Time to Fence the Veggie Garden

Gordon Gould · Jun 29, 2016

We have a new guy poking around

gg

RalphVa · Jun 29, 2016

Get a 410 shot gun and load it with buck shot and take that thing down. I'm up to around 30 here since I started shooting them. Big groups no longer come around. They die if they do.

Ralph

Billrog · Jun 29, 2016

Nice pic. Gordon seldom I get to see a fawn around here. Plenty of large ones so I have an elec. fence set up around the garden seems to have worked for the last few yrs.

Gordon Gould · Jun 29, 2016

That's what we use too - an electric fence. We only see deer in the yard once in a while. They aren't really a problem. I see them in the woods pretty often so they are around and they will get the garden if I don't fence it. I kind of enjoyed seeing that fawn.

Wagtail · Jun 29, 2016

I don't bother as my 'next door neighbour' is a State Forest = a constant supply of wallabies, padimelons, brush-tail possums and an odd bandicoot.

All are nocturnal and I refer to them as my "State Forest Lawn Maintenance Service". Because of them I've only mowed around the house maybe 3 times in a year.

Any new plants, they eat. If I tried to eradicate them a new mob would only move in to take their place.

MossRoad · Jun 29, 2016

I have several hundred dollars worth of fencing protecting $30 worth of vegetables....

CalG · Jun 29, 2016

I've got a "herd" ( a buck in velvet and three does) that move about. Deep tracks in the asparagus bed.

I told my wife "If the garden goes one night, we are packing bags and heading out on a motorbike trip." ;-)

BoylermanCT · Jun 29, 2016

RalphVa said:
Get a 410 shot gun and load it with buck shot and take that thing down. I'm up to around 30 here since I started shooting them. Big groups no longer come around. They die if they do.

Ralph

Do you shoot the baby deer only in season, or all year long?

MossRoad · Jun 29, 2016

BoylermanCT said:
Do you shoot the baby deer only in season, or all year long?

If he's got a nuisance deer permit, its open season on all of them.

fordmantpw · Jun 30, 2016

MossRoad said:
I have several hundred dollars worth of fencing protecting $30 worth of vegetables....

Ha ha! Sounds about like us!

MossRoad · Jun 30, 2016

I was picking yellow raspberries today inside the garden and when I leaned into the row to get some from the center my foot went down a fresh groundhog hole... so much for the fence! :laughing: I joke with my neighbors that I don't grow vegetables, I grow meat.... groundhog meat, squirrel meat, rabbit meat, deer meat....

fordmantpw · Jun 30, 2016

MossRoad said:
I was picking yellow raspberries today inside the garden and when I leaned into the row to get some from the center my foot went down a fresh groundhog hole... so much for the fence! :laughing: I joke with my neighbors that I don't grow vegetables, I grow meat.... groundhog meat, squirrel meat, rabbit meat, deer meat....

:laughing:

This is our first garden at our new house, and so far, so good with the electric fence, plus another shorter fence inside the electric one. I have a peace offering of a deer feeding spewing corn all over the place 75 yards from the garden, hoping that is enough to keep the critters out of our food. Like the fence, I spend hundreds for corn to protect $30 in veggies. Of course, that corn fattens up the deer that later make it into the freezer...

dickfoster · Jun 30, 2016

RalphVa said:
Get a 410 shot gun and load it with buck shot and take that thing down. I'm up to around 30 here since I started shooting them. Big groups no longer come around. They die if they do.

Ralph

You'd shoot Bamby? LOL

oosik · Jun 30, 2016

When we had our garden - it was the pocket gophers that took it down. I had a woven wire fence around the garden and it seemed to work OK. I did one thing that might have helped a lot also. A single strand of bare wire - all the way around the garden on the top of all the posts. We hung aluminum stringers, Al pie tins, large tops of tin cans etc,etc on this wire and that seemed to discourage the deer. The pocket gophers just didn't seem to notice all my defensive measures.

I have deer in the yard every morning - helping keep the grass mowed and eating their favorite thing - the NASTY tops ( seed heads) of milk weed plants.

TheSpoon · Jun 30, 2016

I took these a couple weeks ago. Camera phone from about 300' away (in our house). Buck's in velvet, fawn was either early this year or a yearling, was hard to tell.

Deere Dude · Jun 30, 2016

I put a 6' chainlink fence around our garden and a 2' chicken wire fence wired to that. That keeps the rabbits and deer out, but mice and chipmunks are still a nuisance.

MossRoad · Jun 30, 2016

I shot a rabbit in the butt with 1 pump on my BB gun today. It didn't move. So 2 pumps. It hopped about 5' and looked at me. So I popped it again. It hopped 5' again. I did this over a dozen times. By the time it got to the back of the yard, instead of running away, it went 5' left. I popped it. It went 5' right, I popped it. Over and over again. I started laughing because it looked like one of those carnival shooting arcades. Finally, it hopped into the ferns to wait for me to leave. It was back out 10 minutes later.

DrRod · Jul 2, 2016

I've used the pie tins approach to keep the deer from damaging my chestnut seedlings and Christmas trees and I have to say it appears to work pretty well. Nothing short of fire power has worked on ground hogs. Had a bear cruise through my garden yesterday but he didn't seem to do any damage.

As for hitting a rabbit a dozen times with a BB gun -- I would say that is pretty good shooting. Don't know how that could be done on a windy day.

Stimw · Jul 3, 2016

I put up fence and barbed wire 8' high to protect my garden!
I got up one morning and the deer were in the pasture out my front window!
Saw a Doe, a Spike and two fawns this morning in the same area.

MossRoad · Jul 5, 2016

DrRod said:
As for hitting a rabbit a dozen times with a BB gun -- I would say that is pretty good shooting. Don't know how that could be done on a windy day.

Only about 60' at the furthest. BBs are so inaccurate, but at low pumps, the gun shoots very straight. The more pumps you put into it the more curve balls you throw. Pellets are another story. Very straight shooting. Anyhow, its just a cheap, Daisy powerline 880. On sale for $35.00 for father's day several years ago.

I popped a young groundhog in the rear yesterday and he ran into his hole, so I started shooting a little spinner target I have near his hole. The groundhog came out and started looking at the target each time it spun. :laughing: