my back deck........looked up after shooting a couple of rounds and one big old doe about a 100 yards away was just looking at me................very unconcerned!

I've killed 4 of the 5 largest whitetails in my life from a little honey hole 15 mins from my house.

It's surrounded on 3 sides by subdivisions.  The 4th side is a busy 2 lane road and across that road is ~300 acres of soybeans with a HUGE subdivision on the other side of the soybeans.  

I only bow hunt this spot and its only ~40 acres.  Many times on nice Sept/Oct afternoons, I hear kids playing in the backyard, people working in their garages, lawnmowers, smell people grilling on their decks, dogs barking, traffic from the road, etc.  

Example:

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We have a long, narrow 10 acres that borders a massive chunk of public land to the north.  I just noticed somewhat used tire tracks on the public land, just on the north side of our property line.

The neighbors to the west don't live at the house, they use it as a hunting cabin.  Others in the area told us they bring a MASSIVE hunting party up every year, most of them hunting on the public land or elsewhere in the county.

I have a feeling it's going to be an issue as, when it comes to public land, first come, first serve, period.  They have stands left out all summer long on the public land in some very prime spots.  I will be hunting those areas if no one is there before me.  Not going to be a dick about it and try to deliberately bump anyone but public is public.

I also don't know what to make of the ATV trail.  Riding through the woods isn't legal here unless it's on a designated trail.  I'm sure its what they use to get to their stands on the public land.  I'm mostly thinking I'll just ask them to be courteous about it, and if they are going to ride it to their stand in the morning, make sure they get through plenty early if they know I'm hunting, not 10 minutes before shooting light.

I'd rather they run an ATV through and be out of the area ASAP then have 5+ people walking that trail... and part of me prefers they saturate that woods with hunters from time to time and get stuff moving.

Fortunately our primary hunting spots are on a separate chunk of 80 acres 40 minutes from home.

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There's some noise from time to time.  There's a couple big marble quarries that are 10-12 miles from here.  Sometimes you can hear them blast, not really loud just sort of a rumble.  There's mountain williams that I'll hear shooting in the evening sometimes.  The expectant parents sometimes will incorporate tannerite into their "initial" gender reveal festivities.  Otherwise it's pretty quiet.  We've a lot of wildlife here, turkeys, deer and bears.  I used to live close (1-2 miles) to a busy interstate and you could hear the sound of the cars swooshing by at all hours.  It was almost like white noise but disturbing when you're relaxing on the back deck at 9;30 at night.

I believe that deer get used to human sounds and smells if they live near humans.  Now out in a wilderness area, yeah no.

Used to have coyotes follow me while bailing hay. It gets the mice stirred up.  They usually didn’t do it a second time!!!

I tried harassing the deer in my yard with every possible method.

They were eating every plant, and rubbing every tree raw.

I tried:

Yelling.

Running at them.

Hitting them with sticks.

Hitting them with rocks.

Shooting them with the Wrist Rocket and glass marbles.

Shooting them in the ass and head with the Crosman.

Ten pumps with the Crosman and between the ribs wasn't even effective at running them off. They just died.

I'm not allowed to harass the deer in the yard any more.

I no longer even bother mowing the grass or weed-whacking.

Movement and smell are much greater threats than mechanical or low frequency noise.
On many occasions I’ve sat in the swamp buggy with the engine running and deer 40-50 yards away go right back to eating.
Bang around filling feeders..drive away. 10-15 minutes later the deer show up.

Youve killed deer with a pellet gun?

I'd love to see that. Seriously. It's about as good as Bell writing about elephants killed with a .22.(It happened at least twice).

"I'll just sting him and he'll run away.

Oh, shit. He died."


ETA-I guess it was Capstick, not Bell writing about killing elephants with .22. Still funny.

At our range at work we often have to call a ceasefire because of deer standing out on the range. Shooting or not they could careless. I have shot and missed deer in heavy woods and had them walk closer for a better shot.

On the Wilcox range at Pendleton, we’d often go into check-fire for deer, followed by coyotes. Berm is backed up by a small mountain. They’d have to get pretty close, say within 1200yds to call it. I’ve gotten pretty close to the coyote with some M855 when it was a practice day and could waste some rounds. Just lobbing bullets at them.

The fellas at the gun club tell me that the farmer next door sets up his ground blind pretty close to the club’s main berm. Allegedly farmer+family kill a pile of deer from there every year. During mid-late season, I see gaggles of deer in the woods next to the range. We can go shoot a bunch and they’ll be hanging out just in the tree line parallel to the range. They don’t really run off much either.

Dang deer know full well there’s no hunting on gun club property.