IMO, deer get conditioned to what the sound means. We converted our gravity feeders to spin feeders to save on corn costs and other reasons mentioned below. I couldn't tell any difference in what came to them and what didn't in my cam pics.

In general, in places where browse is abundant, and corn is not their primary source of quality food, I believe it's harder to kill big bucks on a feeder. In places, like some places in TX, where the natural browse may be abundant (or may not) but it's not high quality browse, I think it's probably much easier to see big bucks on feeders, or corn piles, etc. When I hunt the hill country in TX, we put out corn at noon the first day, and the deer (rack bucks included) are on it within a couple of hours. I never see that behavior in AL. They will find it quickly here, but usually in darkness if they have a choice. Which is another reason why we switched to spin feeders to try and make the deer eat in daylight. I've seen deer come up under one and hit the spinner with his tongue. When a 1yr old spike does this only a couple of weeks after the feeder is placed, it tells you that they don't take long to learn what's what. I can't imagine that they suddenly get scared of them, UNLESS they are there when other deer are shot on them.