Deer Fence (Finally!)

Brooks has been talking about a deer fence in the back of our property for years. The terrain is not friendly for fence building however. Our property is odd shaped. We have a 100 foot long driveway coming up from the road and at the end of the driveway the main property is 120 feet by 360 feet. The house is built near the front of this piece with the back 3/4 being very steep with dense brush and trees, home to deer and eagles. It would be an impossible (as in way too expensive) task to fence this whole area off. Instead, Norma had Beau, her lawn guy, cut and remove the brush (mostly horsetails) from a 120 by 50 foot area behind the house.

On Tuesday Brooks and LindaLee drove up and we went fence shopping. We bought two 165' rolls of six foot high deer and rabbit fence plus steel posts. The idea was to use trees wherever we could to support the wire fence and use the steel posts in between the trees. We bought one eight foot wood post and cement to form one corner where there was no convenient tree. The finished product would not be perfectly straight but no one ever goes up there because of the steep terrain and the fence will soon be covered by wild growth in any case. It will soon be invisible and imperfections impossible to detect. It will also completely block off the three main game trails that the deer use to access their favourite flower buffet.

It was a dirty job for Brooks and LindaLee, slipping and sliding up and down the wet bank (45 degrees in places) and reaching into the blackberry bushes to place the fence and posts, with me helping where I could. After several hours of hard work, everyone ended up with deep scratches and muddy clothes. Thanks Brooks and LindaLee!

That same night I watched one of the deer standing on the far side of the fence, wondering how to get to her reserved table at the rosebud diner. Their only access now is up the driveway from the busy road, something one of them actually did on Thursday afternoon. Brooks and Norma are now talking about a swinging aluminium gate to completely block off the driveway. The total cost of the fence was about $700, including material, Beau (the lawn guy), food and beer. About $3.20 a foot but I have about 100 feet of fencing left over if I can find someone to buy it. Norma says this is cheap as the deer eat about $700 worth of flowers a year. That might be a slight exaggeration, but we have spent a lot of money over the years on solutions that did not work.