They will survive and probably send up more fronds...you need to get them fenced though or the deer will be right back...If you look at the pictures in my thread, I've changed my garden style, you will see my deer fence..We live on 5 acres that are fenced...but the deer sail over that fence like it wasn't there so I had a deer fence erected...I truthfully think they would try to jump this one except that we have a dog now and she keeps them back. I use the fence as a trellis and she keeps them from doing lunch at my fence...I do admit though that I have seen a few places on my fence stuff where they have nibbled and I put up a plastic mesh on the fence so their little snouts don't go through the fence and eat my tomatoes...they really do like doing lunch at my ranch.

They will recover, but they won't be as big this year. Next year they will probably look like nothing every happened. Keep watering. Liquid Fence works well - reapply frequently especially after rain. Alexa

omg, that is heartbreaking. they have reduced my bean plants to nothing. i have begun using liquid fence and it seems to be working so far (3 weeks).

Diane, I feed the deer corn and sometimes other grains down on the edge of the woods several hundred feet from the house because if I don't they come into the yard and eat every single plant that I plant. Over the years, they have eaten over 100 hostas, about as many daylillies, every hollyhock I've ever planted, etc. So, I guess you could say they blackmail me. And, I can't bear to look at starving little fawns in the winter time. I'm just a big softy. The deer herd on our land preceded us. When we bought this land, we had a herd of 5 that now has grown to 9. The two old mama does that were here originally in 1999 are gone now, but their descendents are still here. They have a couple of specific spots where they bed down at night and we stay away from those areas year-round so they'll feel safe there. Love County seems to have a huge overpopulation of deer....many more deer than the area can support. It isn't such a problem in a year with a good mast crop, but in drought years, you see a lot of painfully thin deer. Practically everyone on the 2-3 mile stretch of our road closest to our house feeds the deer and none of us hunt them. We'd rather watch them frolic in the pastures than shoot them. This year, our next-door-neighbor has a deer stand up on his land for the first time since we bought this land in 1997. I believe his son-in-law and daughter put it up, but no one has been using it. Before we put up the 7' tall fence around the garden, they occsionally jumped into my garden and ate everything in sight. I think I grew okra for 4 years before I was able to pick any for us. I wish we had a 7' fence around the acre or two closest to the house so I could have gardens all over. The deer here that live on our property trust us. The does always bring the fawns to the garden, just outside the fence, while I am in it, to show them off while the fawns are teeny, teeny tiny. The first time it happened, I thought it was an accident. But it happens so often now that I think they bring them on purpose to show them off. Having grown up in the city with a non-hunting dad, I never ate venison growing up and really don't like to eat it now, except if I make it into jerky. We made the decision long ago that if we were going to feed the deer, we wouldn't hunt them or let anyone else hunt them on our land....to me, training the deer to come to a feeder so you can shoot them is like shooting fish in a barrel. I have no quarrel with anyone who chooses to hunt, but we just choose not to. We do call 911 and report anyone spotlighting from the road or trespassing onto private, posted property. We've also gone outside with guns and chased poachers off our property. The general feeling here along our road is that there are too many houses here now and way too many domestic animals (raising cows, horses and goats has pretty much replaced farming here) for any of us to feel comfortable allowing hunting on our property. The one neighbor who allows hunting on his property only allows one specific young man to hunt and he hunts only with a bow. This neighbor is between us and the river and his deer herd is so large it is like having a herd of cattle and they destroy his garden every year. He lives in the D-FW metro area and comes up here to his place (where he grew up) on weekends only, so the deer are too comfortable on his place and his garden suffers terribly. Our two old mama does that lived here when we moved here really seemed to like us. (Of course, the garden only had a 3' tall fence then, so they probably loved us because we were feeding them all sorts of wonderful plants during the gardening season.) One of those does used to come look into our breakfast room window occasionally. I could never figure out why she was looking inside, but she was the first one who started bring the fawns to the yard to show them off and she'd often go off and leave them in the yard for an hour or two and then she'd come back and get them. I never lose sight of the fact that deer are wild animals and are dangerous. I feel the same about every other wild animal on our property...they are "wild". We have a neighbor up the road a couple of miles who takes in and raises orphaned baby raccoons....and I think she's playing with fire too (as is your neighbor) because raccoons are mean and dangerous. I think wild animals belong in the wild, not in the house. :) G.M., I remember that. You have to ask yourself what she was thinking getting out of that car? I would have been on the cell phone hollering for someone to come shoot that deer, or if I didn't have a cell phone I either would have laid on the horn to scare it off or I would have started up the engine and driven off. I never figured out how that deer made it into town without someone shooting it or running over it there near Central Park! Like Jay and others said, these deer are not Bambi. I have read of cases in other states where deer have attacked people and killed them. I can always tell whether a deer on our property is one of "our" regular residents just by looking at it. My sister's boyfriend tells me that lots of hunters who regularly hunt on the same place year after year are the same way....they know the regulars by sight. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with the deer. In general I love seeing them around the woods and pastures, but I hate them when I catch them in the yard or garden eating my plants and have been known to let out a dog to chase them off. Once last fall, I left the garden gate open overnight and came outside to find 4 of 'our' deer in the garden. They about destroyed the fence, the gate and the garden trying to get out of there when they saw me because they were just in a blind panic. I've been very careful to check the gate every night since then! I hate deer hunting season. The residents here not only have to worry about inexperienced or careless hunters endangering the residents and their animals, but the constant gunshots ruin the peace and quiet we otherwise enjoy year-round. There's always a fire or two or three started by a careless hunter's campfire or cigarette---one of our worst fires last year was believed to have been started on a high-fenced game ranch and probably by a cigarette---and it burned for over two weeks, day after day, back in rugged, rocky hills in northwestern Love County and kept volunteer fire departments terribly busy. Our emergency personnel also get paged out sometimes to conduct search-and-rescue missions for lost hunters. I'd be just as happy if everyone skipped deer hunting season, but that's not going to happen. I think we see more and more hunters every year....and we still have increasing numbers of deer. Dawn