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New England Gardening

Deer Attack

11 years ago

May 27, 2012. Deer Attack.

This morning while walking Dusty about 6:30AM I discovered the deer had destroyed three of my hostas. I looks like the fence kept them out of my main garden. Its just so frustrating they can and do so much damage.

Those hostas were beautiful this year and had reached a respectable size. The one that I had thrown some old wire fence over, just 3 feet away went untouched.

Click here to see the damage -look at bottom of the page.

Committee to re-introduce Timber Wolves and Mountain Lions

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Comments (15)

pixie_lou
11 years ago
What a disappointment to wake up to. I feel your pain. I think most of us here on New England Gardening have experienced similar losses. And if it isn't the deer, it's the voles or chipmunks or rabbits or squirrels or the woodchucks. Very frustrating.

Hopefully your hostas will recover and you will be able to enjoy them in future years.
terrene
11 years ago
Hi Ray, so sorry about your plants! I have heard that deer are out of control in parts of the country.

I just recently learned that more people are killed by deer than any other animal in the US. More than bear, cougars, dogs, snakes, spiders, or all the other things we worry about. Motor vehicles colliding with deer kill people as well as cause up to 1 billion in property damage. Recently, someone told me that their insurance company was adding a $1 "deer damage" fee to everyone's auto insurance.

I think we need highly skilled bow hunters to go out there and cull the deer and use them for food for people and pets!

Fortunately the deer are not too bad here - they just wander through and nibble on their favorites here and there. They have already eaten down my Jewelweed, some of the Woodland phlox, and a few other things.

A few years ago they LOVED my Hosta Royal Standard and would target that Hosta and none of the others. I sprayed it with Deer Off after that and it worked.
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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.
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Yes, they will grow back, and pretty quickly, too. They have nice established root systems, and it's early enough in the season almost anywhere in the country for them to have plenty of time to make a crop.
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I agree with lucy, but let me elaborate. I had this happen to four of my Norway spruce trees of about the same size. If there is at least one side branch at the bottom of the tree with undamaged bark beneath it and just a little above it, the tree will recover. One of the side branches in a year or two will turn erect and replace the leader. If two or more branches turn up to try to replace the leader, wait at least two years and then cut off or dramatically shorten all but one. In the meantime, fence the tree--bucks will come back and rub a tree repeatedly. I learned the hard way--I left one that was buck rubbed once unprotected thinking the damage was done. He came back and completely destroyed the tree all the way to ground level. There was nothing left but a two inch tall stub!! --Spruce
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Comments (23)
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
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spedigrees z4VT
11 years ago
I wonder if deer populations are thicker in urban areas, and if they cause more damage there than in rural areas. We have multiple hunting seasons on deer in my area: rifle, bow, muzzle-loader, yet still they eat our gardens too. Probably they are smart enough to know they are safe in the summer months and during the night.

I'm very sorry about your plants, Ray. What an unpleasant surprise.
NHBabs z4b-5a NH
11 years ago
My sympathies on the damage to your hostas.

When I was at my mom's last week in inner suburban Cleveland, a deer crossed the neighbor's front lawn, not 15 feet from the street, and came within about 20 feet of me, sitting on the front steps talking. My mom said that the deer had lost all fear of people. I knew that they were havoc on plants (a large hydrangea bush I had planted disappeared in a year) but having a deer that comfortable that close to a road and me was a bit disconcerting.
cloud_9
11 years ago
There was something about this post that set off bells for me. Besides the color of your mulch. You seem to have been around GardenWeb for a while, not this forum, but still enough to know the rules. You posted the exact same post on the Vegetable, Hosta and Mid-Atlantic forums which incidentally was a cut an paste from your blog. At least four posts for two hostas? Doesn't this seem a bit much? Are you posting to steer people to your blog? If so that is just not right.
rayinpenn
Original Author
11 years ago
Cloud_9
Apologies I did re-read the Garden Web instructions (rules) and discovered that you are not supposed to post to more than 2 forums.. Why i did.
Hostas: Its what they deer ate so far
MidAtlantic: Its where I live SE Penn less than a mile from Delaware
Vegetables Its my favorite site
New England Because I lived on LI for the first 49 years
of my life

I use a website to store my pictures - I dont like photobucket because I prefer to have control over the pictures. my pics

Again apologies, most people seemed to enjoy the pics.
terrene
11 years ago
Hmmm, interesting observation Cloud-9. I didn't notice the duplicate posts, but would have thought the same thing. I find it annoying when people post here just to promote their blogs and websites too.

RayinPenn, at the very least your post makes no sense whatsoever in the vegetables forum, and I agree that is what you're doing and if I had noticed that I wouldn't have bothered to even reply to this thread.
rayinpenn
Original Author
11 years ago
Doesnt anyone sleep anymore? I forgot to mention I am not selling anything or advertising anything period. I am just enjoying my hobby and sharing pictures. Not sure why anyone feels the need to imply an impropriety when none occurred...

I was just worked up about the damage. last year the deer ate everything!
spedigrees z4VT
11 years ago
I didn't take it that way, Ray, and I can understand why you were aggravated enough to post it in several venues. After all, different people populate different forums and can offer different takes on any given subjects. Personally I've had an interesting bird situation on my porch this summer and have posted the same information and photos on several forums here and elsewhere.

As far as linking to one's blog, I love that! I've bookmarked a number of blogs belonging to members of various garden groups on here, particularly the junk gardening forum. What's the harm? You're not selling anything, as you've said. It can be kind of a pain to post pics on here, so why post them on two different servers when you can just point folks to the one. I enjoyed your blog myself.
terrene
11 years ago
I didn't mean to jump all over you personally Ray, but 4 duplicate posts is a little much. As for sleeping, well I've got a touch of insomnia!

I don't mind people occasionally posting links to blogs or websites, but there are people who come here to post for that sole purpose. They aren't really interested in participating in this community - they are interested in directing traffic to their websites.

And I think that some bloggers DO have commercial purposes in mind (maybe not you ray). And if they are computer savvy enough to format a blog, they are savvy enough to post one little picture here.
spedigrees z4VT
11 years ago
For some, like myself, it is easy to compose several posts for different forums saying the same thing using different words. For others, it is a chore, and copying and pasting is a time saver, and a harmless one when the words being copied are one's own. I don't know, but if Ray copied and pasted the contents of his post, he probably copied and pasted the title/subject as well, making it easy to identify and ignore if you've read it already on another forum. After all, mean spiritedness is unbecoming to gardeners.
EReiCT
11 years ago
oh no! I definitely feel your pain!! i have (had!) a 100 foot beautiful row of Arborvitae. they're about 25 feet tall and this past winter the deer decided that they looked too delicious to pass up! at "deer level," about 4 feet up and all the way down to the ground, they chewed all the lower branches off all around the plants! now i have trees on sticks!! it's terrible. they are starting to grow back but they'll never be the same again!
spedigrees z4VT
11 years ago
Oh, so sorry EReiCT! :-(
claireplymouth z6b coastal MA
11 years ago
Ray: I just moved two beautiful hostas into a bed containing other well-grown hostas, and I'm thinking about how I'd feel tomorrow morning if I found these hostas were eaten by deer. I'd be really, really upset and would write a blistering entry in my blog (if I had a blog, which I don't).

EReiCT: The stripped arborvitae makes me cringe; you can't replace them and you'll have to look at them every day. We don't have much deer damage here, but we do have utility tree butcher crews, the human equivalent.

My sympathies to both of you.

Claire
terrene
11 years ago
Oh dear, how awful for the Arborvitaes! Fortunately my Arborvitaes have never been scathed, this is proabably because my neighbors have a zillion Yews, which they like even more than Arborvitae. Bird netting works well in a situation like that, the deer can't eat the foliage through the netting.

"Utility tree butcher crews, the human equivalent" LOL.

I have neighbors who are tree butchers! Another human equivalent.

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