Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Those [bleep] Deer Ate My

Used a mineral tub full of potting soil. Carefully planted some pecans.
I had 8 come up and set out 6 of the best ones in the front yard! 😁!
I very carefully and religiously watered those little fellas for two years!
Noticed one looked sickly, then dropped it's leaves and died!
WTH!?
Then another.
DAMNED GOPHERS WERE EATING THE ROOTS!
Trapped the crap out those buggers! Only two of the 6 trees remain! 😖

Rlott: I get both Mule Deer and Whitetailed Deer in my yard and they eat everything from Pine needles to Rhubarb leaves!
We gave up with ground flowers and elevated flower planters and even hanging flower pots - the Deer get to them all.
The VarmintWife even bought "plastic flowers" to adorn our planters and baskets and the Deer pull them outa the soil and walk away with them and spit them out.
To tell the truth "I" would MUCH rather have the Mule Deer and Whitetails in my yard than flowers.
My Deer even reach up and knock down my bird feeders and eat the seeds!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I figure I need to get a deer to make up for what they ate that I planted.

Moose are the problem here. They like cold climate crops, cabbage, broccoli, Brussels. Also pumpkins. Neighbors have apple trees. Have to have a fence around each tree.

We have a pretty little creek as the back border of our yard. Big maple, willow, ash, mulberry, crabapple trees and lilac and cranberry bushes border the creek banks. From that creek bank to the road in front of the house is the War Zone. For the last nine years I’ve fought to try to have a few decorative plants and flowers. Going to throw in the towel after this year. Can’t keep ahead of the rabbits and deer.

A damn ‘coon just tipped over my yard waste barrel…why? Nothing in there but twigs and dead flowers. The Vartarg is sitting next to the fireplace. If we were back on the farm, that coon would be hurtin’!

They never bother my hostas, and I can't explain why.

They ate on some of my wife’s Hostas a few years ago when they were newly planted. Don’t seem to like the mature Hostas as well.

Ron

Deer ate 120 ft of corn into ground last year. Plus 2/3rds of 240 ft of green beans. Initially thought it was coons until the green leaves started disappearing off climbing beans 3 ft up in the air. Electric fence for the garden this year...

I get one or two of them in the yard occasionally. They nibble on stuff, but Liquid Fence seems to work pretty well, at least I didn’t lose any tulips this year.

We lose more stuff, mostly newly sprouted veggies, to those obnoxious robins than to anything else. They just can’t resist a patch of soft earth, so we have to net or cage almost everything until it grows a good bit. Why anyone like those noisy, pushy bastards is beyond me. It sure ain’t because they’re pretty….

50 years ago on a road trip with my mom to visit my uncle in Lake Charles. We stopped along the way to visit a historic site set up to honor Audubon. I still remember a display showing one of his drawings or painting of a robin. Part of the display was a neatly typed note stating that Audubon considered robin breast to be some of the tastiest meat from song birds in the U.S.

No doubt if the historic site still exists, that particular comment is no longer present...

Robins taste like dove.....................or so I've been told.

Deer won’t eat as much as a moose…

Y'all ain't feeding that poor moose enough. Gotta fill it out to fill the freezer...

I have very little problems with deer, except they nip my baby oak trees. We have a lot more problems with raccoons and to some degree , robins. We have many mullberry trees in out back yard. If we dont get them, the coons and robins will. About 17 yrs. ago I planted about 100 white pines to replace the famr land.. Now they are re seeding and I was very happy to see about 40 little pines coming up. I come back this spring and almost all have been bitten off. It is surely the rabbits . I love rabbit hunting , so I make brush piles out of the hybrid poplar branches when I cut down the poplars for firewood. I will put a bucket over them this fall. A bit off subject , but I had so many rabbits on my 2 ac. of brush years back, and every year there were less rabbits. I was told in the small game thread that they need more salt , so I put out a salt block and they are coming back now.

Don't any of you have dogs?

I ripped up our entire flower bed when we moved in, on one side I planted 6 oakleaf hydrangeas. They find them every year. 6ft and blooming one day, still 6feet the next without any leaves. Just found them again the other night but didn't hit them too bad. Irish springs around the plants doesn't work, the spray repellent can be a pain to constantly apply.

I've planted at least 24-30 azaleas around the yard, I think I had only one of my natives bloom this year, they nibble on the tips and I never have buds to bloom the next year. My encores halfway bloom since they can throughout the season but my natives almost never bloom due to the browsing.

Mexican petunias are a lost cause too, they keep them mowed down. They all but walk on my front porch to get to whats in my flower pots.

I've probably put out 50 daffodil bulbs around the yard, they'll come up but they eat the flowers as soon as they emerge.

Don't even get me started on my muscadine vine.

Everything has to eat something. Or it dies.

Good on you for feeding the deer, although it isn't recommended. lol

Good point. Outside dog(s) will usually chase any critter out of the yard or kill it.

We have two Labs that help[but we're gone too much].

Over the past 2 months we've been in Tenn almost every Thur-Mon.

The deer moved right in. You can see where they've hammered everything growing in the buffet we've planted them.

I only 'try' tomatoes anymore.

50' long by 10' wide, metal T-posts with 5' mesh wired to it and tent staked every 3-4' in the ground.
I make a skinny V for entry/exit with a couple of small chains clipped across the opening.
It slows the garden predation down but doesn't completely stop it.