A baited electric fence can work quite well. This is not normal
electric fence configuration btw.
You mount the fence by placing two strands, one above the other, about
2-3' off the ground, seperating the strands by about 6". You will run
one strand hot, and the other as ground. This ensures a maximum hit
when contact is made between the two.
You next place bait hanging from the upper strand, but above the lower
strand. Apple scents work well. Even hanging bits of apple from string
will work.
The object of the game is to get the deers nose in between the two
strands of electric fence. When the controll box discharges, a maximum
of electric shock is sent across the very sensitive deer nose. It hurts
like hell, and the deer takes off, away from the direction of the pain.
The deer will quickly learn to associate serious pain with the
location, and avoid it.
>>> Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com> 06/25/02 04:45PM >>>
My travails with wildlife eating my apple trees continues. I've
beaten
off the gopher assault, now its the deer. My wife and I laboriously
made
wire cages for each apple seedling and I put in two t-posts to hold
each
in place. It worked well for the last three years but last week one
of the local deer learned how to stand on the wire to reach the leaves
past the top, and how to smash the cages in to get to more leaves on
the side. Then it used the same trick to eat half the leaves off all
my almond trees.
There's two young bucks hanging around plus a number of does and
fawns.
We don't normally get bucks this time of year, they usually stay
farther
up in the hills and only come down for the rut.
I'd like to discourage them from hanging around. Its not legal to
shoot
guns in my county (I'm in a rural corner of the county that has most
of Silicon Valley in it), deer season isn't for another month or more
and I'm vegetarian in any case. So I'm looking for a way to let the
deer know that they're not welcome here besides killing and eating
them.
I don't like dogs so that's not an option. Besides, I've seen the
local
deer chase coyotes, unless it was a tough dog it might get its ass
kicked.
What I need is a mountain lion to come down and eat some deer but its
sort of hard to just ring them up and tell them to come over for
dinner...
oh, and I'm not a commercial orchard so I can't get a depredation
permit.
Hence the paintball gun. My theory is that I can get close enough to
them
to shoot them and give them some welts. I have no problem getting
close
enough to throw rocks at them and I have a lousy throwing arm. I could
shoot them with my pellet rifle but I'd injure them and then I'd have
a bunch of gimpy deer around the place. Its probably illegal anyhow,
and I don't want to injure them I just want them to leave my trees
alone.
So does anyone have any recommendations? Where do you get
CO2? Can you use compressed air instead? Whats the range?
Of course if there's a way to discourage them that involves fire
or explosives I'm all ears.
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