No matter where deer are found in North America, their winter survival tactics are no more evident than in your gardens and yards right now!
Woodland mast crops -- such as acorns, sumac peas, beechnuts and locust pods – are in abundance as the fall season settled in, but those favored deer foods soon be hidden beneath matted leaves and seasonal snowfall. As a result, the deer have added your ornamental shrubs, trees and cold-weather vegetable gardens to their wintertime warmup. Your prized plants represent cold-season cold-cuts that could attract deer from as much as 50 miles away! Among the most likely congregation areas will be yards, gardens and agriculture fields on south-facing slopes where sunshine is abundant.
If you have had foraging deer damage your shrubs, gardens and trees during the warm months of the year, rest assured deer will return to your property in the fall months. In most cases, suburban homeowners are no threat to deer. Deer often won’t run unless chased. They learn the limits of controlled dogs, and they even learn the noises associated with those who feed deer. Preventing damage by foraging deer is easier than breaking the pattern of deer foraging after it starts. Once they adapt to your garden, one deer expert says, they adopt it.
Perhaps no deer barrier is more effective than a fence. But deer can easily clear fences as high as 6 feet. That’s an expensive fence, no matter the material it’s made of, and the cost of building that fence is compounded by the length of the barrier. Imagine building a fence 6 feet high to encompass a yard 2 acres or more in size!
How do you begin a winter-season plan to protect your valuable flowers, shrubs, and trees from foraging deer? Initiate your plan now, using the strength of a deterrent program that stops deer from entering your flowerbeds, gardens and even your yard!
1. Learn where deer eat. Clear-cuts, parks and suburban neighborhoods are the perfect habitat, where rich mixtures of vegetation produce abundant food and cover. They’re easily attracted to areas of open lawns, succulent summer gardens, flowers, fruits and vegetables and the buds and twigs of fruit trees and ornamental shrubs.
2. Identify the damage caused to plants by feeding deer. Ragged, broken ends of branches of plants and trees are clear signs of browsing deer, which do not have incisor teeth.
3. Disrupt their sense of security and you’ve achieved the primary factor for turning deer away from your valuable plants, gardens, shrubs and trees. Bucks are rarely seen with does, but does, fawns and yearlings are very social, congregational, even predictable animals. Individually, their nose will lead them to return over and over again to areas where food is tasty, abundant and safe to forage.
Deer are creatures of habit. Once they’ve found a food source, they’ll return to that food source. At no other time of year are deer most likely to return to yards, gardens and grain fields to feed than during the winter.
Prevent deer damage this fall and winter with Deer Scram – America’s Finest™ all-natural, granular deer repellent. Follow the application instructions to create the barrier you need to break their feeding pattern, and your chances this winter are good for protecting your prized trees, shrubs and gardens from foraging deer.