Do deer know there being hunted?

no way manDo deer know there being hunted?
A deer doesn't know anything. They don't have a language and so can't think ';I am being hunted';. They are conditioned from birth to react to certain stimulus and that is to run away and/or hide. As they escape they don't think ';gotta get away something's trying to kill me!'; because they don't have the words and don't have the understanding of those ideas. In addition they can not link one set of stimulus with another. So if there's a rustle in the bushes and they flee, then there's a snapping of a twig and the flee, and a flicker of movement and they flee, and so on - they can't put this together and know they are connected, that something is following them.





Finally, human beings have a thing called intentionality - that is when we see something we assume that someone intends it to be there, or intends to do something and has left behind a trace. If a man stands infront of your house - you don't like it because you assume he intends to do something. You dog may bark at the guy but not because it thinks the man intends to anything. If we return home and the front door is ajar the we are immediately concerned because the first thing we think is ';someone did this - they are in the house';. A dog wouldn't notice.





Basically, we would know we were hunted but deer wouldn't because they are incapable of thinking in terms of what something intends - they don't even know what they intend when they are running away or hiding, they just do it.Do deer know there being hunted?
deer are a prey species and therefor know that predators are out there.





you ever wunder why the Dodo went extict? because they were from a island with no natural predator, so when we arrived they had no reason to fear us and the rest is history.





deer have always been around predators whether its the wolf, lion or human
When pressure gets going of course they do. We have found deer hiding in drain pipes under roads during rifle season in Michigan. Even if your out in the woods in the summer and a deer knows that your in the area they take it as a threat because they know that we are a predator.
Many times they will smell the scent of man which any deer over a year or two has noticed before and maybe had been shot at as well.They hear and have a great sense of smell.
yes, they don't know there's a man with a gun in the bushes but they know there's something there that is possibly dangerous