Killed 26 deer

[RSKY]

Farmers in this area are having a terrible time with the deer eating their soybeans. One I know of has killed 26 out of one field at last count. Game Warden told him that he could drag them to the edge of the field but not remove them from the field they were shot in. Brother in law said the field looked like it had been mowed close to the ground. More than ten acres stripped. The deer just went down a row grazing. There have been hundreds of deer slaughtered but you still have to be careful driving at night. On one recent twenty mile trip my wife and I counted eighteen deer in six locations all standing next to the road.

They got thru my small battery powered electric fence and ate all my purple hulled and black eyed peas. It the rows had been strung out end to end it would have been over 600 feet. One day the vines were just about ready to be picked. Two days later, not a pea on them.

Oh yeah, the coons got about a third of my sweet corn. Caught two in traps after the fact. The groundhogs ate all but a half dozen of the cantaloupes. Shot one of them.

So out of my very large garden I got about 500 ears of corn, 80 quarts of green beans, and enough cucumbers to make around forty quarts of pickles.

Lot of healthy vegetable fed wildlife around though.

 

[creekbend]

A few years ago, I read that there are more Deer in America now, then when Columbus first landed. Sorry about your garden.

 

[Vtnewbie]

I can't remember an electric fence ever stopping deer. In fact, it seems like deer will always run through an electric fence once they get shocked, rather than back off. I've been tending horses for 40+ years, and rarely will they run through a fence, so long as they know where it is. The deer, on the other hand, have been the usual culprit when my fences were down.

Guess that's a long way to suggest that a fence, to be effective against deer, should present more of a physical barrier than does an electric fence. The old-timers highest praise for a fence was that it was "deer high and bull tight".

 

[MacLawn]

Knucklehaided rascals. Way too many of'em! A soybean farmer in southwest Mississippi where I used to live let me hunt his soybean fields for quail after deer season. He told me even way back then, 1978, deer could take down $2,000 worth of soybeans in one night! That's what he said. They need killin' I tell ye. And, eaten if ye can eat that many.

 

[dmccarty]

It is a shame let those deer rot and go to waste.

Ya'll need some coyotes. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: We should be seeing 7-9 does this time of year but I have only seen one. I did see a buck the other day and we have been seeing one doe. The coyotes knocked down the deer heard over the last couple of years.

Later,
Dan

 

[TripleR]

We have programs to give the deer to the needy, but we are not in a situation to where 26 deer are killed at a time. We can go to MDC and get crop depredation permits but so far have not needed them on our farm, I jumped ten does up out of a corn field yesterday and the bean field next to it shows some grazing, but not much.

 

[/pine]

Soybeans will put fat on a deer unlike just about any other fodder....
deer populations are in decline in GA and NC due to the propagation of coyotes...

 

[Midniteoyl]

And yet, people plant food plots..

 

[RSKY]

They ran thru my fence once but I have researched it on the Internet (finally got smart) and there is a way to keep them out. You must have two fences that the deer can see, one three feet out from the other, and you must bait the wires so the deer will want to lick them. Peanut butter seems to attract them better than anything so I have been told. Once they get shocked in the mouth they will leave. I am also going to have a motion detector light and noise maker to scare them off and a few other tricks.

Probably still lose everything next year but I like a challenge.