Interesting post, good topic to think about. Like at least one other has already said, I don't think the physical presence of a car is particularly spooky to game. I've come back to my car at all times of year to find game feeding unconcernedly within easy bow range of the vehicle.What I do think spooks them is changes in engine pitch. Experiment with this next time you see game near the road. Often they'll pretty much ignore you if you maintain constant speed, but come off the gas or hit the gas and watch what happens! I think they're very clued in to the fact that driveby shooters have to come off the gas and stopto shoot.

Furthermore, I think most hunters heavily overrate a deer's night vision. I really don't think it's that much better than ours. All that rod and cone theory accounts for some advantage, but it's just not as much as most people think. In walking to your stand, if you blow right into them, or give them your scent column, you're in big trouble. But skirt them even by 50-75 yards and NOT ON A SKYLINE and in my experience you can stroll casually past with little or no disturbance.

I picked this out on a dandy funnel stand on the Milk River. The one weakness was that I had to walk along about a mile of field edge heavily used by deer to get to my stand. Idid it repeatedly over the course of several days and saw no diminution of deer action, or big buck action. Finally, on a full moon night with really good visibility,I was able to see why. As usual, that morning I headed ina good hour before daylight, but with the full moon I could really see well out into the field, which was full of deer. Ipassed a couple dozen deer at ranges from 50-200 yards (the limit I could see with binos), and spooked none of them. Many of the closer ones watched me walk past, andthe ones 50 yards away might even skitter another20 yards into the field, but once I passed they settled down immmediately and resumed feeding. Those same deer poured by my stand in the firstminutes of daylight.