North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Dylan Ford" <dford@suffolk.lib.ny.us>]

In reference to using a timer to turn the radio on and off at staggered intervals during the night to startle the deer... I had an idea a while back that I've never had the opportunity to try. They sell screw-in plug outlets that can be put in a standard lightbulb socket. I wondered if you couldn't buy one of the less expensive motion-detector light units that people put outside their houses, screw the plug outlet into the socket and plug the radio into that. Then, I surmised, when the deer came a-munching, their motion would turn the radio on for the minutes you set the timer for, and only when the deer was on-site. On paper it looks like it would work.       dylan 

----- Original Message -----

From: HDessureault

To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 9:55 AM

Subject: [NAFEX] Fw: Keeping deers away

 

----- Original Message -----

From: HDessureault

To: nafex@ibiblio.org

Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 8:38 PM

Subject: Keeping deers away

Dear members,

I have been reading with growing dismay the deployment of fencing material and work involved in keeping those crafty cervidaes from destroying the fruits of our labour.

I usually get the odd deer wandering through and taking a bite here and there, now that my trees are beginning to look like trees, but last year I had a particularly destructive specimen eating all but a few apples that I was able to save before there was none left by fencing the tree temporarily AND stringing baling twine accross, which finally discouraged the animal from jumping directly into the enclosure where there was hardly any room for me. Deers apparently don't like to get tangled up. He left all kinds of broken branches from rubbing antlers, though, and made a genuine mess over the course of the summer. He was not a glut, mind you, and didn't eat all the apples the same day. No, only a few every day, keeping some for later. I must add that he was not afraid of dogs, it was more like the other way around.

I can now appreciate that they can be a real nuisance.

However, I have a plan.

I will set up a radio tuned to the most commercial busy station I can find featuring rap music all night, if there is one, and I will set it up on a timer on multiple setting with on-off  at various time during the night. I can even change the cycle forward a little here and then so the noise will occur at different times, so the deer cannot get use to a pattern.

Someone mentioned that the deers learn quickly. I wonder if they are smarter than bears. I know of a beekeeper that managed to save all his beehive sites with radios while another local beekeeper shot three bears in a matter of a few weeks during that same period, one year where the bears were particularly hungry at the end of a bad summer.

As any of you tried the radio strategy?

 

Hélène, zone 3

Where the trees look very good in spite of the coldest winter in years.

---

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