yep. thats why the vermin are overpopulated. killed off the predators and stopped the hunting.
I thought the guy said he lived in a rural area. My mistake.
Even in urban areas of MN the number of coyotes is off the chart. Thereās probably more 'yotes in the T.C. metro than most of the rest of the state here.
I envy you. Iām ~15 mins south of Asheville in relatively wooded suburbs very near to Pisgah and even here Iāve never seen a coyote or fox. Really makes the rabbits go wild 
.
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Iām in Alaska so we do have a bit of wildlife running around. Then again we have parks the size of US states, that belongs to them. My backyard belongs to me.
Having said that I donāt have a lot of animal pressure, mostly robins and moose.
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Farming community. Every other neighbor has chickens, horses, cattle, goatsā¦ kids.
Social media has really changed the game on this. My community and surrounding communities have FB pagesā¦ and if someone posts a game cam picture of a bobcat, a cougar, a bearā¦coyote.even foxesā¦ its game on. They will hunt and kill it then post pictures of it deadā¦ and get lots of likes and loves and thanks. Selfies with dead predators are very welcome on social media.
āhuntingā around here is posting game cam pictures on social media.
Armchair hunters chime inā¦ and the likes and praise of removing it ensue.
Sucks.
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unlike the rest of the country we have very few deer and the coyotes kill many of them in deep snow winters. we also have alot of predators. why we have open seasons for bobcat, fox, coyotes open all the time. so far its been well balanced. unfortunately, the deer have recently had to deal with a new threat. Canadian lynx. they have been protected for a long time and now their numbers are up. they sit in trees and ambush deer. there is a push to open a season on them for trapping but its a federal issue. i understand as i used to be a avid deer hunter until the numbers plummeted here 15yrs ago and it felt like i was hunting a endangered animal so i got out of it. very rare to see a deer, let alone a buck. plenty of bear and moose.
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I have coyotes here, they do jump in and out of the backyard, I think they hunt rabbits. But luckily I have a small tiny lot, all cement wall, so no deer, no snakes, no rabbits, no raccoons so far, but we have squirrels, one tiny red squirrel in fact, lots of birds, and rats. Thatās enough to deal with. But I donāt have pellet guns, we are not allowed to trap squirrels.
Your farming community must be very different from mine. Heck, most of the farmers around here donāt have any time to be posting on social mediaā¦or even to go hunting.
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wivesā¦teensā¦and armchair farmers and hunters are plenty. Nobody hunts deer here really. Too many that think they are pretty. Too much livestock to want to eat deer anyways. Too much work to process them etc.
My dad in the 60s and 70s had to be on top of his NO Hunting signs due to so many people hunting our land. Today i ask everyone i know to hunt meā¦ nobody ever shows. The few that have want to put feeders up in fields close to my house and put up game cams to make sure the racks are big enough.
If had nice access roads and they could ride their sidebysides and i had good cell service for selfies and tiktok i could get more hunters.
The good olā days are gone here.
I just got hit last night by some deer browsing. Right in my back yard. I leave a small gap in my fence so that the dogs can access another plotā¦ i guess they found itā¦ and the dogs mustve been asleep or on another chore. Im mad about it.
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Yep, your farming community and mine are pretty much polar opposites. Farmers donāt have time to do much hunting, but their families/friends sure do. Itās very, very difficult to find a chunk of ground in this state that doesnāt get hunted hard for deer. Processing a deer is easy for anybody who knows how to keep a knife sharp. One group of guys I know process several dozen deer every year. They buy zero beef. They do buy some various kinds of pork, but thatās only to mix with their venison.
As far as deer browsing goes, I get āhitā pretty much every day, all day. The vast majority of that browsing is on the native vegetation provided on my acreage. They do like to eat our garden veggies, so those areas get fenced in with 6ā welded wire. Zero problems. Our tomatoes and peppers are grown in a different area and are caged. Deer will still browse through those cages unless I hit the plants with a repellent. I hit the plants before any browse starts and that takes care of 99% of that issue. Same deal with my domestic berries and on fruit tree limbs that have low hanging fruit.
I love deer. So does my wife. We like watching them more than eating them, but we do eat some venison every year. Living with deer has challenges, but those challenges can be effectively dealt with via some time, energy, and dollars.
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Agreed. I still want to turn over my job as apex predator and prison warden to wolvesā¦which have been eradicated and exterminated.
Once common across the eastern U.S., gray wolves last held-out against civilization in the mountains of central West Virginia, where the last native wolf was taken in 1897. Wolves had already disappeared from more-developed surrounding states and had been eradicated in Ohio by 1842 and Pennsylvania by 1892
They had two of them at a wildlife center so that people could do their selfies and stuffā¦ but they escaped and were hunted and murdered.
Good times.
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I live on a relatively small island, (20 or so miles long). The predators that were here were hunted to extinction long ago. The deer population is out of control as hunting is very restricted here.
I have spent over $35,000 this year on fencing and they are still getting onto my property by wading/swimming the shallow areas adjacent to the shoreline. They have decimated many of the new fruit trees I planted this spring and I expect quite a few will not recover and will need to be replaced.
I have three dogs and when they are outside they do a good job of patrolling the property, but I do not leave them outside all night as they are smaller and not really outside type dogs. I have gotten beyond the point of frustration with the hooved rats. I am now resolved to pitlamping them with a crossbow for stealth.
The most frustrating thing is that before I put the fence up and planted the new fruit trees the deer were so brazen you could almost walk right up to them. Now, they hide until Iām asleep and I never see them even though I scan with a flashlight on a regular basis.
It is enough to break your heart what theyāve done to my new fruit trees as Iāve spent a lot of time effort and money to get an Orchard established after building the fence I thought would keep them out.
The gloves are off now, if I see them Iāll be dropping them from here on out.
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Honestly it boils down to this: if animals are bypassing your fencing, you did your fencing wrong. And early on they did bypass my fencing efforts until I sorted things out.
Notice that I said āfencingā and not āfenceā. A pretty tall fence can be jumped, a well thought out fencing canāt. On one side my fence is only 4ā 5" tall, but it is at the edge of a steep slope; a moose with his nose on the fence has his rear legs another 5ā lower so unless he figures out how to do an Olympic side jump he just canāt get in a good jumping position. A friend has a similar low fence on one side of his main orchard, big rocks are piled up on the inside. A moose could jump it if he doesnāt mind breaking 3 out of 4 legs.
For a large area fencing can be a multi year project. I have my main fenced area and I already know how it will be expanded in phases over the next couple of years. An entire length of 7ā fence will then become the trellis for hops and grapes.
Heck now that I think about it I havenāt had to shoot a squirrel in two years, and I do see them jumping trees far off at the edge of the forest. Squirrels are smart and we are stupid; we teach them not to be afraid of humans and then lament that they come eat our stuff. Squirrels in my small neck of the woods probably see humans in the same category as hawks. See them for the tree rats they are, treat them accordingly, and they will leave you alone.
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Perhaps your property is not adjacent to a waterline, mine is. Frankly I was not expecting deer to go to the effort of swimming onto my property when the next door neighbors property is completely unfenced. Sure I guess I could build a high fence all along my waterline, but that kind of destroys the esthetics of having a nice view of the water. It also would make mowing the lawn with the lawn tractor difficult, and frankly having to always go through a gate in a fixed location to get to the water is not appealing.
Im with u.
Im the kind of guy that will stop my car in the middle of the road to move a turtleā¦ i am in love with nature and its wondersā¦
However like i have said a few times beforeā¦ i have inherited the job of the apex predator thanks to my fellow Americans and neighbors and progress.
I am forced to become Rambo and Chuck Norris, and a poacher on my own landā¦ or have nothing at all but nubs.
Maybe i should start hunting at night and become a carnivore instead of trying to grow food forests. lol.
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I have to prune my trees above deer browse level anyway, so I have about 5 feet of trunk before branching starts. I started putting a piece of round metal ductwork around the trunks. It is impossible to climb, being all smooth metal without seams, and has worked really well against climbing pests (raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and chipmunks around here). The only issue is that squirrels and chipmunks will climb nearby trees and jump to the fruit tree if branches are too close.
My major pest now is birds. They take a single bite out of every ripe fruit. My trees are too big to net, I think next year Iām going to bag my fruit just to keep the birds off them.
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You make it sound like it is all or nothing. I donāt put fences where I donāt want them either. You could put your orchard in another spot. You could single fence trees with a magnificent architectural work of art of a fence. You could setup an electric fence that is visually minimal.
Bottom line is animals are getting to the trees because they are not properly fenced. Me? If fencing was a bridge too far I would not agonize over that happening. I would accept it as the normal outcome like the sun raising in the morning and setting in the evening.
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I beg to differ. The normal outcome, pre manās intervention would be that the deer population would be kept in check by the predators such as cougars. If a cougar manages to swim to the island nowadays it is killed pretty quickly. Funny how cougars are unacceptable, but deer are sancrosant here. Hunting is so restricted that the island is overrun by stunted deer.
Super hypocritical how man decides what is an acceptable species and what isnāt.
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The normal outcome of the reality we live in, not the one we hope would be
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I live in town, and someone saw a badger two blocks from my house.
at least we donāt have deer
yet
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