Deer damage to trees

I have spent 17 years working my gardens planting varieties proven to be deer resistant- in Northern NJ, your favorite flowers become the ones you actually get to see bloom in the Spring and Summer. I've figured out the annuals and perennials (pretty much), but now face a new challenge trying to plant trees in the yard. Last year and this spring, I planted a 4-foot Cypress, 4-foot Dogwood, and a 3-foot Japanese maple. I had an established Clethra shrub and an Edith Bogue Magnolia (5 foot). All proven to be deer resistant...as far as the leaves go...In the course of 6 months, they have all been destroyed by a young 4 point buck that took residence in the neighborhood and decided to manicure his horns and mark his territory- which by the way I pay taxes on.

This isn't some little bark nibbling, all of the branches have been torn off the trunks- Joan Crawford showed more mercy to the Rose garden in the MGM lot after they canned her. I have vowed never to surrender to the deer, but these trees were no small investment in time and $. Any suggestions out there in regards to protecting young trees from my uninvited guest?

This message was edited Oct 25, 2009 7:03 PM

Welcome pdools. Have you tried temporary fencing around them? I don't have deer so can't help much, just didn't want your thread to go unnoticed. I think most of those deer repellents are to stop them from eating trees, not rubbing their horns against them. Are you relatively new to DG?

If you click on Communities and go to the right and enter some words in the search forums box, you can type in deer and trees and push your enter key. All kinds of threads will come up discussing trees and deer. Also, you can post links to this thread in the tree and wildlife forums and the atlarge membership will see it and I'm sure you will get responders. Good luck!

Have you tried Liquid fence?? Fellow DGr's in the NE forum have mentioned about having to constantly change repellents because they become used to the smell, dog hair, human hair, soap, Liquid Fence. Regular deer fencing(which I think to be effective has to be at least 8') It would cost some $ to install but to save your trees....
Someone also mentioned using that motion sensor water blaster thingy...I forget what it's called

How big is your yard? The plastic deer fencing - you can get a roll at Lowes for around $12 - works great and probably the easiest thing to do is fence off the parts of your yard where they're passing through.

My friend Joyce had a terrible time with deer coming into her yard and chomping her roses down to stubs. They were coming in through the back of her long, narrow back yard. I fenced off across the back, attaching the fencing to the trees back there, some old fence posts, some new posts and the neighbor's fence, and for a few feet up the sides of the back yard.

That wasn't feasible in my large yard so to protect my daylily bed, I made a fence around the bed.

I was told it works because they can't see the thin, black fence very well and they're afraid of something they might get tangled in. They certainly could have jumped the fence easily but they didn't. I also left about a foot and a half of it draped along the ground at the bottom on my daylily fence because I thought the fear of tangling their feet might keep them away.

In both cases, the fence worked like a charm. In Joyce's yard, they could have easily entered the yard through the front or by entering from the side essentially in the spot where they normally left the yard rather than entering. All I did was block their usual pathway. By the next year, neighborhood kids had torn down the fencing but the deer still stayed away. Same at my house - within a couple of years, the fencing had torn. It's now down completely but the deer stay away from that bed.

I tried everything and I do mean everything. Nothing worked for long except the fence. The only other thing that worked for the daylilies was interplanting oodles of garlic with the daylilies but I'm sure that wouldn't work for trees.

If neither of these options would work for you, you could make a fence around each tree.

If there is a dog groomer in your local area, they may save the hair for you to spread some around. This has to be freshened regularly though. It can also be added to compost to beef it up. Blood meal is sometimes effective also. You can also rig up a mobil motion sensor to use with a noise maker and/or flood light. Ric