Do deer come to corn because of smell or because of the sound made by the feeder? WHat about when a road is corned for the first time? Do the deer stumble across the corn and then keep coming back as long as the corn is there or do they hear the feeder and come to investigate and get rewarded with the corn?

The ones in my yard (tameish) come out anytime I hit the feeder button. At the ranch they come to the feeder when there is nothing else to eat.

We hand fed for years...they don't hear that...I'm inclined to say smell...

I'm sure both, but I think sound over smell though, I put small pieces of hard plastic aroung my varmit cage, so when the corn hits it, it makes a loud sound, so they know when the dinner bell is going off.

I say both, I say that cause we throw a lot by hand and they always find it and I have watched deer come and just stare at a feeder waiting to go off. Or when it does go off they come out like clock work.

The come by smell. But they are conditioned by sound. I'd bet if you had a recording of a feeder going off, but not distribute corn, deer would stop coming to that location with in a few visits. On the flip side if you a rigged a feeder that would dispense corn quietly it would still attract deer.

I just might have to do an experiment to find out how long each would take to develop a pattern

I have a little gadget that sounds like a feeder going off. I use it if a deer is at a feeder and leaves without getting a good look at it or if a doe has a buck trailing her, but she is a long ways off. You turn this little gadget on it sounds like corn hitting metal. Almost everytime I use it, deer show up looking for the chow.

Classical conditioning (also Pavlovian or respondent conditioning, Pavlovian reinforcement) is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov.[1] The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance.

neutral stimulus- sound of corn hitting metal.

Smell, because they do not always hear the feeder go off. I have moved my feeder to a new location and they find it that same day I moved it.

Can we get a dumbass interpretation of that for me? I may not be smart, but I don't work very hard.

I would say smell more so than sound:

[/quote] Can we get a dumbass interpretation of that for me? I may not be smart, but I don't work very hard. [/quote]

The deer associate the sound of the feeder with food, but initially it was the smell of food "corn or feed" that attracted them to the site.

Curly's pictures pretty much sums it up, deer eating and no feeder racket.

Another example, you drive in out to feed your cows in the same truck every day for week the next week you drive a cross the pasture to fix a water leak and you look in your rear view mirror and your entire herd is following and "moooooooing". Cows are not attracted to trucks nor deer to feeder sounds with out the association of food.

I will say sight and smell if you dont have a electronic feeder. I know deer will still come to a feeder when they hear one even if its ran outta corn. I know a deer can find every single kernel of corn on the ground if I have thrown it out by hand.

Maybe its all of the above?

+1 on All the Above theory

Some of our guys think they must know what a feeder looks like because we put up a brand new one in a new spot 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. Finished banging around on the pen about 3 in the afternoon, and set the timer for 5 pm and 7 am.
We threw up a pop-up ground blind about 90 yds away and left. One guy hunted there the very next morning, The feeder went off at 7 AM and at at 7:03, 5 does went in that pen and started chowing down. They had to be just waiting back in that brush for it to go off and with it only being there about 16 hours, It just makes us think the deer saw it (or had sat back and watched us put it up and fill it with corn) and knew from past experience if they were hanging around come daylight that corn was going to come out of it. A short while later, a couple of bucks came in and it's had multiple deer, bucks and does coming in ever time someones hunted it since that first morning.

But on that first morning, it had only went off once before and that was at 5 pm the previous evening so that particular group of deer may have smelled the corn, but they couldn't have had time to get trained on that feeder for coming to eat there in the morning because it had never put out corn in the morning there before. But somehow, they knew it was going to go off that next morning and they didn't come in the pen till a few minutes after it had went off. I'm convinced they know what a feeder looks like by sight.

I'm also convinced about the sound of a feeder going off bringing them in, but I believe smell might also be just as important as well.
One of our guys had filled a different feeder with that corn HEB sells that has the apple smell added. He had the empty sacks in his truck and had walked around a bit checking out some other spots. When he got back to the truck, there was 4 does standing right around the truck looking at the bed where those sacks were and there's no reason we can think of they'd have been doing that unless they smelled that corn.
So I vote for all three - sight, sound, and smell.

If you think deer come to feeder sounds more than smell, then maybe this is for you:

DOCTAYLOR, YOU ARE CORRECT. DEER ARE NOT STUPID. THEY LEARN THAT CERTAIN TREES DROP ACORNS QUIETLY. THEY WILL RETURN TO THAT TREE. IF A TELEPHONE POLE PROVIDED FOOD THEY WOULD RETURN TO THAT TELEPHONE POLE. PERSONALY I THINK SMELL WOULD BE A VERY MINOR REASON FOR THEIR RETURN.

Neither, I think it has more to do with taste

They come back to a spot out of habit and ONLY if there's a continual food source. They sniff it out to begin with....I personally think smell plays a major role but that's just lil ol' me.

I know both. We have done several things over the years for me to determine this.

Smell - We hunted a couple of places we have used this in our favor. We had a large area of brush in s. texas it had a road that ran along it for about 3/4 mile. Thick brush on one side and a open field on the other. When the wind was blowing out of the north we would see 5x the number of deer after we fed it. Wind out of the south we might not see anything.

Sound - I had a deer feeder business back in the mid 80's. I had an uncle that would throw corn out for the turkeys and ring a big bell. They would be there in 5 min.. I decided to put a load buzzer on one of my feeders to go off when the feeder motor went off. I put it on another property thinking I would train the turkeys over there. After a couple of weeks I went out to watch the feeder go off I didn't see any turkeys but from where I was sitting I could see deer from as far away as 300 yards moving towards the feeder a couple of times I saw deer running to within 75 yards of the feeder then they would slow down.

Our deer must be educated. They almost always show up at the feeders a few minutes before they go off. We have our feeders set to go off a second feeding 20 minutes later in the afternoon and most of them hang around and wait for it also. I realize these are the regulars but they seem to bring new friends everyday. I love it when a newcomer is standing under the feeder when it goes off again. Scares the sheet out of'um.

Smell, When I hand feed you can watch them catch wind and walk straight to it. But when you move a feeder to a new location they hear the feeder and come to it as well. So I would say both...

Smell first, then sound second....if a deer hears the sound of a feeder for the very first time, he won't know what the noise is but when he smells the corn or whatever is in the feeder once it throws, he will then come to it. Deer go to food plots over and I don't think food plots ever make a sound.

I hunted an area last week that my partner had poured out a 5 gallon bucket of acorns on the ground plus a 50 lb bag of corn on a Friday. The game camera showed the deer eating the last acorn before they touched the corn. By Tuesday both were completly gone and we poured out one more bag of corn and again the camera showed the deer coming to it within 2 hours in the middle of the day and that bag was 3/4 gone the next morning when I crawled in the stand.