You may want to rethink your first scaffold height, 5 foot plus. I’m starting mine at 6 foot because fruit will bend the scaffolds down anyways.
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I meant rings of fence around individual trees, deer don’t jump into a confined place like that. Similarly, if you face a low fence in front of an obstruction like a wall or dense vegetation, they don’t jump over it. A small orchard can probably also be protected with a 5’ fence, deer don’t like to jump into a confined space (e.g they don’t jump into my 70x40’ veggie garden, surrounded by 5’ fence)
I would absolutely take photos and send them to the company. We received similar complaints which are likely animal girdling issues but are making it right if it was our crew.
They shouldn’t be cutting your stuff and need to make a note about it.
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I find that the plastic deer netting/fencing from Tenax and others work really well for deer. And for deer only. All my rolls are chewed through at the bottom from rabbits and squirrels. I would like to migrate to this type of knotted fence with close bottom spacing, but can’t find it near me:
That would be great. Since I am not covering large areas, I’m thinking about adding chicken wire on the outside of my 2x2 or 2x4 fencing to help with rabbits. Though, I’m pretty sure they’re going to be able to get through at gaps at the gate. Anyone have a metal gate they like? I keep coming back to the deer busters one.
Double fence. Inside fence 5 feet, outside fence 4 feet. Landscape fabric and mulch or stone in between. On the outside, much larger rocks. Larger rocks are so deer can’t get a good footing to jump.
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Have not used so I can not give a review. But perhaps the least expensive option i’ve seen yet. 7x100 $26.95
I use a 4’ diameter of 4’ high woven wire on 2x 6’ t-posts. Inside I use a coffee can diameter of 2’ tall hardware cloth. I also start my scaffolds around 6 foot high. I have a hunt club 120 acres to the south.
Previous owners of my place installed the thick version of Tenax plastic 7.5ft deer fence, with t-posts, around 1.3ac. It’s gotta be around 10yrs old now and is still holding up decent to the CA sun exposure. It’s pretty strong on its own, but does tear if you hit it with a weed eater line. It’s not very expensive compared to metal fencing; my inlaws have a proper metal deer fence with wood posts around their whole property, but it was a small fortune for protecting their 3.5ac, but MIL has always been a gardener and always battled the deer, so it’s nice not having them chomp everything anymore.
I think ours was a quick and dirty DIY installation by the previous owners, over the top of old metal fencing in the 4-6ft height. It lacked 100% security and I’ve been upgrading it here and there. One issue is we’re on a hillside and deer will just jump downhill where fence is “lower” to get over; they also focus on any section that’s sagging between the posts because the installer used like 20ft spacing on the posts, probably to save $ and time - I think sagging will always be an issue with these plastic fences, as they’re meant to have some stretch to them. Recently I started remedying this by reinforcing with horizontal lines of galvanized wire, woven through and anchored on each post - you also can’t really just lift up from the bottom to get underneath anymore, yay!
Talk to me about gates. Are people building their own wooden gates or buying something like tractor supply or deer busters metal gate? I keep going back to deer busters.
I bought fishing line. They get spooked because they can’t see it but can feel it touching them so they back off.
You can add a bell for extra effect as well.
So far, it’s worked great! Even got me a bunch of times 
Cheap 6$ post from lowes + fishing line. I do a few lines together at chest level.
I was getting nibbled on every 2-3 days but it’s been over 2 weeks now with no nibble since i did this
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I had been putting welded wire fencing around my trees in a 3’ circle but recently ran out. I had bought some 7.5’ tall plastic fencing on clearance from Wal Mart, but it was really flimsy and didn’t hold up very well. Buying more of the welded wire fencing was not in budget so I had to do some scavenging. My father-in-law used to put up snow fence along their lane years ago. He still had 3 rolls of it. So I am giving that a try now.
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Here in town in the exoburbs… Despite city ordinances about 4 ft or 6 ft fences, I see plenty of gardens in town with 7 ft fencing. Thing is it’s not chain link fence and the posts are not set permanently in cement.
So I talked to one vegetable gardener who showed me her fence which was 8 ft high and she showed me that there was nothing “permanent” about it even though it had been there many years. She said it the deer jumped higher than 7 ft to get in, so she had to raise the sides to 8 ft. She also pointed out elsewhere in the yard she had 4 ft chain link fencing which had cement in ground at the posts. That was the fence she said was “permanent” and restricted to 4 ft.
Out in farm country, something a lot sturdier would be needed.
Google “3-D electric deer fence”, don’t know if it would work in a residential area but has worked great for me. Cheap and effective for deer, not for smaller critters, I weed eat a few times a year to keep the grass down.
To get proper deer fencing built using 10’ pressure treated posts (3’ in ground and 7’ above) and woven wire, including gates, will price out around $4,000/acre if you do all the work yourself. You’ll need to rent a 10’ post pounder. Trust me, you don’t want to be hand digging 70 3’ deep post holes. And you’ll need to have a way to haul around or have the posts and other materials delivered.
There are other options like CritterFence which price out similarly but don’t require heavy machinery to install.
The cheapest option I’ve seen which seems effective is the 3d electric fence. Costs at most hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.
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I just picked up a used 6" skid steer quick connect post pounder ($450) and have locusts at the farm I’m hoping will finish out the post aspect. I’m painting the in ground portion with fence specific stuff. A local fence company has wire fencing available in 10’ height. Should be a few thousand for my 5 acre area, but we’ll see.
And to clarify, I’m using 13’+ posts for a 10’ fence. Any less and I wouldn’t trust it. I’ll still have additional fenced areas within the main area.
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I am so glad to hear that you were able to get one of these, and for a very affordable price! I hope that this one works really well for you.
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i’ve had a four foot tall fence for years that effectively kept deer out. unless someone left a gate open.
my experience, based on my conditions, local deer pressure (high), habitat and food sources generally available (also high).
and i also have a part where the only fence is an invisible dog fence, and a border collie.
reading through the answers, it’s clear that there are often competing goals. price matters, but so do aesthetics, local zoning, local conditions, and personal preference.
my opinion is, over time, cheap becomes more expensive in repair and labor, and expensive becomes cheaper in never needing to ever think of it again. it’s a question of has enough time passed for the equation to balance.
i manage an estate with woven wire eight feet tall and posts that if they are not corten i’m not sure what they are. been in place 30 years. a tree falls on it, you cut the tree off and pull up the wire. maybe a little tightening at the posts.
a couple years ago, new guy buys the place. wants to extend the perimeter fence. doesn’t like the price of the heavy gauge woven wire and the heavy posts. gets stuff from critterfence.
they are not the same. you get what you pay for, and while i fully respect keeping costs under control, my time also has a price. the one thing i n-e-v-e-r have enough of is time i’ll gladly spend more upfront if i can articulate a reasonable expectation of longevity.
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Purpose: Describe fence that deer broke through in my ~50’x50’ backyard exoburb orchard:
It looks like a deer tried to run through and crashed into my fence, maybe not seeing it at night. Broke most of the fence section. It was on the side where the neighbor’s dog could run out barking, scaring the deer to run.
Description of fence structure that broke:
The fence posts were all steel T-posts 10’ long and set 2.3’ into the ground spaced every 8’. I had 4’ chickenwire at the bottom. Above the chickenwire at 6" intervals I ran monofilament 17 gauge steel wire:
… except for 2 horizontal runs I substituted 1/16 wire rope with “368lbs Breaking Strength”, particularly the top pass:
I circled the wires twice around each post and 4 times at the corners.
Anyway, a fencepost was pushed back and all the horizontal strands of wire above the chickenwire snapped. I assume the deer was hop dashing, hit the fence, pushed the post back before coming to a stop, then had it’s entire weight being carried by the wires of the fence.
My fence strengthening plan:
My plan is to reinforce the existing T-posts from being pushed backward by driving cheaper 8’ t-posts into the ground behind them to a depth of 4 to 4.5’, then clamping the 2 t-posts together with U-bolts.
I have the choices below for welded wire to hang above the chickenwire. The local conservancy uses the 1st choice on top, which I’m hoping would let butterflies through because I happily watched a monarch and some pollinators pass through the horizontal wire in summer.
Truly, I wouldn’t bother spending the time, effort and money to strengthen the fence in any fashion by augmenting the present T posts, the only thing I would do is undo all the post circling and use standard T post clips
to loosely secure the same wire to the outside of the T posts so that the fence wire can slide back and forth through the clip and isn’t as likely to snap if this ever happens again.
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