So far I have not had a deer problem, but the hab comment reminded me of something else. Squirrels aren't such a big problem now but for a few years they were terrible. If I would till anything, they would walk it up and down with their nose to the ground like a bloodhound and I suppose it was because they had nuts buried there and knew that I had disturbed them. I guess I wore them down because I don't see many in my garden. However, they would not leave my bird feeder alone and I just couldn't keep it full. It was hanging from a shepherds hook so I mixed hot chili pepper with Crisco and covered the pole. The squirrel jumped from the tree onto the hook of the pole and started down the pole. As he hit the shortening he started to slide and he slide to the next rung of the hook where he caught on for a minute, then continued to slide down. When he got to the ground he started licking his paws, then he started shaking his paws. He would go back to the pole, then sit on the ground and shake his paws again, walk a few feet and shake them once again. It didn't cure the problem but it sure did provide entertainment. We probably have 20% of what we once had so I would guess someone is eliminating them.

Made my way over to the nature section from the home section, so i'm new here. I'm a wildlife biologist, have been paid to ID scat. It's deer scat. Wolf and coyote scat are tapered at the ends and usually have obvious hair, though can be amorphous (squishy and black) if they have just ingested blood. Bear scat is more clumpy/crumbly, in a pile as opposed to a slab like this, and with a smoother outer layer. Deer scat is usually in small pellets, but can take a more clumped form such as this when they've been eating more succulent browse. If you look, you can see the approximation of pellets in it and the green of vegetation.

Wayne, While deer can eat persimmons and usually do, the coyotes get hungrier earlier and eat them off the lower limbs long before the deer do. I know this because every day while walking my dogs since 1999, I have observed both deer scat and coyote scat and know that the coyote scat is full of persimmon seeds months before I see any at all in deer scat. That is what I have observed in my specific area. On the other hand, deer will visit my fruit trees often while they are in bloom and while they have small fruit, and show a definite preference for plum over peach, but I've never seen plum pits in coyote scat (though I suspect they eat wild plums) and I've never found coyote tracks in the soft sandy soil beneath my plum trees. That might happen solely because wild plums grow with abandon along fence lines and in pastures here, so the coyotes can eat all the wild plums they want without having to venture up close to our house to snatch plums off our cultivated varieties. The deer are not afraid of me because I feed them in winter and in drought, so they boldly walk up into the yard and snatch young plums (or even the blooms) off the trees while I'm working in the yard. They also visit the compost pile regularly to scavenge for appealing kitchen scraps and, in winter, when I am not feeding the compost pile enough to please the deer, they will stand by the pile and scream or call for me. Sometimes my husband will come indoors and say "the deer are calling you" and I go out, and they aren't even calling---they just stand by the compost pile and stare at the back door nonstop, as if willing me to walk out the door with a bucket of compost pile scraps for them to pick through. It is sort of comical, but sort of sad that they get so desperate for food. The coyotes wouldn't dare do that because we do nothing to encourage them. Nowadays I only plant fruit trees within an area with an 8' tall fence because otherwise I have to fight the deer for every plum, and sometimes for the other fruit as well. The squirrels largely ignore plums until they are ripe, but go after the peaches while they're still green. I learn a lot about wildlife by observing them here since we have so much wildlife. Birds seem to prefer peaches or cherries. Most of the wildlife leave the figs alone, and I think that's because figs are not common here so the wildlife don't realize what they are. I can watch for young rusty blackhaw viburnums to sprout in spring, but rarely see them because only one viburnum is on the edge of the woods near the house where I can see it from a spot outside the woods. All the others are buried deep in the woods, where I fear very large, old trees are slowly shading them out. Our climate has veered towards being both hotter and drier since we moved here in the 1990s, and I am seeing subtle changes in what grows well here as well as in what sprouts and what doesn't. Partly, I think, it is because our water table has changed. The spring that once fed our pond dried up, another spring that fed our swamp dried up, and the two springs that feed our creek barely run at all any more. Consequently, the swamp slowly died off and the plants that grew in it died as well. Now, just ordinary old woodland trees have taken over the once swampy spot, and trees grow where we once had a huge pond full of fish. I hardly ever see new viburnums or Mexican plum trees sprout and grow, and even the wild blackberries don't grow as abundantly as they once did. But then, on the other hand, I see more prickly pear cacti, even deep within the woods, than ever before. For years and years I spent a significant part of every winter clearing undergrowth in the woodland and removing invasive species of plants, but as we became more and more involved with our local VFD, I gave up time in the woodland because I was spending it at grassfires and wildfires instead. So, with less time spent in the woods, it is hard to know what's growing well. That situation became even dicier in the drought of 2008, when I had two encounters with a cougar. Ironically, in both cases the cougar came out of the woods directly adjacently to my garden, and wandered along beside the garden fence. So I actually had the encounters with the cougar in the yard/garden and not the woods, but because the cougar came out of the woodland, I stopped going into it alone and unarmed. We also have had feral pigs at the back of our property, roughly 1100' from the house, several times, which put a halt to me venturing back there (even in snake season) to pick wild plums. A couple of times the feral pigs have made it to within 200 or 250' of our house, so I have to be really careful any time I go outdoors. When we moved here, I hoped that when the wildlife adjusted to us being here on this property, they'd kind of move further away from the house. I was wrong about that. If anything, every year they become more abundant near the house. I blame some of that on too many years of recurring drought. When the greenest area and the spot with the most potential food sources is the acre or two around the house and outbuildings, then that is where the wildlife go. Now, I hate the highly invasive mulberry trees and don't want them anywhere near me. The birds plant them (and wild grapes) endlessly all along our fencelines, the garden fence (where I don't need anything invasive), ponds, etc. and they grow fast and spread and take over. We spend a couple of days every year in late summer taking out mulberries, hackberries, wild grapes and other wildlife-sown plants that easily invade and spread and get out of control. The wildlife can sow seeds of whatever they want in the woodland, but in the areas where I am trying to grow stuff for us, I want them to stay away and not fill my gardens with stuff I don't want. Every year the squirrels plant about 10,000 pecans and acorns in my fenced veggie garden space, and every spring I yank out all those young seedlings. Mulberries, wild grapes, native pecans and oaks have their place, but it isn't in my garden. I don't plant much of anything in our landscape that cannot tolerate being eaten by wildlife, and I don't plant anything that needs a lot of water because most summers, rainfall is low to almost non-existent. Even the native plants that thrive in these conditions are less common than they were before 2011. In some cases, plants that were abundant before 2011 never really have recovered from that horrific drought, and in order cases, they have sprouted and grown and died in drought every year since then so that every attempt at a comeback largely fails. This means our natural landscape is changing and evolving to tolerate increasingly more common drought periods, and our native grasses and forbs continue to change and evolve as that occurs. We spend most of every year on the U. S. Drought Monitor classified as being "abnormally dry". Well, to me, if we are spending, let's say, 30 weeks a year being "abnormally dry", then to me it isn't abnormal any more----it is the new normal. The weather and drought agencies won't recognize it as the new normal for us, though, until we have seen it seriously affect our 30-year-averages from which they derive the norms. Native milkweeds ebb and flow a lot around here where they have to survive only on rainfall. Some years they are plentiful, and some years they are sparse. This year they are very, very sparse. The one I see most often is green milkweed, but this year we only have had maybe a half-dozen of them grow and bloom. Most years we have dozens, or even hundreds. This trend doesn't bother me as much as you'd think because I still see plenty of them nearby on property that has sandy soil. We mostly have clay with only a couple of bands of sandy soil running through it, so we've never had milkweed that is as abundant as those sandier areas have. I've never seen the milkweed vine here, so suspect it doesn't like our recurring droughts, or our highly alkaline soil and highly alkaline water. Every now and then I'll see a showy milkweed and we had swamp milkweed back when we had a swamp. Now? Nope. Bon, The birds plant sumac for us, so maybe they'll plant some for you. Carol, I agree with you on the redbuds. I'd never plant one on purpose because they look pretty crappy for most of the growing season. They seem prone to every kind of foliar leaf spot a person could dream up. I do love them when they're in bloom, and we have several dozen of them scattered around our woodland so I enjoy seeing them. When they're out of bloom? I don't even notice them until they start looking especially ugly. Dawn

We have a lot of coyotes where we live in Orange County, CA. I grew up here in a neighborhood close to my current home and the increase in volume of coyotes attacking pets is huge, as a kid we never heard of a pet being killed by a coyote. Now I can not let my pets outside without supervision, neighbors pets have been killed at all times of the day. In our last house we did not have any coyote problems in the 23 years we lived there, so our pets could go back and forth between the house and the outdoors at will. We have lived here 2 1/2 years and my poor dogs still miss the freedom they had and so do I. The problem is so bad that a student was attacked by a coyote at a near-by university. The authorities tracked and killed a pair of coyotes at the school, one was injured and they think that caused the unusual behavior. That said coyotes have also been stalking walkers including those without pets. Very scary. Here the authorities request that we report all coyote sightings to our County as they are trying to understand the extent of the issue. We also get an occasional mountain lion, my mom has a picture of one in her backyard a few months back.