permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

My experience has been that deer get used to anything that isn't a danger to 
them. I tried them all: fishing line, soaps, sprays, bone and blood meal, 
predator pee, noise on a motion sensor, on and on. If it wasn't associated 
with a real threat, deer, not being stupid, will learn that. These were mule 
deer, and when food gets scarce (a dry Western fall, say) they get very 
aggressive and will break temporary fencing down, uproot small trees, and eat 
leaves that have been coated with pepper spray or fish meal.

I tried 2 short fences about 4 feet apart. Worked for a while. Then a smart 
buck figured out how to jump over the outer fence at a corner, and the hop 
over the inner fence. He taught it to other deer.

I eventually got a dog and an 8-foot fence. Should have done that at the 
beginning, although we didn't want to for lots of reasons. I lost a lot of 
trees, shrubs, and veggies, and was ticked off a lot of the time. Problem 
solved, end of hassle.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com


On Sep 13, 2011, at 3:32 PM, S P SHERMAN wrote:

> 
> I have found that fish emulsion in a foliar spray works quite well as a 
> deer repellant. However it does need to be renewed after rains.             
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