A new slant on deer fencing
Many animals, including families of deer, like to wander through our field and rest under the small grove of oak trees. Our local deer are Columbia Black-tailed deer, a subspecies of mule deer. They are one of the very few native ungulates (hoofed mammals) that still roam freely throughout the state. We learned rather quickly that they also like to eat our garden. It has been fun to watch the cute deer families hop on past, but not so cute to see them ripping up veggies starts. While we want to afford the deer as much freedom as possible, we need at least some space dedicated to food production for the Food Security Garden Network.
Learning to live with deer when you want to grow food is a project! Many approaches are singularly focused on barring animal incursion via high fencing, without much care for keeping them safe and not allowing other critters and sunlight to come through all parts of the garden. It is important to us that we keep a bit of space deer-free in a way that is safe for deer to live next to, but hopefully not inside, our garden.
In our fencing research, we learned that deer can jump high, or far, but not both, which led us to a slanted deer fence design. This caught our attention because it would use minimal material, allow light and other animals through, and seemed to offer a solution that would keep the deer away from the produce without making the garden feel like it’s behind a wall.
By taking 8-10 foot branches, and slanting them down from the top of our existing 4 ft high wire fence, we build a wide buffer that discourages deer from attempting to jump over. The slanted branches are strung with a thin nonabrasive cord about 18 inches apart so that the deer feel and see the cord on their legs. The cord is taught and not tangly - deer can quite easily step in and out without injury, but are not eager to continue toward the vertical fence as they keep feeling the next cords tied progressively higher on the slanted boards.
We had a ton of fallen eucalyptus branches, so we were able to grab enough long branches to make the slants rather than buy or hunt for recycled lumber. We have a slippery twine-like orange cord that we could tie horizontally up from the ground from slanted branch to slanted branch. It took 6 volunteers about two hours to lean/attach the branches to the existing vertical fence and tie the chord taut for about 100 feet of fencing, and only $10 for the cord!
The fawns sometimes hop into the slant a bit but get a bit startled by the cord and hop out. They have a lot to eat out in the meadow - they seem to love to munch the oak trees, wild radish and some of the grasses out there. As we begin to spread more native plants into the field we hope to provide some deer friendly options to help encourage them to eat those and further ignore our garden. As for the produce - the slanted fence works! The deer stay out (except, of course, when we forget to close the gate).
Co-existence isn’t always easy or convenient, but we are up for the challenge, and enjoy sharing the land with the native animals that were here first!