Fencing my garden - how do deer react to string fence?

[WVH1977]

Sorry if I offended everyone about the dogs. I live in the middle of 4,000 acres along with my neighbor who farms. I own bird dogs. I will leave one out a time some nights (not all the time). They will run 300 yards chasing the deer and come back to the porch. I have never had one problem with any other neighbors that are farther away. Majority of the time they are within site of the house chasing birds. Also, the county that I live in does not have a leash law. My dogs are trained and come when called.

 

[dmccarty]

I put up a "temporary" fence around the garden about a decade ago. I know we need at least an eight foot fence to keep out the deer but since the fence was "temporary" I just used 8' T posts which gave us a six foot tall fence. This worked for quite a few years until the deer start jumping into the garden to escape the coyotes. :shocked: They never went after food when we were growing stuff but when the coyotes showed up they would jump over that six foot fence like it was not there.

We read and saw on a garden show a report about using two lines of fence about 3-4 feet apart. The first fence was only 18-24 inches tall and the second fence was maybe six feet tall. The two fence would keep out the deer since they did not want to be between the two fences. Kinda odd that this worked but either GA or SC did a study about fencing out deer and this worked.

Later,
Dan

 

[Sidelined]

I have a friend who had deer problems in his grape vineyard, he tried a variety of things that worked until the deer decided they were harmless, he eventually took cheap bars of soap, drill a hole through them to run a string through and hung them every 20 feet around the vineyard, he has had no more deer problems since.

As for Bungie Rabbits, I have heard that if you sprinkle liberal amounts of course ground pepper throughout your garden the rabbits wont come in.

 

[newbury]

Our cousin had excellent results using a single strand electric with peanut butter to protect his garden from deer. They just lightly smeared the PB on the wire. The deer go to lick the wire and get a good jolt on a sensitive part.

 

[hunterridgefarm]

I have tried the string, two string and electric fence. I had scarecrows, buzzers, Mylar balloons, soap, perfume, hair, etc to keep the deer out. Then someone told me to pee around the fence and the deer would not come in. I peed so much around the fence that when I would get near the produce section of the local grocery store I would start to unzip my paints.:laughing: Everything would work for a while then they would mow it down. I grow 3-4 acres of produce and have seen 20 deer in the field at one time.

The electric worked for 2 years but then they started coming in. You could see the ground torn up where they would pace around before jumping or going through it.

I finally fenced the whole 4 acres with standard field fence. Put extensions on the corners, gates, and Tpost. PVC on the Tpost to extend to 8-9 foot, I then took bailing twine and strung around the top. Usually two rows and tied survey tape every 5-10 foot. It has been several years now and not one deer has tried to jump it. And this was cheaper than buying 8' deer fence.
Now if I can just control the ground hogs!!!

 

[Spindifferent]

This:

3D Anti-Deer Fence

https://www.premier1supplies.com/img/fencing/diagram_pdf/31.pdf

Here's a photo example of the 3D fence.

 

[SandburRanch]

For hot wire to be most effective the soil surface needs to be wet or damp at minimum. Deer do not like a electric fence that has an audible arc that sounds electrified. With that in mind, at a corner post, leave about a 1/16 gap between the two ends of the conductor. It will glow at night for visibility and sound electrified.

 

[SandburRanch]

Our cousin had excellent results using a single strand electric with peanut butter to protect his garden from deer. They just lightly smeared the PB on the wire. The deer go to lick the wire and get a good jolt on a sensitive part.

I can see that being effective on a long list of pesky garden varmints.

 

[PILOON]

I have a friend who had deer problems in his grape vineyard, he tried a variety of things that worked until the deer decided they were harmless, he eventually took cheap bars of soap, drill a hole through them to run a string through and hung them every 20 feet around the vineyard, he has had no more deer problems since.
.

We learned the soap trick----IRISH SPRING works for us, little baggies shaved coarse for more scent. We fold a plastic 'roof' and staple the 'roof' to cap the baggie in order to fend rain otherwise rain washes the soap away. We make the baggies from scraps of window screening using stapler for closure and hang close to the deer lunch.
Our deer love hostas!
We use to have wind chimes until we discovered that that was like a lunch calling. Deer are curious.

One of our main problems however are black bears that like to visit our trash bins, now if they ate and left that would be OK but they scatter trash all over the place selecting what they want.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I now use 7' tposts with pvc deer netting, has worked for 3 yrs bow.

 

[rossn]

Lots of great ideas here! Amazing how hard it is to outsmart the animals

I'm thinking that for my situation, I'll start with 6 or 8' t-posts, and just the 2' rabbit wire at the bottom. Maybe a couple of strings around. If they start coming in, I can either electrify it, extend the top a few feet with more string, or move the 2' fence out a little further to test the double-fence effect. Ideally, I can have a fence that is easy to take down, and widely spread t-posts will probably be best for that.

I wasn't kidding when I mentioned that the deer are not so motivated. Some neighbors have gardens with fences, and others don't. From the two I know without them, I haven't heard of deer issues -- even though I seem them eating from the apple and other fruit trees a lot in the late summer and fall. Eventually I'll be planting a small orchard, and that is going to be the real challenge!

 

[scdeerslayer]

We've never had any trouble keeping deer out with an electric fence with one wire about 18" from the ground and another about 36". Using the thin wire and not a ribbon, I don't think they can really see it, so it zaps them and they don't know where it comes from, and they can't see what to jump over.

To keep crows out, put a stake about every 50-75 feet, and criss-cross white twine between them, basically making Xs in boxes. Crows will walk up to the twine but not go under it. The theory is that they are afraid that if they go under the twine they will get tangled in the twine if they need to fly away quickly.

Without using an electric fence I've had some success keeping deer out with just twine, putting the strands at 18" and 36" and adding the criss-cross for the crows. They push against it though and if the twine is rotten and breaks or a stake isn't in really well and falls over then they get in. Deer don't have great depth perception so I think they don't jump over it because they don't know how far away the criss-crossed lines are. That's also how a double fence supposedly works. Another way I heard will work is to put short horizontal bars at the top of the posts with a line on then end to create the illusion of a double fence.

I remember my dad trying the irish spring soap once. Every week the uneaten circle around the soap got smaller and smaller.

I don't think predator scents work all that well, at least not with bucks. I've gotten trail camera pictures of bucks and coyotes together, and the bucks didn't seem bothered by the coyotes. I also shot a buck a couple of years ago that walked between two coyotes I had killed 30 minutes earlier. Does, especially does with fawns, will spook from coyotes though.

Urine doesn't work that well either, in fact there are some who will use urine as an attractant, making a buck think you're a buck challenging his territory.