Originally Posted by
mackesr
I have experienced the same this year as Champlain Islander. One doe has been hanging around my property and had a couple of fawns. She has eaten most of my garden, including corn, bush beans, cucumbers and then ate my still green cantalopes and watermelons! The only thing she hasnt eaten are my tomatoes and squash or anything behind my 8' fence.
I have been spraying coyote urine around the perimeter of one garden and my lope/watermelon patch and it used to keep them and the coons out. Not this doe! She is not bothered by the smell at all. There is plenty of food out there in the woods, but she prefers my garden. I usually leave the deer alone on my three acres and hunt on two leases, but I am rethinking that now......
gardens are just prime food sources for wildlife, you MIGHT think there is lots of food in the woods, but not a lot in one small area and of prime servings
deer are like people, they like easy meals, can stand in one spot and eat many GOOD things
over what wander about eating lesser foods LOL
its just part of planting food where wildlife lives
if you want your farden safe, you do HAVE to fence it in
I will also add this, wooden fence 6+ ft tall works better than any chain link , deer can SEE food, they will attempt to get to it, wooden fences seem to stop a lot of the seeing party and make them less likley to want to jump into the un known, but NOT always
a farm I managed had SO Much crop damage the state stepped up(maybe due to farmers brother worked for the game dept LOL)
and they put a 8 ft tall deer fence around a 60 acre field for him
deer used to jump over that fence like it wasn't there SO< much so
that after about 25 yrs of it being there, tree's fell and smashed down section of the fence and deer would still jump over the fence rather than use the openings from the damage, be them 5 ft away from an opening or not, they still just jumped over that fence!
it was crazy, could spot light the field(legal to do so) and see a 100+ deer ion it every night, and folks a 1/2 mile away would tell you, you couldn;t find a deer track if your life depended on it, never mind a a whole deer,
they all lived right next to that field LOL thank god for crop insurance !
and YES we killed a LOT of deer every yr trying to get numbers down, seemed like every one we killed 2 new one's showed up to take its place!, had a few yrs we took over 60+ deer off the farm , and didn;t put a dent in things