Deer have got into the garden again. About a week ago I had a vague suspicion that something was wrong when the family dog barked far more than usual one night. She was obviously trying to explain the situation to me, but I just made her come inside for the night. I first noticed something was amiss when I saw footprints across a bed of seedlings, but dismissed it as possibly being the dog (though she usually sticks to the paths). Later that day I also noticed some missing grape leaves, but I attributed that to the always destructive quail. The dog barked again the next night and was ignored again. The next day I saw the telltale stripped lower branches of a cherry tree, too high for quail, but just right for deer and I finally understood there was a problem. With my eyes newly opened I started to see damage all over: a row of tomato seedlings topped, bitten off raspberry shoots, mallow plants completely stripped and the lower branches of several apple trees gone (deer particularly enjoy apple leaves).
As I have just moved a fence line to expand my garden I assumed that the deer must be getting in through the newest part of the garden, so I spent some time going over the new fencing trying to figure out where. I strengthened some suspicious spots and hoped for the best. It didn’t work though, they got in again that night and ate some more apple tree as well as some low plum branches and various wild plants. I was awakened at dawn the next morning by the dog barking, so I let her out and she chased them away (if I was fully awake I would have tried to see where they went out). I then went over the older sections of fence and found a place where a branch had fallen and the wire had been pushed down to a point where deer could jump over. I fixed that, as well as a place where the fence had been pushed up to leave a wide gap underneath. I breathed a sigh of relief that I had finally found the problem, but they got in again that night and just about finished off one apple tree. The next day I found a well hidden spot where a falling branch from a neighbors tree had torn a hole just big enough for a deer to get through. This finally did the trick and the garden is now secure again (for the time being).
Dogs are domesticated wolves and know more
about deer than you do, so listen to them
One of my garden rules is that I don’t buy anything I can salvage, so my perimeter fence is an almost laughable mix of 8 or 9 different kinds of fencing, held together with wire. It is only 6ft high at its tallest and only 5 ft in many places, which is theoretically low enough for deer to jump, but they don’t. Either they are too well fed to make the effort or the fences look too hazardous to try. I suspect the latter as a broken leg would be the end of a deer.
The thing I find most interesting about this whole event is that the damage has been relatively minor compared to the last time it happened (which was four or five years ago). Then it was a major event and set back many plants significantly. The garden has grown a lot since then and many of the fruit trees are now too tall to be seriously damaged. Now I understand why trees take the shape they do (and feel grateful we don’t have giraffes around here). There is also far more vegetation around in general, so the same amount of damage isn’t nearly as significant. We have all heard that the garden gets more resilient as it matures and diversifies, and this is a real world example of this.
I no longer get too perturbed by minor disasters like this, as you might have guessed by the length of time it took me to fix it. I don’t even feel any animosity to “the little deers”, as they are simply trying to make a living (if anything I am the interloper into their world).
