Wild Grit: Deerproof Your Garden

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Deer were so plentiful in the truckpatch one season that they lined up along the road at sunset like hungry diners patiently eyeing an enticing restaurant menu. A neighbor swore he saw them wearing little bibs.

After dark, the farmer started hearing a voice in the lettuce patch, “Bambi, your table for four is ready...”

If that sounds all too familiar, take heart. You’re not alone. Deer populations throughout the country are said to be at their highest levels in 100 years. There are nearly 2 million deer in Alabama alone.

Don’t despair, you are not defenseless against marauding deer. Deer may be smart, determined and downright sneaky, but gardeners whose prize plants have been gnawed to pieces by what some of us call long-legged rats are even craftier.

Know your enemy

Rather than camping out on the back porch with the .30-30, resourceful gardeners use a wide variety of simple tricks and tools to keep deer at bay by targeting their keen senses of smell, hearing and sight. Home-brewed repellents, high-tech booby traps, invisible or electric fencing and even motion detectors target deer’s strengths – and turn the tables against them.

Smell – Unpleasant odors that are barely noticeable to humans can turn a deer’s stomach – and its tracks away from your potatoes or prize petunias.

That’s because their black, wet noses can sniff out dinner – or danger – from half a mile away. Bucks have the sharpest sense of smell with some 500 million olfactory sensors in their noses. Deer also have seven glands that are primarily used to communicate (and ultimately mate) through scents.

Disgusting though it might sound, you can both repel and attract deer with the right smell. Things like highly scented deodorant soap, rotten eggs, ammonia, wettable sulfur, garlic, clumps of human hair and even cheap perfume or aftershave tend to turn deer away. Soap, hair and other solid stinky stuff can be hung from posts, stakes or branches in mesh bags, panty hose legs or pieces of cheese cloth. (We didn’t promise this would be pleasant. But you want to get rid of the deer, right?) One limitation of all scent barriers is that rain eventually washes their potency away. They must be replenished regularly.

Peanut butter or apple juice, on the other hand, bring deer running. Why would you want to attract deer? To make sure that their wet noses make contact with your electric fence.

You can “bait” an electric fence cheaply and easily with strips of aluminum foil smeared with peanut butter. Premier Fence in Washington, Iowa, sells “scent caps” that attach to their 3-D anti-deer fence. They are made of twist-off metal pop bottle caps stuffed with cotton balls. A strand of soft wire attaches them to the fence. Add a few drops of apple juice concentrate to the cotton, a few zaps and deer will soon get the message to stay away. The caps cost $1.30 each. Four ounces of apple scent is $6 (www.Premier1Supplies.com).

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