…you stink. This was the basic response one reader had to last Saturday’s Weekend Garage column in which I answered a question about deer whistles. He took affront that I had called a deer-whistle manufacturer to talk about what one of these things is and purports to do and that I hadn’t said enough about them being bunk.
I re-read the column, reproduced below, and, with the benefit of hindsight, I agree. I do stink. The piece gives a lot more space to the whistle manufacturer’s point of view and is light-handed with its criticism.
My gut reaction on the subject of deer whistles is that they’re bunk. I nearly wrote that straight off as a very short answer to the question. Then I did some research on the internet, but I didn’t find the smoking gun I was looking for–a comprehensive study by police, a highway department or insurance companies showing that vehicles with deer whistles hit deer just as often as those without.
The WG reader sent this link: http://www.ibmwr.org/otech/deerw.html, which cites a fair amount of data in concluding deer whistles are bunk. It even references a finding by the Ohio Police Department that “after months of testing” patrol cars with the devices hit deer as often as those without. The writer of the linked piece doesn’t provide the stats though, just the statement. The research cited there concludes that there is no evidence that deer whistles do what they claim to do. Whistle manufacturers, not surprisingly, state it the opposite way: there is no evidence that they don’t work.
The site whose owner I called does reference a study drawn into question by the linked piece (a guy tested deer whistles by recording the sound they produce and playing it over tape recorders from snowmobiles driving through the woods. Deer ran away–but did the recording have any part in it?). I wasn’t as moved by that one as the lengthy report by the Modoc County, California, police following their two-year study. They managed to give out free deer whistles to 20% of the county population. After two years, none of the 1648 cars in the county with deer whistles had hit a deer; 29 of the 6652 vehicles that didn’t have them had hit deer. The study states that statistically, 5.7 of the 20% of cars fitted with deer whistles would be expected to hit deer. Granted, that’s a small number. I’m not a statistician but I have seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead (at the beginning of which one character flips a coin repeatedly and it always comes up heads). That six cars would be expected to hit deer over two years but didn’t isn’t on par with 1,000 expected to and none doing so.
I must also have been a little seduced by this product’s longevity in the world and its purported millions of unit sales on many continents. This is the can’t-fool-all-the-people-all-the-time scientific method, which is dubious at best. Could be that I’m too optimistic or generous to conclude that millions of people have wasted their money on something that is utterly useless–maybe I haven’t spent enough time watching infomercials on late-night TV. Because the product is only $6, I also cast a less critical analytical eye on it than if I had been asked whether someone should retrofit a ‘65 Mustang with stability control.
Just developing the test model that proves it’s the sound and not the vehicle or machine generating it that is driving deer away is a good challenge. If you take out the vehicle and trigger the device by itself in some other way than driving, that’s a big change to the device as used. Something roaring and whooshing and making a (potentially) threatening sound is more impressive than the sound alone. Voices shouting in the distance don’t make the same impression as the tremble of a running army shouting. (The latter of course begs the question whether the shouting is having any effect, or if smaller forces freeze or run away from the marching tremor alone.) Still, if the devices were 100% effective, there wouldn’t be so much data questioning their effectiveness.
To clarify, I was in no way stating or implying that buying a $6 (or $5,000) deer whistle will render you immune from deer crashes the way Superman is impervious to bullets. If that were the case, there would be no reported finding anywhere in the world of a whistle-equipped car hitting a deer. That evidence would be overwhelming–even if scientists disagreed over how they work–and car makers would make deer whistles standard equipment along with turn signals and brake lights.
At best, deer whistles might (in light of evidence like the Modoc County study) do $6 worth of good under ideal operating conditions, whatever those might be. Or they might do nothing whatsoever under any condition and scared deer or reduced collisions attributed to the whistles may be better assigned to other factors, like chance or noise from other sources.
Staying alert, driving within the speed limit, keeping headlights functioning and properly aimed, and constantly watching for movement to either side of the road–and on it–are your best defenses.
The only guaranteed way to avoid hitting a deer is to not drive. If my piece came off as stating that deer whistles are a proven excellent defense against deer collisions, I didn’t mean that and I apologize for not giving the other side of the issue more ink. I thank reader Steve for taking me to task on this. If you’re going to write about a subject, write carefully, even if the product in question is cheap.
The important data comes from drivers. As always, I’d love to hear readers’ experiences with these devices.
Here’s the link reader Steve sent me:
http://www.ibmwr.org/otech/deerw.html
Here’s the website for the product whose company owner I spoke to, which includes links to the Modoc County report:
http://www.deerwhistle.com/html/research_comments.html
Here’s the response I had written to the question of whether deer whistles work:
[Begin] First of all, there are several manufacturers and they come in both mechanical (sound generated by airflow) and electronic styles.
The basic principle behind the invention is sound. Deer are flight animals. When danger approaches, they have two responses. One is to go still, motionless, hoping that whatever perceived predator has come within the area will not see them. The other is to run. Because running gives away their presence, stillness is preferable until the deer is convinced it’s not going to work.
The design theory is to trigger the stillness response with a high pitched sound. If the deer was walking toward the road and into the path of your speeding automobile, the whistle is designed to put the deer on alert and cause it to stop moving so that the deer-car meet-and-greet never goes down. The deer stays still, you pass by, mammals of two and four legs live to see another day.
I called Save-a-Deer whistle company, in Colorado, to ask a few questions. Mike Livingston said his father bought their product, a one-piece two-tone mechanic whistle, from a wildlife agent in 1987. Since then, he estimates they have sold between 4 and 5 million of them worldwide, including private vehicle owners, trucking companies and delivery companies like UPS.
He said they just sold a batch to South Africa, which conducted its own research on their efficacy. They concluded that they were effective for a variety of wildlife, not just deer, but were not effective on domesticated animals. Save-a-Deer’s website also has test and review data from entities including a wildlife-dense area of California. These tests were positive.
Livingston’s family uses them and he gives them to his friends in the mountains, too, and he says no one has reported any problems. His friends say the deer either stop or run away.
You would think the various noise vehicles generate on their own, like engine, wind and tire noise, might affect the animal’s perception of the sound, but Livingston says that hasn’t proved a problem. Could be that the sound is distinct from most car-generated noises. Livingston said the design also projects the sound forward (about 100 to 200 yards).
It’s possible that the product is such cheap insurance, people buy it disproportionately to its actual value, but Livingston’s sales and customer feedback cut against that theory. If the device were snake oil, e.g., trucking companies who bought them were hitting deer at their pre-whistle rates, you would expect word to get out and sales to drop off. The Save-a-Deer whistle is about six dollars; if you bought it and were unhappy, you’re out less than two gallons of gas. [End]
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