North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[RW Spalinger <rwspal@earthlink.net>]

On Feb 5, 2004, at 11:01 PM, Peter Knop wrote:

> We have a dreadful problem with beavers here in suburban N. VA...we 
> now have to fence everything we
> plant - looks bad and costs...
>      ...We hate killing anything we don't use, so a recipe would be 
> welcome.

We have a similar problem with deer - real pests here in SE Texas where 
they roam by the hundreds. We have to fence every fruit tree 
individually. This doesn't look that good, is costly, and takes a lot 
of time and energy.

The females move through all year, eating off the branches and leaves 
until there is nothing left but the vertical trunk. Then, during 
rutting season, the males come through and scrape all of the bark off 
the entire circumference of the trunk with their antlers, gouging the 
underlying wood, and break off any remaining limbs, thus killing the 
tree.

The joke is on the deer however, because the gophers often kill the 
trees by eating the roots before the deer can get to them. I'm about 
ready to just set piles of money on fire rather than continue to buy 
fruit trees to feed the vermin. It accomplishes about the same thing.

There are however, many recipes for venison.

Randall Spalinger