The wildlife in your yard aren’t just squirrels and rabbits
anymore. University of
Georgia county extension agents now answer thousands of
questions a year on backyard
problems deer cause.
Many homeowners enjoy seeing deer in the suburbs. Others have
learned to hate them.
They devour expensive landscape plants. They eat garden
vegetables. Deer-car crashes cause
destruction and even death.
Unlike more specialized wildlife, deer don’t need wild
habitat. They eat a broad array
of wild and cultivated plants.
Are deer pestering your plants?
If so, what can you do?
When most people get a wooded lot, they clean out all the
adapted vegetation. Then they
bring in store-bought deer "dessert." Avoid this
pitfall if you can.
Not every plant is good deer food. It’s possible to go into
landscapes where deer are
abundant and see green plants all around. The deer decide what
plants will live.
Use landscape plants the deer don’t like. If you want a list
of deer-resistant plants,
I’ll send you one. Just send your request to: Jeff Jackson, c/o
Extension Forest
Resources, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-4356.
OK, so you insist on having your favorite plants anyway. You
want to keep that exotic
azalea your Aunt Mary gave you despite the fact that the deer
have nibbled it down to half
its original size.
In this case, unsightly exclusion is your only option.
Various fences and cylinders of
wire mesh will protect your azalea.
Cut the bottom wire off a length of concrete-reinforcing
mesh. It makes a fine
free-standing deer barrier like a big tomato-plant cylinder.
Wrap it with chicken wire to
keep the deer from sticking their heads through. It’s ugly, but
effective.
Protecting a large area like a vegetable garden takes a
bigger, better fence. A seven-
or eight-foot-high plastic deer fence is OK. An electric fence
with a single wire 30
inches off the ground is cheaper.
Teach deer not to enter by smearing the entire wire with
peanut butter. Mark the fence
with rags eight to 10 feet apart so deer see it. They’ll check
out the new fence and smell
the peanut butter. They touch their noses to it and give it a
lick. It’s sort of an
education fence.
Deer are likely to accidentally run right through or jump
over an unbaited wire. The
baited electric wire isn’t deer-proof, but it’s a good trade-off
between cost and
effectiveness.
How about repellents?
I never recommend them for homeowners. They’re all temporary
at best. No matter what it
is, sooner or later — for one reason or another — the deer
will eat your plants anyway.
You need to protect your plants 365 days a year. If a
repellent fails even for one day,
Aunt Mary’s azalea will get another nibbling.
There are home remedies, but I don’t know any a professional
will stake his reputation
on. Many articles hold out hope for repellents. But they aren’t
my thing.
Repellents do have value in many commercial situations where
a crop needs to be
protected for a few weeks or so, until it has passed its
vulnerable time, or until the
harvest is in.
If a community can find a consensus to remove deer,
appropriate authorities can be
designated to shoot them. Killing deer can reduce deer
damage.
Surely, you must be asking, why aren’t scientists studying
the problem and finding a
simple, cheap, easy-to-use wonder cure for homeowners’ deer
problems?
A lot of public and private money is being spent on deer
research. But I predict these
commonsense solutions — ignoring the problem, using resistant
plants or exclusion, and
killing surplus deer — will remain the mainstay of deer damage
control for a long time to
come.
