Commentary: The most-feared predator of all for whitetails? One study shows it’s humans

As someone whose career was based around wildlife, sometimes a report or a study comes out that makes me shrug with a “no kidding” feeling creeping over me. Recently, Steve Rinella shared such a fact-finder in his MeatEater newsletter. This one looked for the answer as to what predator was the most likely to stimulate a response in white-tailed deer behavior. In other words, what scared them into altering their habits. Conversational human voices were overwhelmingly the most fear-inducing of the sounds to which the deer were exposed.