One of the reasons our deer deterrent works so well is because of the movement of the golf ball.  I was reminded of this when a deer walked quite close to me in the woods the other day.  I had stopped to rest, so the deer had a hard time deciding whether my still form was just another stump in the forest or was something to be afraid of.  It watched and waited, stamping its hoof to try to startle me into motion, then decided I wasn't a threat and wandered on its way.

The most effective deer deterrents always seem to include some kind of motion.  I encourage you to keep this in mind when designing your own!

We got a gift about a year before we started making our own deer deterrents of these "Night Guard" units. It seems like a good idea. A small solar cell charges a battery during the day and at night a little red L.E.D. light flashes with the intention of mimicking the eye of a predator and thus scare away any deer intruders.

The instructions tell you to move them around every now and then so the deer don't get used to them and we did, but it only seemed to provide a brief pause for our deer. Within a week we were seeing additional signs of nibbling and hoof prints in the garden.

The website states "Night time predators see the flashing light and believe it to be of another organism and feel threatened, so they stay away". I think it looks more like a VCR when the clock needs to be set. Perhaps this technology can work for a smaller deer population, or maybe in a different situation, but I have to give its performance around here two thumbs down.

Maybe this idea could be refined to look more like the real thing? I would like to see an improved version someday, but for now I 'm going to stick with the home made deer deterrent plans available for free on this website.

Mark hit the nail right on the head with his review of the Night Guard deer deterrent.  But, in fairness, I do have to say a couple of things in the product's defense.

Night Guard has excellent customer service policies.  Of the four units that arrived in our gift order, one was not working properly.  I gave the company a call, and they sent out a new deterrent along with a self addressed, stamped envelope to mail my defective unit back.  The procedure was entirely painless and left me with a very good taste in my mouth.

Also, although the Night Guard product didn't seem to do diddly-squat in our garden, my father had different results.  He affixed Night Guards to four sides of the homemade stand shown here, moving it every day within his garden, and reported that it kept the deer away.  It's quite possible the deer were just repelled by his increased presence in the garden though.  The deer population in my father's area appears to be considerably lower than ours, and at those levels most of the mainstream deer deterrents work well.  Click here to see how your region stacks up on the deer population scale.

The main difference between a deer repellent and a deer deterrent is the reapplication process. With a good mechanical deterrent you never need to reapply anything.

Even the best and most expensive deer repellent will eventually wash away and lose its intensity requiring a second coat of whatever smelly substance you've settled on.

This approach might be fine if you're just trying to scare off one or two deer from a prized flower in your yard, but if you've got any kind of serious deer population I might suggest the smell away approach to be more of an urban solution for areas not any bigger than an average flower bed.

Photo credit goes to Steve Fraser and his awesome hiking trail website at hikingthecarolinas.com.

 

I've often wondered how effective a nice wind chime might be at scaring away deer from a garden.

Some environments will have enough steady wind to keep the chime banging, but if you live in an area with little or no wind this battery powered spinner is an option to consider.

This method should be considered experimental, and if any readers have had some success with keeping deer away with wind chimes I'd appreciate a comment on how long you've been solving the deer problem with this rather attractive approach.

In December, our power went out for two weeks and we stole all of our deer deterrents' extension cords to hook the fridge and freezer up to the generator.  After the power came back on, we let our deer deterrents slide.  After all, the deer were following their winter paths, a good distance from our garden, and all of our succulent perennials were under a thick mulch cover.

Recently, though, I've been seeing hoof prints a bit too close for comfort.  Tender shoots are beginning to pop up both in the woods and the garden, and I suspect the deer's gut bacteria are making their shift as well.  I figure it's only a matter of a few days until they discover that my strawberries are sending up new leaves, and then we'll be done for.

So I sent Mark out this week to plug the deterrents back in.  It took him an hour or two to get them all running, disentangling wind-blown chains and rewiring bits that had pulled loose.  Now I'm regaled by the gentle clang of deterrents as I work in the garden, and am content that my fruits and vegetables are safe for the moment.

Now is the time to start thinking about protecting those young lettuce sprouts from being a tasty snack to some over indulged buck.

You might notice how this configuration provides a slight variation of clanging and scraping noise, a feature I hope will prevent our enemy from getting accustomed to such sounds.

My newest book spans 300 million years, with tales of chemical warfare and sex changes.  Due to its epic scope, I guess I should be pleased that it only took me fifteen years to research and eighteen months to write and polish.

Sugar Hill: A Microcosm of Central Appalachian Ecology is one part trail guide and two parts stories about our local ecology, flora, and fauna.  The book is now available for $7 in ebook format...or you can just read the whole thing for free on its website.  Even if you never plan to visit southwest Virginia, I suspect the book will explain at least one mystery relevant to your own ecosystem.  And there's even a section on deer overpopulation!

Whenever I talk to people about Mark's deer deterrent invention, the question I inevitably get is, "How do you sleep through the noise?"  I suspect that our videos make the clanging seem much louder than it actually is --- we live way out in the country where there is no street noise to drown the deterrents out, and I can barely hear them with the windows closed.  If you lived in an area with more noise pollution, you probably wouldn't hear them at all.