It depends a lot on what job-searching sites you use and what information you give them. I got on Dice to apply for a particular job, and had to take my phone number off my account there to get the pushy recruiter calls to stop. LinkedIn mostly isn't too bad, but I still wouldn't put a phone number on there.
It's not the type of roles that gets irritating, but the pushiness and desperation of some recruiters. Like they've read too many books on sales and think that they can get any engineer into any job if only they say the right words and are persistent enough.
Do you have LinkedIn? I'm considering ditching it because I'm so sick of recruiter spam and that seems to be their main avenue of contact.
I did it when Microsoft bought them. Not because of it, it was just the moment when I realized that nothing good ever came out via LinkedIn.
Github and Stackoverflow supplied me with all of my decent leads and networking necessary in the past years. For the only two exceptions of people that expected me to have an account there, I told them I could send an up-to-date CV with references, if needed.
I've never been called or harassed by a recruiter, and I try to get back to every one, if only for politeness sake. No reason to burn bridges. If they got the match a little wrong, no big deal--they're not wizards and mind readers.