Getting the Deer Out

Getting the Deer Out

Gardening can be a very frustrating activity. Perhaps my greatest frustration in this regard has been the deer. In years past I have worked the soil, planted seeds, watered, and weeded only to have the deer decimate the garden in one night.

Deer love vegetables; they are browsers after all. They have eaten the tops of my bean plants, nibbled young tomato plants to the ground, and walked indiscriminately over and through everything else in the garden, nibbling as they went.

Did you know deer like gladiolas? Check that. They LOVE gladiolas! One year, just as the glad buds were ready to open, the deer went down the rows and ate the buds off the stocks. Ate them like candy! I’m not talking just a few flowers here. I had three 40 foot rows of gladiolas growing in hopes of selling them locally. The deer must have had a party!

In desperation I went to the County Extension Office to see what they could tell me that would help keep the deer out of my garden. The nice people there gave me a brochure prepared by the University of Missouri or maybe it was the Missouri Department of Conservation. Anyway, the gist of the publication was “organize a hunt”. That’s right, organize a hunt and kill as many does as legally permitted and thus reduce the number of deer browsing through the garden.

Well, there were two immediate problems with that approach. One, this was not during hunting season. It was summer and the deer were using my garden as their version of an all-you-can-eat restaurant. And two, my neighbor’s wife, dearly loves deer. Temporarily stymied, I resigned myself to give up gardening.

This spring I found I could no longer suppress the urge to cultivate the soil and plant a garden. But I had a plan. I tilled the soil and planted as usual. Potatoes were the first vegetables I planted. Just about the time put the taters in the ground I started placing my super-duper deer deterrents.

The neighbor lady mentioned above has a hair cutting shop in her basement. She cuts my hair and the hair of most of my extended family. She is more than happy to give me bags full of hair. Some of it is unwashed, some washed, some permed, colored, highlighted, whatever, and 100% human-scented. I dropped wads of hair here and there over the garden. Then I tied one of those ubiquitous plastic bags from you know where full of hair to the handle of my push plow. I parked the push plow at the south edge of the garden so the prevailing breeze would carry the scent through the garden.

To augment the scent of the human hair, I also collected my urine for several days and poured small amounts of it around the perimeter of the garden. I then placed a bucket containing a few ounces of urine at the south edge of the garden along with the aforementioned hair. When I planted tomato and pepper plants, I placed thick hay mulch between them in the rows. I have routinely poured a dollop of urine on the hay between every third and fourth plant.


How, you ask, is this working out for me? Very well, thank you. There was one instance where a couple bean plants were lightly nibbled. No significant damage has been done. Perhaps even more encouraging is the fact that the number of deer prints in and through the garden has dropped drastically. They seem to have altered their browse pattern to avoid the area.

If you are plagued with deer, give this a try.

There is a down side to this. I had made tentative plans to have a deer hunt with some friends this fall and now I’m not sure I can deliver the deer. What about the lady next door? Well, I am trying to take her lots of tomatoes this summer. Maybe we can have our hunt when she and her husband are out of town. We’ll see.