It was the eyes I saw first. Then the outline of the animal as it stood just off the right side of the road, looking across my path. I stopped as the six-point buck remained frozen in my headlights and apparently poised to jump in front of my truck.

Then I saw the doe stepping daintily toward him from the left side of the road. She didn’t hesitate but went right across my lane where the buck jumped at her. In trying to dodge him she slipped and sprawled on the pavement. That was on an icy night several years ago.

On occasion I have been drawn into conversations regarding the effectiveness of deer whistles. Usually my position had been one of skepticism. Just another gimmick, I’d thought, that at best might frighten the occasional deer. But then a year or so later, I was given a pair and so mounted them to the front of my vehicle, on each end of the bumper brace. And since that time I have had at least a half dozen experiences that have convinced me of their worth. My only deer car collision occurred when I was without whistles.

In the incident described above, the whistles were not a factor. Several cold nights had accelerated the “rut” or mating season, and I had slowed before coming close to the deer. Whistles are activated by air rushing through holes in the front of the whistles and it takes a speed of about thirty miles per hour for them to produce a sound usually above the range of a human ear but easily within the range of a deer.

Earlier that same day and during daylight hours, something had startled a young buck and he was galloping directly toward the highway in front of me. My speed was about fifty and there were several other vehicles in the immediate vicinity. And suddenly, as I became concerned that a collision might be imminent, the animal reared up on his hind legs and turned away from the traffic.

During October, November and December, whitetails are likely to ignore traffic and drivers need any extra help they can get to avoid accidents.

Coming home from up north one night, another incident occurred that convinced me that my whistles work and frighten deer. Two animals stood on a little ridge just to the left of M-66. I spotted them in my brights just about at the point where hitting my brakes might have been too late if the creatures had decided to cross in front of me. But again they wheeled and retraced their route back into the darkness.

As I said earlier, there have been several times since when similar things have happened. Twice in the spring of the year I avoided what might have been an accident, due, I believe, to my whistles.

The most notable of these took place as I drove south of Mt. Pleasant on U.S. 27. Just at sunset a doe and two fawns bolted away from the road and into a field at my approach. The scary thing that time was that I never saw the animals until they rushed away from the highway.

Finally, near Big Rapids, two deer stood just yards off the road in early May, munching the season’s first green grass. Before I had whistles I quite often had passed deer at the roadside that continued to chew unconcerned as I passed. But these two in question, fell all over themselves, galloping into cover.

I suppose we could make a weak argument that “we don’t drive in places where there are deer”, or “we rarely drive at night.” The problem is that during these days of the late fall rut, bucks especially and to a lesser extent does, run all over the place trying to find each other.

Bottom line, I think, is that these three to ten dollar items might make a great Christmas present to yourself a friend. In Michigan there are deer almost everywhere!