Posted on 09/14/2008 5:29:20 AM PDT by yankeedame
I have a neighbor who uses his own urine to keep keep the deer away. I won’t be eating anything from his garden...
I use Liquid Fence to keep them off my plants. I have deer in my yard all the time and they leave my plants alone.
Between the deer, armadillos, and hogs I’ve given up on gardening and any yard.
Before they built their house up north I remember one dinner when they and my dad and I got into a heated discussion about deer hunting - they were totaly against it!
As expected, their attitude has totally changed now that they've suffered the consequences of deer overpopulation.....
Armadillos are the new scourage around here. They’re across the Missouri River now and if Iowa’s winter doesn’t stop them, they’ll be past the Minnesota border in ten or twenty years. Plantskydd works to stop deer but washes off in the rain. Its essentially blood from slaughtered packing houses.
Liquid Fence is also my liquid of choice. It smells awful but for that reason it works great. I have a gazillion varities of hosta that they ate like lettuce before I started using it.
If deer and bear had their numbers kept in check in forested areas where they originally were found before invading developments, we wouldn;t have this problem.
The canard that we are driving out of their habitat by building is only partially correct.
In the past their numbers were FAR smaller than now. They were well controlled by deer hunts. But as they moved into parklands the animal rights wackos blocked every effort by fish and game people to stage controlled hunts to limit their numbers. From their they moved into developments and other areas where successful hunting is difficult or impossible.
In New Jersey, the resident bear population was limited to a small area near the Delware Water Gap and kept there by controlled state hunts until the Bambi-ites in New Jersey stopped the hunt a few decades ago.
Since then the black bear population has exploded created increasing dangerous encounters between bears, people, livestock, pets and cars. I believe even now, the Corzine Administration in New Jersey is “cooking the books” on bear-human encounters.
AS for the deer pests, eating shrubbery is the LEAST of the problems they generate. Fatal or serious vehicle collisions, as well as a public health problem from deer ticks infested with Lyme disease and other contagions are even more threatening.
gardening? I know it not.
I use one of those automatic water sprayers and it is amazingly effective. Can’t use it in freezing temperatures though.
We moved to an old farmhouse and I’d never had to deal with deer before. I couldn’t figure out what was happening to my roses. My pastor, who is a rosarian (breeds his own) clued me in. I have to spray weekly because it’s different herds moving through all the time but I haven’t lost anymore new growth or rosebuds. I love the stuff.
It’s gotten much worse the last few years here in West Michigan. They WILL eat anything. We also have neighbors within a mile that have those automatic corn feeders in the woods. The herd keeps getting bigger, and they only kill a few each season. Do the math, people.
Does it work? (human urine)
“Does it work? (human urine)”
Apparently it does.
“Fatal or serious vehicle collisions, as well as a public health problem from deer ticks infested with Lyme disease and other contagions are even more threatening.”
...Absolutely....in our area the average cost of a deer-auto collision was $2000...to try and manage the deer population, the county held an archery hunt in the river Park....I went down to the check station and talked to the biologist in charge...he was pulling ticks off the dead deer and sending them in to the state university for analysis...ticks were pulled off the left ear only....one doe had 14...it made your skin crawl to see it....when our neighbor got Lyme, he went to 4 different doctors before the last one finally properly diagnosed him....he suffers from chronic pain in his joints.
I love the deer in the yards.
Once had EIGHT, EIGHT points bucks in my front yard!
Being involved in an auto accident usually changes the mind of even the most deer-loving.
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