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Deer fencing

Help! Talk to me about deer fencing.

We are contemplating perimeter fencing at our new place, and the suggestion has been raised to make it deer fencing. I really don’t know from deer, but the fence builder’s quote sure made my eyes open wide.

Our land is long and oblongish, rather than squat and square, so I could conceivably just deer-fence the area of land where the majority of the planting is going to go.

All current fencing is ancient. We are on a 10% slope, so I’m not sure about heights required (insofar as an uphill jump over a 6 foot fence is more like 8 feet, you see).

I’m not sure if deer avoid fenced areas because they SEE the fence, and don’t challenge it, because they jump and hit the fence and bounce off (which implies some pretty high tensile strength in the fence itself), or what. We intend to plant things that might logically attract deer – fruit trees, berries – but how do they know an area is now planted? Do they smell the berries, or only find out via brousing in the area? (We don’t currently have a problem of deer entering the property and our current deer fence is only about 35% complete).

Hoping some of you have good info for me. Thank you in advance.

I would count a 6’ fence should keep most deer away, but maybe not all.
We have a 6’ chain link fence, concrete base, around the house/yard.
The concrete bottom is to keep feral hogs away.
We rarely have deer jump in, but have a few times found some, mostly does, that jumped in and then we had to chase out.
If any others jump in and back out, we didn’t see them.
We have 8’ and 12’ gates in four places where we can drive them safely thru.
Picture of some of our deer around the house last Saturday:

It can depend on your location and the size of your local deer population. We’ve got pretty big whitetail deer up here - they will walk right up to my 5’ Electrobraid fence and hop over it from a standstill with no effort. They’d probably also laugh at a 6’ fence.

For perimeter agricultural deer fence our local DNR recommends a 10’ tall fence that is 8’ woven wire with an additional 2’ high tensile at the top.

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/livingwith_wildlife/fences/video.html

A friend of mine lives across the street from the tree nursery for our local park system and they use this fencing. We ride past it to access the trails, and there are quite a few spots where the wire is bent/damaged where a deer still tried to get in.

Perimeter fence needs to be high, but interestingly if you are only fencing in a small garden plot you’d probably be OK with a 4-5’ high fence since deer are reluctant to jump into a small enclosed area.

Black magic? I dunno how but they always know

Put in a dog proof fence, and get some guardian dogs if you want to keep deer out. IMO, you really only have to do that around your house and garden areas, so not usually a huge area. No problem with deer in your pasture areas.

Our debate was whether the cost and appearance of a deer fence was really justified. If you are going to be selling the things you are growing, it may be worth the expense. We looked at the cost of deer fencing and the fact that it interrupts the view and decided we could buy a lot of organic fruit for that cost.

https://www.codot.gov/business/designsupport/standard-plans/copy_of_2012-m-standards-plans/2012-m-standards-pdfs/m-607-4/m-607-4
Here is a set of specs for deer fence along highways, using 8-foot woven wire. You should consider how you are going to handle deer that somehow manage to get inside your fence - see the section on ramps for one solution. Orchards around here have 8 ft tall gates. I’m fairly certain the design is for mule deer.

https://cpw.state.co.us/Documents/LandWater/PrivateLandPrograms/FencingWithWildlifeInMind.pdf
This article presents another perspective - what can go wrong for wildlife if you install the wrong type of fencing. See page 6 for the effect of slope.

Have you explored the use of the black plastic netting fences? It is sold by Home Depot and TSC. I believe it is 6ft tall and fairly tough. Can’t break it pulling with your hands! It goes with the premise that deer can’t see it well, won’t jump into it because they CAN feel it when they walk into it, so they avoid the area. So letting deer learn where fencing is before planting, as they CALMLY explore what you are doing, should help prevent a stampede trying to use an old trail later. Blocking an established trail with some netting pieces might help establish a trail AWAY from your newly fenced garden areas.

We were out on a carriage driving picnic and saw net fencing being used for protection of a HUGE garden area for flowers. I presume the flowers were sold commercially, the beds were immense rows with a big variety of blooms. Maybe they had bouquets in every room of the very large house!! Ha ha There were a couple greenhouse looking buildings inside the fenced area too. The net fence was toghtly stretched on frames mounted to posts. No trees or brush around the fencing. Everything flowery inside the fence was quite lush, very colorfull, with no deer to eat or destroy things. That area, as well as most of Michigan, is way overpopulated with White Tail deer.

We could easily see thru the black netting to the flowers. The black framework holding netting was the most visible thing about the fences. I would not call it obtrusive though anything that keeps the deer out is good!! I have black fencing metal fencing to protect garden beds from the dogs and find it almost disappears looking at it. Flowers show thru much better than light color fence wire.

Until recently, they have not bothered my yard, but they now romp in both the neighbors front yard daily. Three dead deer hit by cars in my paddock roadside ditch. And a deer superhighway across the hayfield!! Not many deer hunters locally anymore. I have been considering the deer net fencing to keep them out I have caged and covered the rosebushes to protect them. Dogs keep them out of the fenced back yard.

Same #*^€ deer cross the horse fields regularly, sometimes get caught in the tensile wire by the antlers and pull it off the posts, maybe break a wire. They can really make a mess of several sections of wire!! No deer killed or found caught in the 8 strand fences. So we have to keep checking fences for damage, especially during their rut time.

Any deer fence here is over 6 feet tall. We have apples, peaches & plums and between the deer, birds and raccoons we get basically nothing.

I don’t want a compound like fence around my yard though…

Even a 6 ft. fence wouldn’t keep out our small Florida deer who scale my 54" no climb and overjump by about 3 ft. So it would have to be 8 ft. to discourage them. Between them and the bears (?) they’ve knocked down my electric wire on top of the top board. Don’t know what the attraction is besides good pasture and water troughs.

Pioneers of old had a good reason to keep away/kill encroaching wildlife.
Their lives depended on keeping their stuff safe until harvested and stored.

They could not shrug and buy their chicken as Mc Nuggets and peaches canned at the nearest store around the corner. :upside_down_face:

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