ORIGINAL: Dopler

You came to the right guy for this argument ;-).

The speed of sound is around 767 mph, an average carbon arrow travels at around 200 mph.Meaning that the arrow will travel about 5 of those 17yards before the deer hears the string. In the remaining 12 yards, the deer will have approximately 1 tenth of a second to react to the noise. Imaginehaving 1/10th of a second to react to a surprising noise?

I read a very interestingarticle several years ago by a wildlife biologist and avid hunterabout deer string jump.He did tests on deer and tested the deers reflexes. The conclusion of the study was that once a deer is alert, meaning it's looking at something that's spooked it or it's heard something that has it on hightened alert it can react to sound or danger in an instant and can potentially jump the string atbowhunting ranges; however, if the deer is in anormal pattern, like feeding or walking and it has not yet identified a threat,then the deers brain has to first identify the threat and then engage flight mode which takes up to a second, enough time for any arrow to strike its mark at 17 yards. It made sense to me and I'vefound that to be the casefrom my own observations. If this buck was on a doe, oblivious tothe hunterspresence,now way is it jumping the string at 17 yards. He also saidin the articlethat there is a distance where string jump is impossible even for an alert deer, I think it was 10 yards but I forgot for sure.