I've read a few questions/comments lately about how deer react to combines, and have also wondered myself how this relationship works.

Well Friday evening I went out videoing and was very surprised to see this relationship in full effect.

A combine had just begun harvesting a corn field and had just cut a strip down the center of the field then moved about 200 yards down the field for hisreturn stripback.
It couldn't have been 4 minutes since the combine left that initial cut and as I watched, 3 deer appeared from the standing corn into the cut lane to eat the corn that had spilled from the harvesting.

From what I saw, the noise of the tractor didn't scare the deer at all - more like it rang the dinner bell! Just thought some might find this interesting.

As a guy who sits in tractors and combines alot, I have seen my fair share of encounters with deer, especially during harvest.

They definitely aren't weary of the machinery. It can be a wonderful way to hunt if you are set up along a field edge.

Like anything, you get close enough and they will flee. But then again, I don't think they are spooked nearly as bad as they would be when winding hunters in the woods.

I was thinking about this very same thing in my stand last night (seeing how the farmer still hasn't been able to get the corn out yet on our lease). The best anology I could think of was how a defense lawyer reacts to an ambulance driving down the street. Some deer out there are in fact "Combine Chasers"...have seen it first hand myself.

So....I need to drive a combine into a field. Run a nice cut down the middle, stop, climb onto the roof of the combine.........WHACK!!! Dead Deer.