North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[jnfischer@aol.com]

My experience with hair clippings (and all the other tens of tricks that rely 
on odor to spook the deer) is that they got used to it after a week or ten 
days and went right back to leveling plants. I would love to use the 
"projectile method" but that's not an option here in northern Virginia where 
the human population is too dense and a vocal minority prefers to manage the 
deer by hitting them with cars. 

I have had luck lately though in protecting plantings within smaller areas, 
new apple trees and garden plots, for example, by surrounding them with 
monofilament fishing line, two or three strands, strung tautly between 
four-foot posts. They apparently do not like the feeling of something 
substantive touching them but that they cannot see. 

After so many failed attempts at discouraging them, I'm way past expecting 
long-term victory with this method but in almost twelve months now I've only 
had two intrusions. I lost a young apple tree when one apparently stuck her 
head through a three foot space between strands. And one got into the garden 
one night apparently through a narrow opening I had left in the fish line for 
my ease of entry. Ate all the new growth off twenty-some roses. Times that 
try men's souls.

Jack
 

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