Today I asked my son to helped me wrap some deer netting around a new tree I bought but have not had a change to plant yet or setup deer protection. He noted that netting could be pulled apart pretty easily. I told him the comment I quoted above.
It is an important thing to remember. Deer protection is not the same thing as squirrel protection. A squirrel will spend 500 calories of effort and seemingly risk broken bones for a 2 calorie peanut. A deer is much more pragmatic. You just have to do enough to convince them that jumping the fence is not worth the reward - or that there is another nearby easier alternative.
Deer are desperate enough to pick on one of my small yellow pears. Fast fruit set on this one it just took 2 years. It’s a less than ideal location. Nothing else could stay alive there. This deer ate half the tree. As big a compliment as that is to only eat one pear out of my entire orchard it’s pretty hard on this little tree. Normally deer bite off branches clean at an angle so to be honest this looks more like a very hungry cow. Deer are normally picky eating off juicy buds so leaving those pears behind is unusual as well. There are deer that dine and dash quickly and that are sloppy but this is very unusual.
Trying to figure out a buck can be challenging. The other night one grunted in the woods about 10 feet behind me after he snuck up on me in the dark. Apparently he was equally shocked a human was out as he took off. Normally their nose works better than that. He rubbed down one of my trees last year so I’m not real happy with him. Bucks get very aggressive and brave aka stupid in the rut as is expected but most are very docile this time of year. The rub is old as you can see and not unusual for a herbivore with horns.
He rubbed that grafted tree in the middle and left every callery alone. Wonder why he didn’t rub those? I’m laughing a bit as I think how thorny those are sometimes. These are not thorny callery in this part of the orchard. Normally the deer cut a wide path around my trees but there is an alfalfa field of my neighbors they love on the edge of my orchard. That’s why they came here as it’s a sizeable risk for them with no reward without that alfalfa. They have to cover open ground to get there. They stay in my tree lines as much as they can.
Grrr, stupid deer. We discovered 2 destroyed pear and a badly damaged peach tree today. We see plenty of does around and only rarely a buck. Obviously they’re around though and obviously they’re rubbing “velvet” off their antlers. Of all the trees I don’t care (so much) about, they pick these…
What is most disheartening about this is that the two pears I grafted from scions we gathered a few years ago. From a barely alive tree on my wife’s 5th generation family farm. All her parents knew was “Keifer” and no idea how old it is. Good tasting pears and a piece of family heritage she wanted to live on. Fingers crossed I can graft another from it next year…
I have a high fenced garden about 25 x 60 with fall vegetables, strawberries and seedling apples inside.
There are 2 doors and I left one open for one night after being careful the entire year.
They walked in the door and browsed the entire thing and out again. No fear of being trapped in there. No fear of walking under a gazebo to get to the door.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 22 years but I have no problems with deer hunting, though these deer know they’re safer in the city.
I’ve had a bearing age fruit tree nursery on property in NYS where my deer often appear in small herds for 30 years- right now, my orchard almost seems like a stockyard with all the deer poo and I see 5 or 6 at a time at dusk. It is a deer oasis and I can say that your assessment of repellents is excessively pessimistic, or I would have been out of business years ago.
What I haven’t found is a repellent that lasts more than 2 or 3 weeks, but I am now using a combination of Plantskyd and rotten eggs I mix myself that repels the hungriest deer for a time after application. I got lazy as my trees were nearing defoliation, stopped spraying and the deer have done quite a bit of damage in the last couple of weeks, my herds are extremely hungry, even by the usual standards of deer trying to fatten up before winter- there is no mast in our woods. As soon as the scent has worn off they attack and they even snapped some small peach trees to reach a few remaining leaves at the tips.
My fault- my last spray was well over a month ago. Even the snapped trees will survive, though, and I suspect many of the deer will not make it through winter.
One method I used to use that could last a season was mixing dried blood with water and hanging in containers tied to plants- with holes above the liquid that don’t allow much rain. The mixture smells like rotting corpses after a couple of weeks and if the deer brows on plans with these containers on the branches, even just one, they are likely to tip it and get the putrid stuff on them. However, I never even had browsing when protecting plants this way, but it is just a bit too disgusting and time consuming for me.
I’ve been trying all sorts of things and the deer just keep coming. First I put up the black deer fence, 5ft tall. Worked for a week and then they started jumping it. I added a second row. Worked for a week. They started runing at it diagonally and jumping one fence at a time. Then I switched to 10ft tall t posts , and added rows of wire. They jump between the strands of wire. So now I thinking to buy more of the black netting game fence and run it along the top. But if the deer cannot see it aren’t they just going to jump in to the netting and tear it up? I thought about turning the second fence into an electric fence but I’m in the city so i would have to run a third fence to stop people from coming in contact with the electric wire???
We are finally going to bite the bullet and get a fence put up. Unfortunately we are only permitted 6’ so I’m going to have to work after it is up to hit that 8’ mark. More money than I care to put out and the yard will feel more closed in once all is said and done but I’m tired of suffering the machinations of these hooved villains.
My previous experience using repellants was decent but a bit more rain than expected or a slightly delayed spray left me open to some pretty intense damage. Not to mention the occasional browsing in spite of sprays.
Deer can jump high… Deer can jump far… They can not however jump high and far at the same time. So “obstacles” on either side of a 6’ fence could potentially be as effective as a taller fence. Two fences with the correct amount of separation with one of them being even shorter possibly…
Deer detest blackberries thorns as do people. Thats why people buy thornless but i have my reasons for these heirlooms and their uses are many Blackberries by the gallons . Free fence around your orchard is one use for them. If i was in Africa and the lions wanted to eat me i feel i would be as safe as if i was home in bed with those berries growing around my orchard. One apple is very safe in the blackberry patch from deer. The blackberries are a haven for quail and rabbits. You might be trading one problem for another. Blackberries are just a fence of a different type. My orchard around the house is fenced and the outer orchard is not fenced. The deer eat leaves and berries from the edges of the berries patch but never go in the middle of the patch. Would you? The plants can grow up to 20 feet tall no problem.
I’ve kicked around the idea of a hedge fence. There are a few options, blackberries being one. Others that I’ve thought about are Darwin Barberry, Seaberry, and Hawthorn. Sort of duel purpose. But in the end a traditional fence is what me and the wife agreed upon.
@wdingus I agree with the barrier. My property is fairly thin so I don’t have much room on the margins for much of a barrier. I’ll likely be planting something along the inside edges but I’m not sure what.
Saw 3 bedded down inside my fenced orchard… Last night and tonight both. Three strands of electric doesn’t cut it, they duck under like it’s not there. This winter’s project is getting up some proper fencing. I have the posts in, just need to support/brace them and stretch the fence. May work on it some tomorrow…
We successful keep the deer out by having a 4’ outer fence, and a 4’ inner fence with about 6’ in between the two fences. Our dogs and their house/my garden shed are in the area in between the two fences. The deer stay away from the interior garden and fruit trees because the dogs are patrolling this area between the fences.
