This time of the year is great (obviously) for reading about hunting stories and such. One thing I've noticed though is a lot of hunters will call out to deer to get them to stop so they can shoot them usually with a "maaa" or something of the sort.

While I have done this myself on more than one occasion, I only do it if the deer is on a good pace and I don't think I can make a clean shot. If the deer in just slowly walking I won't make a sound and I will shoot them mid stride or when they stop to browse or what have you.

I've actually been studying this for some time and there is areason why. I have found that approximately 90% of the deer I shot that I had to call to stop have ran out of sight, most of them pretty far (over 100yds) before dying.

Conversely, approximately 90% of the deer I shotwithout making any sound,fall within sight (under 50yds). Most of the time they will react to the impact and run for a bit then stop or continue walking until they fell over just as my deer did this year.

I believe the deer that hear your mouth call, stop to look to see where the sound is coming from and automatically go on alert. I think they know what they heard just wasn't quite right and are ready to bolt but being curious animals they hesitate. When they get hit by an arrow they now KNOW something is wrong, instinct kicks in and they flee.

If they don't hear a sound, and are not on alert,all they can compute is a sudden pain. They react to it but then calm down quickly. Nature is a rough customer and deer get injured a lot. Deer don't have the brain capacity to compute things like us and can't reason out what just happened. This is why (IMO) the deer have reacted the way they do.

I've been studying this for many years now...it just takes time to gather the data.

Just thought I'd share my findings....opinions anyone?