OT: Deer Repellent

Aardvark

Aardvark

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A coworker lives in the hills and his vegetable garden has a severe problem with Bambi's relatives, so he's looking for remedies. Since he is married and has 2 daughters, buckshot and barbed wire are OUT.

He lives in a some rather populated urban hills, so the neighbors are a consideration.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks.
 
Yes! Move to Chicago. We haven't had a serious deer problem in 20 or 30 years. We do have a few others... however... :D
 
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Note the red arrow pointing to my house; then note the vast expanse of heavily-populated whitetail habitat adjacent to my house. Now, trust me on this:

There are no reliable deer repellents.
There are no "deer resistant" plants.
Feeding deer will not keep them away from your garden.

The best advice I have:

Build a high fence.
Make your garden less inviting to deer than your neighbors' garden.
 
Aardvark said:
A coworker lives in the hills and his vegetable garden has a severe problem with Bambi's relatives, so he's looking for remedies.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
Aa, was watching the HGTV Channel the other day; a garden show was on.
The man that had created and owns the land the garden is on had a severe deer problem as well.
The solution was an almost invisible, in the woods, eight foot fence. The best I could tell it appeared to be similar to a 2" X 4" weld wire fence that had some sort of coating or color on it so that it wasn't all that visible.
Might be an option for him.;)
 
Go out and pee in your yard. Works wonders. Some people recommend hair clippings sprinkled around. Haven't had much luck with that. Some people swear by a single strand of monofilament strung around the perimeter at about waist height. I haven't tried that myself though. The only thing I've found that deer don't seem to like are calendulas.
 
Deer are better high-jumpers than broad jumpers. Two six foot fences six feet apart with seem to work better than one eight foot fence.

Deer don't like to walk on chicken wire/chainlink or slippery plastic.

Deer get used to any "scare" -- noise, hair, soap. moth balls, etc.

I'm enough "out" to use an electric fence with 3' arms angling out at 45 degrees with a wire at the end of the arms with hanging CD disks.

I'm not enough "out" for Bambi to equate houses and people with danger.

IIRC, U of Minn. has done serious studies on how to keep deer away.
 
Get the tree huggers to import wolves into your neighborhood. Alternately, get a dog (now--how do I keep the dog out of my garden).

So the other day I hear our 5-pound toy fox terrier making the weirdest noise of his life. He was desperate to get out of the yard to attack something. I came around the house to look and saw that he wanted to try and bring down a 3-point buck standing in our strawberry patch in the front yard..
 
I vote for Dogs, Long bows, Crushed red pepper

I think the bow would be the best solution...
 
Well, this is rather depressing. Unfortunately, it probably means the demise of a tomato plant that I grew from seed. Oh, well, it was one of about 60.
 
Bill Marsh said:
How about some deer crotch high cactus or yucca as a border?
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Deer LOVE to eat roses,holly, barberry, thorny quince, and yucca (At least when I plant it. :( ). Maybe cactus would work if it would grow in the location in question ---- but wire would be cheaper (not cheap) and faster.

You can spook them with monofilament across their trails. When they hit it, they go straight up. :D
 
They ate our yucca too. :grumpy:

We use a combination of dogs, fences and wire cages. I may start paintballing them, too. :D
 
raghorn said:
I may start paintballing them, too. :D
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I'd use a neon Orange or neon Yellow, makes 'em easier to see when deer season rolls around.:cool: :D
 
We put shredded paper around the garden & down the rows. The 'coons & ground hogs don't like walking on it. For the deer, I put bean poles around the garden about 10 or 12 feet apart, with about 2 or 3 feet of string tied to the top & the other end attached to an aluminum pie plate. This worked pretty good, but worked a lot better when I fastened a bar of Zest soap to about every other bean pole around the perimeter. Deer don't seem to like the smell of the soap. Hair clippings worked some, but not great. My last resort was to run monofilament line on the bean poles with these little Xmas-type bells attached. That in combination with the soap has given us the best results. I don't shoot the deer usually because mostly all I see is does & fawns in the summer time. The occasional late summer buck is a "different" story. They eat pretty good, as do the 'coons, ground hogs & squirrels. None of the above methods has worked for the tree rats. My only solution for them is a head shot with a .22, followed by immediate skinning. If you eat the tree rats(squirrels) or rabbits before there has been a good frost in your area, check the outside of their bodies between their shoulder blades for fly larvae called 'wolves' around here. When you skin them, check their livers for spots. If spots are found, or the outside of the body is infested with the fly larvae, I don't eat that animal.
 
A great product for ornamentals, shrubs and small trees is Repellex, just can't use it on food crops.
A solution that worked for me was an electrobraid exclusion fence
http://www.electrobraid.com/
easy to install, easy to maintain, a bit pricey, guess it depends on how serious you are or what you garden means.
I installed mine 5 years ago to keep black bear and deer out...works just fine!
Hope this helps

P.S.
I tried all the others suggestions and found none to work here in the Rockies, incluidng cougar poop, soap, human hair, cayanne pepper, "scarecrow" motion detector sprayers, ultrasonics, and visual deterents, Good luck!
 
Just have me stand there for a few hours some cold wet morning.They will never see a deer for months.At least this works here in W/PA during ANY deer season.tom. :eek:
 
deputy tom said:
Just have me stand there for a few hours some cold wet morning.They will never see a deer for months.At least this works here in W/PA during ANY deer season.tom. :eek:
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They are all hiding at Minster Creek until the season is over. :D
(We counted 47 in sight at one time when backpacking there late last Fall.)
 
Stringing a few strands of high-strength fishing line around the perimeter sounds like a relatively inexpensive, potentially effective thing to try.

I once worked in an area where the deer were overpopulous and not legally huntable- and was supposed to protect crops. I'll tell the story to y'all sometime- in person. :rolleyes:

John
 
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