My friend seems to have it down to a science. He feeds them corn, spreads a ring out on the ground twice a day, about a gallon jug full (he does this in two areas). The deer come and eat the corn, get fat on it and apparently have no room for the hostas that are just about 15 feet away. Brilliant!

interesting....i am thinking about transplanting a zillion (approx) of the plain old ones into the edge of the woods that abuts my property. wonderin if that would distract them from my hosta which are about 400 feet away. we already have a dog who is of no use at all regarding deer. (but we love her to bits anyway.) i have lived here for 30 years, some years, hardly a munch. other years, look out.

Molly, have you tried Liquid Fence Deer and Rabbit Repellent? It the only thing I've found that works for me. I spray it around the bed about every 5 days. It stinks to high heaven while spraying it but boy does it work!

It is illegal here in CA. We have mountain lions showing up in cities here going after the deer that people are feeding. They can eat pets and small children.

-Babka

Here is a link that might be useful: Keep the Deer Wild

i'm not sure this would bother my conscience. they've eaten half of our many, many hosta this year. i would just be moving their dinner table a few hundred feet. maybe i would be re-baiting. is THAT illegal? is it possible to rebait something if it hasn't been baited in the first place? hmmmm.....

I think I read in the Hosta Journal a story where the experience was that some deer are connoisseurs in finer things, will not stop at cheap hostas, but will search for the expensive newly bought hostas and eat them first. They will eat them a little bit at a time so it hurts humans more.

Guess it depends on your location. No mountain lions around here. We're a little too suburban for that.

Oh, and isn't baiting deer in reference to hunting them? Feeding them just to feed them has nothing to do with "baiting" them, which would be a completely separate issue.

This post was edited by funnthsun on Sun, Jul 6, 14 at 15:56

Lancifolia and ventricosa borders work well; I once sold a friend in Nebraska about 2000 lancifolia eyes (in clumps, a field row I had used for that purpose) for $50.

He planted them around the outside of his garden and they "fed" the deer for a few years until they moved on to other vegetation.

I got the idea from Alex Summers who had tried this successfully on his farm in lower Delaware.

Deer are relatively heavy grazing animals and will eat anything once they get hungry. We use homemade "deeraway" now on shrubs outside our deer fence.

I don't have enough lancifolia or ventricosa today but someone you know may have a long border of mature plants that can be thinned out.

Bruce

i have always been mystified by peeps.. who get all excited about JBeetle traps.. and hanging them in their yards...

its attractant.. is a pheromone ... and the key word there is.. ATTRACTANT ...

the suggestion of ATTRACTING THEM to your yard seems quite utterly ridiculous.. if you think about it ...

i always used to joke.. you give them out a presents.. to the 4 or 5 neighbors upwind.. AND ATTRACT THEM OUT OF YOUR YARD...

the same logic goes here.. with the thought of attracting them to the feed pile... what the hell happens in fall.. when they tell all their homies about the goldrush down on 666 Elm street.. and 3000 of them show up for the free food????

but hey.. if it works.. it works .... we will never know otherwise ...

ken

ps: if they all show up in late fall... one might argue.. that them mowing them down.. will save on fall cleanup ... plus.. they will heel them in for you ...

Well, the logic is you can either have 10 that know where the food is (food supplied by you) and they don't eat the expensive stuff OR you can have 3 that don't know where the food is and get to pick for themselves i.e. your expensive Gunther's Prize. Course, you can always choose whichever you want, the master of your own destiny, yada yada.

No brainer to me. If they're gonna eat anyway, feed them what you don't care about. They're not gonna bring the whole clan over, just a few friends, you know, just like you would to a party, LOL. Only the closest ones that are the most fun to talk to :)

On the flipside, I totally agree about the June bugs. They REALLY do invite the entire clan! That's just ludicrous!

I used to have a gazillion of the 'green & white' ones...deer loved those but it didn't stop them from eating the other ones.

This year, I'm using Liquid Fence and it's been working great so far. I say 'so far' because the does are just now emerging from the woods with their little ones.

A while back I started a thread suggesting that soaking some pieces of paper mache type cardboard (egg cartons, beer coasters, etc) with Liquid Fence and then tucking the soaked cardboard in, around, & under plantings might help to alleviate the need to keep respraying Liquid Fence. You would need to train the deer first by spraying plants a few times to teach the deer to associate the smell with a taste that they don't like. My thinking is that the cardboard will retain the odor even after a rain washes the LF off the leaves and serve to remind the deer. Another poster suggested covering the cardboard with a perforated plastic cup--an excellent suggestion--to help preserve the odor even longer.

I haven't tried this yet...so far one good spraying & a couple of light mistings to top off have been working. Not much rain and my hostas are mostly sheltered under trees.

As to feeding deer to keep them away from hostas...

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is one of the reasons why feeding deer has been prohibited in some areas. It's thought that feeding deer helps to spread CWD.

From one of the many sites on CWD:

It is believed that CWD prions are spread both directly (animal-to-animal contact) and indirectly (soil or other surface to animal). Prions are likely shed through the saliva and feces, and urine of deer. Prions can remain infective in the soil for several years.

That was the topic of Larry's Garden on Channel 4 news in Jacksonville this morning. You could probably find the article on News4Jax. He mentioned growing rosemary, blue salvias (the giant ones) and Indian Hawthornes to deter them. I missed the first half of his talk. He said to plant a 2-3 foot border of these plants around the plants you want to protect. We had a lady in town used a double elaborate electric fence to keep them out of the community garden.

all good info....pondering....oh, and btw, for the most part, the deer only ate my plain old fashioned hosta, that came from my grandmother's garden. i have tons of it, hence my idea of planting a catch crop.

bruce, recipe for homemade deeraway, please? thank you.....

ci_lantro, i knew nothing about cwd, thanks for info.

If I had this problem I would be 100 percent sure to be making a automated garden hose squirter to soak everything that moved....

homemade deeraway recipe;

2 eggs thoroughly mixed in a gallon of water, spice with garlic/hot pepper to suit and sometimes a bit of Palmolive soap as spreader.

If gardens smells like Caesar salad, so be it!

leafwatcher, i have 3 but they don't cover all my gardens and i don't have the water pressure for more....

all good info....pondering....oh, and btw, for the most part, the deer only ate my plain old fashioned hosta, that came from my grandmother's garden. i have tons of it, hence my idea of planting a catch crop.

Sounds like an absolutely bad idea to me. What exactly would someone do in the winter for other plants or shrubs? (assuming they live in a zone that has winter)

You want to dissuade them from your area. Bruce has the right idea, but any egg mixture must be put through a blender and strained through a few layers of cheesecloth if you plan to use a sprayer. Studies have shown that the sulfur smell in putrid eggs (they go putrid, but don't smell bad) mimics the smell of urine from a well fed wolf. Commercial products almost always contain putrefied egg. Who studies this stuff? Any peeper will do, Cayenne or the stronger the better. Some recipes call for some milk as well.

Jon

My sister had a neighbor who fed the deer behind his house near the property line between them. More and more deer came to eat the corn. A whole heard of deer gathered after just a couple of years. Her hosta were eaten every year, some completely to the ground, in addition to the corn. Then he quit one year. It took several years, but now she has only a few deer visiting and munching on her hosta. The damage is not as noticeable and the hosta, so far this year, have not been eaten to the ground. You need to be prepared to provide more and more food as more deer arrive and your neighbors might not appreciate your efforts. Also, deer drop deer ticks, which spread lymes disease.