Deer awareness map

Close

Assumptions — model, not magic

This sketch is an educational awareness model, not measured field distances to free-ranging white-tailed deer. There is no peer-reviewed “deer heard / smelled a hunter at X meters” curve for footfalls, whisper, or human scent with known meteorology (see research brief).

Hearing

• Behavioral audiogram: Heffner & Heffner 2010, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127:151–158 — best threshold −3 dB SPL at 8 kHz; good sensitivity ~500 Hz–32 kHz. That paper is an audiogram. It is not a “heard a hunter at X meters” result, and it is not an input to the distances drawn here.
• Isotropic base from spherical spreading only: r_base = 10^{(L_ref−L_th−M)/20} m (r₀=1 m). Air absorption and foliage loss are ignored.
• Default knobs are still engineering assumptions: L_th=0 dB and M=6 dB. Careful footfalls at L_ref=40 dB then have r_base ≈ 50 m (34 dB of excess). The previous +10 dB / +10 dB pair stacked two conservative margins and pinned that preset near 10 m, which read as a pin-dot next to smell and see. L_th=0 is a round broadband-alert assumption; it is not the −3 dB best-frequency audiogram threshold, and it is not a measured detection distance. The L_th slider can go to −6 dB if you want to explore, and that is still an assumption.
• Source SPLs (L_ref @ 1 m) for rustle / footfalls / whisper / gear are assumed from general acoustics charts, not deer-woods measurements.
• The drawn shape is a closed ASSUMED lobe, not a circle. It uses the same wind-FROM / downwind axis as the smell cone (LIVE Open-Meteo when that fetch lands; otherwise the ASSUMED fallback or a manual override). r(φ) = r_base · (1 + e · cos φ), where φ is the angle from downwind. Crosswind stays at r_base; downwind is longer; upwind is shorter. Wind-speed bins set e: calm 0.06 (near-circle), steady 0.35, strong 0.55. This is not CFD and not a published wind-and-hearing curve.

Smell

• Drawn as a downwind cone, not a circle. Wind dominates.
• Wind direction, speed bin, and humidity prefill from the same Open-Meteo surface forecast Windmaster uses (current=wind_*_10m). Marked LIVE met when the fetch lands; ASSUMED (270° W, steady, humid) if it fails. Manual override sticks until the next pin or Refresh.
• Cone angles & max ranges follow brief §4.3 / Table C — assumed model knobs (calm 60–90° / 100–300 m; steady humid 20–40° / 300–600 m; strong diluted 10–25° / shorter; dry/hot 50–200 m). Live wind aims the wedge; it does not measure deer detection distance.
• Popular “¼–½ mile” figures are hunter lore; optional 800 m dashed ring is uncertain lore only.
• MSU VOC work characterizes human scent chemistry / sprays — not a calibrated meter-scale detection distance.

See

• Not line-of-sight. No DEM, no viewshed, no terrain mask.
• Clear-air radius is an ASSUMED woods visual hint (default 200 m). The slider is the only control on that base.
• When Open-Meteo returns WMO weather_code and precipitation, that LIVE code scales the radius down for fog or precip (rough bins: fog ×0.35, heavy ×0.5, moderate ×0.7, light ×0.85, overcast ×0.9). If the fetch fails, the ring stays the full ASSUMED radius and is labeled that way.
• Hearing and smell remain the primary overlays. See is a weather-aware hint, not a detection distance.

Scope

• White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) awareness ranges only. Educational — no hunting tactics beyond awareness geometry.
• Export KML downloads the current hunter pin, hearing lobe, smell cone, and see ring (plus the lore wedge if it is on). The hearing placemark is the same wind-biased polygon as the map, labeled ASSUMED. The file is geometry plus labels — opening it does not need a network. Each description says whether wind aim and the visibility scale are LIVE Open-Meteo or ASSUMED.
• Same geometry can be opened in Google Earth or TAK. Optional later: an ATAK plugin (same model knobs). Spelling: ATAK.

Science source: research-brief.md in this folder.