What Dawn said. After 30 years of having a 3.5 ft fence, we built an 8 ft fence to keep the deer out. The rabbits still get in, but every so often we turn the dogs in and they dig up the nests and take care of that. The cats can still get in and they help with small mammals too.

I kind of have a love/hate relationship with my fence. I love it from the standpoint of keeping most critters out, but it would sure be nice not to have to take down sections if and when I need to get a tractor in. Had I done my job properly, I would have started out with a heavy layer of wood chips or other organic matter. That or put a little more thought into access.

Dorothy, I wish we'd started out with the tall garden fence our first year, but it is so easy to say that in hindsight. In the dead of winter, I leave my garden gate open and on at least one occasion a bobcat got into the garden and killed a rabbit. My only reget about the fence I have now is that it keeps the bobcats out. I love rabbits, but not in my garden.

okoutdoorsman, We had to redo our gate and pathways a few years back in the front garden to give us better access. It was well worth the time and effort, but I do wish we'd done a better job when we installed the fence. At the time, we weren't focused so much on access, but just on keeping the deer out. When we later built the back garden, we did a better job with the fence, largely because of lessons learned with the front garden.

If we ever built a third big fenced-in garden plot (which is doubtful since two of them are almost more than I can manage), we might get everything right on the very first attempt.

Dawn

If there are deer in the area, then I'd recommend you start out with a fence. If they never get in there when it is a garden, then they'll be less likely to try. I have a 5' fence around my main vegetable garden, which is 30' X 100.' Sometimes I see deer, walking along the creek, about 200' away from the garden. But we have not had a single deer incidence since putting that garden in, in 2006. I credit this to three factors:
1) We fenced it when it was nothing but pasture. So there was no special draw to get in there. Then, when we planted, the deer simply never thought to try.

2) The deer regularly use the creek as a highway. But the corner where we put the garden is not in a direct line to anywhere the deer would normally go.

3) Since about 2008 we have had livestock guardian dogs which think it's their job to warn deer away, both day and night.

Thanks, I am convinced! If my grandmother will pay for the materials, I'm gonna build her a fence while I'm around to do it. There are dozens of deer living in the immediate area, some on our property. We are on the outskirts of the little town of Claremore but there are tons of densely wooded areas. We have seen cougar tracks by our pond in past years. All the usual suspects are common. I don't want to do all the work just for the deer. If I build the fence, it will be there for my grandmother to use when I'm gone and she is gardening alone again.

Is it worthwhile to trench and bury a little fence to keep rabbits or other diggers out? How deep?

George, I bet you are right on all 3 counts the way house and woods are situated but #3 may be the best deterrent.

Dorothy, it isn't hard to imagine that deer would be a problem at your house. They just want to come walk in your beautiful woodland garden.

Dawn, she who lives in Love County must learn to live with the 'wildlife'. LOL

If you're going to fence out rabbits, you'll have to make that fence incredibly tight. You'll need 1/2" mesh wire, probably for the bottom 20" and bury it about 4-5." Just keep in mind that any hole large enough to squeeze your thumb through will probably allow a rabbit.

I moved my garden about 10' to the South, some years ago, in order to separate it from the fence line growth on its North side. That weedy, brushy growth served as a corridor both for rabbits and, even worse... grasshoppers.

I love the deer. I feed them in winter, especially in years when the mast crop is small (this year it is huge). I put out huge pans (in some drought years we use children's wading pools as watering pans) filled with water for them during drought. I let them scavenge my compost pile and eat tons of stuff that doesn't survive long enough to become compost. We have deer trails running all over our property. I just don't want the deer in the garden. When the same ones come back year after year, I name them.

The only issue with buried fencing is that weeds and grass grow up in that fence line and are hard to control, particularly if you chose not to use herbicides. We did away with our buried fencing for that reason. I got tired of trying to dig out the bermuda grass that became intertwined with the buried fencing. We still have the fence down tight against the ground, and if there is a spot where it doesn't perfectly meet the ground, I put boards, large rocks, etc. there so the rabbits won't notice. I even use U-shaped landscape pins to pin down the fence to the ground if needed.

The amount of trouble you'll have with wildlife in any given year will vary. In times of plentiful rainfall when there's lots of native plants to eat, the deer can walk right by my garden daily and not even nibble at the bean vines climbing the garden fence. In drought years, though, they get increasingly and desperately hungry and will eat anything and everything they can find and nothing, and that includes crawling into feral hog traps to eat whatever is being used to bait the traps.

Our deer know us pretty well. They know our habits. They know the times we generally come and go. I think they are really intelligent animals. They also know, for the most part, that I'm not happy when they nibble at plants on the garden fence. Sometimes, after they've been coming through our property for a while, some of them even will come too close to the humans----not in a threatening way, but more in a "Hey, I know it is summer but do you have any of that deer corn you feed us in winter?" type of way. Some of them know when I am canning and start standing near the compost pile every evening, just waiting for me to come out there with a bucket of peach peelings or whatever to toss on the pile. If they start coming too close or being too friendly, I bring a dog out with me. He's too old to get overly excited and chase them like he did in his younger days, but they don't know that.

Interesting, so I guess chicken wire won't keep the rabbits out. That is very unfortunate! I'm not sure we want to buy 150' of 1/4" mesh wire, that sounds expensive!

Yes Dawn, I believe animals are very intelligent. I doubt they survive just by instincts and luck, nature is harsh and weeds out the idiot animals, like it used to weed out more of the idiot humans!

My grandmother used to feed the deer too until my cousin tried to get herself selected by chasing some of the bucks. The girl is one of those children you just can't tell anything to so my grandmother had to stop feeding the deer for the child's safety.

I don't like it when kids get too close to wild animals because there's the potential for too much to go wrong, but we don't have any small children around here, so it's all good. We have far too much wildlife, but none of them are going anywhere and neither are we, so we all just try to get along.

Downplay, I don't know if you should be 'worried' about the critters, rather than just aware, and have a plan- good luck, you're formulating that!- because if they are going to be there, they will. I have a comment on electric fencing. I love our electric netting. Love it. Ours is short, and we have some 4 ft as well, because our dogs keep the deer at a far distance, but portable fencing like this does come in deer height and lots of netting size variations. It could connect to house current, but we power it with a small. long lasting marine battery in a plastic milk crate.

https://www.premier1supplies.com/detail.php?prod_id=127179&cat_id=53 

I wish we'd done it years ago, but I was afraid for kids' sake. We keep much more of our garden now, and even use it to temporarily put young pigs there to till, sometimes. It also keeps our lawn mowing sheep and stray chickens, cats and dogs out.

BUT, this was my reason for posting. I think anyone reading about and researching fence options, and considering electric, who has wildlife pressure, needs to be aware of the need to keep the fence hot, once up, ALL the time.

We saw it working so well that we got lazy and didn't. A fence like that needs regular upkeep to keep growth short underneath it, if you don't want to spray herbicide. It didn't take the critters long to find out. They do learn. They nibbled holes all along our first fencing attempt. When we repaired it and the weather got hot and dry, a whole group must have put together a sacrifice the scapegoat plan, and in one night, re-chewed their way through, to chew on the drip tape and chew on every tomato, squash, cucumber and bean in reach, the only water source for miles!

We do have one advantage I suppose, there is plenty of water. We have a pond, both of our neighbors have ponds, and there is even more water sources not far away.

What material did they chew through? I was gonna go for a 9 or 10 ft tall fence, maybe using chicken wire on the bottom and then finish the top with some square wire fencing we already have in the barn. I'm very much open to suggestions on fence construction though!

My grandmother is liberal with the herbicide but I don't like the stuff. I'm not quite the purist that Dawn is but I do have a strong aversion to using chemical poisons. We have a ton of materials we can put down for the weeds like black woven plastic, and I hope we can find a liberal supply of tree mulch which can block them somewhat as well.

This really keeps the deer out? They don't just jump over it? We have so many deer! My grandmother used to feed them and I'm fairly certain at least a dozen does live on our property. I snook up on them one day in the woods not long ago.

The electric would be good for all the other critters. We do have lots of all the usual suspects, raccoons, opossums, armadillos, rabbits, something that looks like a ground hog, and more.

I'd like to have a dog but I don't plan on living here forever and my grandmother doesn't want to deal with one when I leave so that is not a good option for us.

While electric netting fence is now popular and avail cheaper (quality unknown) at local places, I got my initial electric fence education at the Premier fenceing site and from their beautiful catalogs. I strongly suggest anyone thinking about electric, get on the catalog list and read up on all the information on the website. It's free, and worth something.

The link above that I posted is just garden fencing, there are others for deer. Folks 'bait' them with peanut butter and the like, and yes, if you follow the company's suggestions, which differ based on other animal pressure, soil nature and environment, the fencing works...for everything I know of.