Nuisance Deer

LOLBELL said:

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Here is something I came up with yesterday. I retired as an electrical lineman. This was a pole top rescue dummy. Someone had let him free fall about 40’. I put him back together and give him some new clothes. I’m going to trade hats with him every evening to keep him smelling like me. We’ll see if that works. If so I’ll try something similar at the big garden.

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To enhance this pee on the ground where your dummy is once in a while.

Cypress said:

I think raising a couple of dogs on the property and making it their home would be the best bet. Even the dogs that I’ve had that weren’t hunters would chase a deer off if it got too close.

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I've got 2 dogs that run the deer out the orchard at the house every day.But they still come back. One is so persistent that she beats the dogs back. They tend to get use to each other over time. Works for a few weeks.

Atavar said:

To enhance this pee on the ground where your dummy is once in a while.

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There's tons of evidence that shows that human urine does not spook deer at all. Have witnessed myself, deer walking thru the yellow spots in the snow below my treestand, only minutes after I relieve myself. Many successful hunters swear by relieving themselves in real and mock deer scrapes. Even the scientific community has studied this scenario......

From the "Meat Eater" website....

The scientific community got involved in 1998 when Texas researchers Ben Koerth and James Kroll at Stephen F. Austin State University tested how deer responded to mock scrapes treated with four unique scents: no scent, human urine, estrous-doe urine, and rutting-buck urine. Deer visited all the scrapes, but bucks paid more visits to scrapes treated with either human urine or rutting-buck urine.

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buck460XVR said:

There's tons of evidence that shows that human urine does not spook deer at all. Have witnessed myself, deer walking thru the yellow spots in the snow below my treestand, only minutes after I relieve myself. Many successful hunters swear by relieving themselves in real and mock deer scrapes. Even the scientific community has studied this scenario......

From the "Meat Eater" website....

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I think we have had people here mention deer investigating where the hunter had urinated. They were not driven off by it.

Double Naught Spy said:

I think we have had people here mention deer investigating where the hunter had urinated. They were not driven off by it.

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True enough. Another of those hunting myths. Like smoking, some of the best deer I ever took I got with a cigar in my teeth. Sound and movement are way more important than scent.

Atavar said:

Like smoking, some of the best deer I ever took I got with a cigar in my teeth.

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You probably rubbed Wolfsbane all over yourself and the cigars.
Sorry, I was a huge “Grimm” fan (a “Grimmster”) when it was on TV, and rubbing Wolfsbane on yourself to hide your scent while hunting deer came up in the first episode.
Grimmster or not, I thought it was a silly line. I’d been successfully hunting deer without worrying about covering my scent for close to 50 years before Grimm ever came on TV. Deer notice movement, and mule deer notice sound - that’s why they have those “great big ears, grandma.”

Whitetail deer have become a headache on
some farms.

Keyfer 55 said:

Whitetail deer have become a headache on
some farms.

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Of the crop losses due to wildlife (which I assume does not include insects), deer are responsible for up to 70-90% in many states. Individually, hogs do more damage, but deer usually outnumber hogs significantly.

jdsingleshot said:

Plant potatoes. Deer won't bother them.

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Yes they will...........They will eat the leaves off the vines.

I plant a 20 acre dove field. I plant sunflowers, millet and corn. I do 4 phases. First I scatter moth balls around the sunflowers. Second I I have about 50 post around the field with a sock tied to each one containing malorginite, shredded ZEST soap and human hair. Third I mix up a slurry of sulpher and use my tractor sprayer to spray the sunflowers. So far no deer are using the field. Fourth is my spotlight and 30/06. So far I haven't had to resort to phase 4 yet. The field is in front of my house so I can spotlight it from the front porch. Malorginite (human waste fertilizer) is a great deterent. But it's expensive and has to be replaced after a rain. Our depredation tags have no specifications as to disposal. I'd just probably shoot "em" through the slats and let them run off to save me the trouble of having to dispose of them.

LOLBELL said:

The deer around here love sweet potatoes, even more than peas

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I think I can speak for a few of us here when I say: "We're growing impatient waiting on YOU for some NUISANCE DEER JERKY!!"

The deer around here have all gone nocturnal. They are pretty brazen to.

They run down through between my and my neighbors house and walk right down the road on their nightly trek. They turn right on Forest Rd and keep going. Sometimes early in the morning we catch them on their way back to the woods behind my house. Our door bell camera catches them.
The people we bought the house from had a pretty good sized garden in the back yard, and they tried everything to keep the deer out and finally gave up on it. I don't grow anything back there, no point. Neighbors are to close, I can't get away with anything.

Could you trap them in a live box and call DNR for transportation and release?

More would just move in.

Tough problem when the local laws are stupid. There are some good suggestions in this thread that skirt the edges of ethical, but still legal. When it comes to protecting my property and livelihood, I'll do what it takes.

Lead- does wonders to protect the veggies!