Deer have become a huge pest in areas of the Shuswap. In fact, some people are waving a white flag in surrender and have given up on gardening altogether! I’m not ready to do that even though these stupid, albeit beautiful, creatures continue to wreak havoc in our orchards and the garden center. Earlier this year I was beginning to think that a fence 10 feet high - preferably armed with an electric perimeter fence baited with peanut butter – might be the only effective method to stop the destruction!
The internet has hundreds of home-remedy ‘recipes’ - almost all scent or taste deterrents. The recipes recommend eggs, human hair, human urine, or Irish Spring Soap and, of these, the egg-based concoctions are probably the most effective. In almost every case, however, the effects last only as long as it takes the deer to become habituated or for the scent to wash away.
As deer populations have exploded across North America, deer deterrent products have become readily available. Each works slightly differently and each succeeds…to a point. ‘Plantskydd’, a blood-based product, works on the principle that blood is one of nature’s ‘Danger Ahead’ signals that animals take heed of. It, and blood meal, work reasonably well if applied around the perimeter of a vegetable or rose garden but it looks awful, is messy to use, and you cannot spray it on edibles nor should you spray it on ornamentals because this ‘cure’ looks worse than the problem!
Two other deterrents are ‘Bobbex’ and ‘No Bite’. ‘Bobbex’ smells and looks awful when first applied but the scent is barely detectable to humans within a day or two, and it dries clear. It doesn’t wash off so treated foliage remains protected through the growing season. The problem with ‘Bobbex’ is that new growth is not protected so the product has to be reapplied repeatedly.
‘No Bite’ is in an easy-to-use aerosol can and contains Denatonium benzoate (Bitrix) – which tastes truly awful and lasts for a long time. Because ‘No Bite’ is easy to use, it’s a good product to use with ‘Bobbex’; use the ‘Bobbex’ to give season-long protection to the bulk of the plant and use ‘No Bite’ to give protection to new growth as it appears. Neither ‘Bobbex’ nor ‘No Bite’ should be sprayed on edibles; if it tastes awful to deer, it will taste worse to you!
These are effective products, however, if you’re diligent in spraying new growth throughout the season. Bobbex works especially well to protect trees, shrubs and roses from winter foraging; it doesn’t wash off and the protected stems and foliage will be protected until growth resumes next spring. Because we didn’t have time to reapply the products described above as often as necessary to get the protection we needed in the garden center, I decided to source a product we used to sell, but haven’t been able to get, for a few years. I ordered some ‘Predator Pee’ (in this case coyote urine) from a company in Maine that ships into Canada. When it arrived, we soaked tea bags (the ones with strings and tags) in the urine and hung them up around the perimeter of the garden center. The ‘pee-bags’ were hung in June and there’s been no damage since! The company calls this ‘creating a pee-rimeter.’ The advantages of this product are that the pee-rimeter can surround a large area, it doesn’t have to be applied to plants to be effective, it lasts a relatively long time and it’s undetectable to the human nose. Because deer can become even more of a problem when food is scarce through the winter, I’ll ‘re-charge’ the already-hung ‘pee-bags’ by adding drops of urine and that should make them effective through the winter.
Protect plants especially susceptible to deer-browse damage (hedging cedars and wintercreeper come to mind). If you have a large area to protect, predator urine may be the best choice although you will have to order it online to get it.