I don't call it "ducking the arrow"...that would lead me to believe the deer knows the arrow is coming and is lowering his body to avoid being hit by the arrow....absolutely not.

The deer is merely dropping his weight onto this legs to preload them to flee danger that he heard. No different than us when we take off to run etc....



I say, he dropped at either the sound of the bow, or the arrow in flight....in experiments, I hear the arrow more than the bow and if you allow gravity to do it's thing, even humans can drop many inches before impact.