Keep Deer From Your Garden and Orchard

I have had to awful experience of waking up one morning and finding three apple trees, one pear tree and a peach tree stripped of all of the leaves and fruit! Some deer found their way into my yard and filled their bellies with my fruit trees. This late night Bambi party killed all but one of the apple trees and set me back about $100 in buying new trees and unknown fruit production.

It didn't matter that the trees had fruit. Deer will eat the leaves off the trees before any fruit appears. Deer generally travel in packs, so if you see one in your yard, chances are there are others.

Here are some tips to scare deer away from your garden and fruit trees.

1. Predator Urine: Wolves are the natural predator of deer. Wolf urine can be purchased at the local garden centers and I have great luck with it. It will make your garden smell like a dog kennel though.
2. Mobiles: I put mobiles hanging from the branches of the trees. Hopefully when the wind blows, it will scare the deer away. Don't use a comfortable pretty sounding mobile, take a bunch of bottles and hang them so they make a nasty "clanging" sound.
3. Tin pie pans: The shinny tin pie pans waving in the breeze not only scare deer, it scares birds. I hang these up on my blueberries and plum trees. The birds hate them and deer see their reflection and run.
4. Bottles: Take old wine bottles and hang them upside down on a post. If deer rub against them, they might get spooked.
5. Human Hair: visit your local barber and get a bag of hair. The smell of humans scares them off. This will work on scaring me off you get that perm chemical smell!
6. Scare crow: don't make just the normal scare crow that stays stationary on a post in your garden; remember that movement in the key. Make a scare crow that can move in the wind if hanging from a tree (just be sure to tell the neighbors it's only a scarecrow!). Use your old smelly clothes for the scarecrow. We want the human smell to be overpowering.
7. Motion activated lights: If you can get a solar powered motion light out in your fields, they work good to scare animals. I couldn't get electricity out to mine, so the solar one works well. However, a powerful one can get be expensive.

I have found that a combination of these tools work well in protecting my trees and garden from deer. Animals get used to objects if they don't move around or if the smell doesn't change. So replenish the human hair regularly (it works as good mulch), move the scarecrows, move the mobiles, and move the pie pans. Anything different will cause regular deer visitors to reevaluate if they should enter your garden or orchard.