I have no comment about whether deer like walking on chicken wire.

But you will need a LOT wider section than that. A four foot jump to a deer is like stepping over a root.

Dennis

doubt 4 foot will do much of anything ...

check out the link.. maybe the 6th one might help .. if not.. try the other 622 posts ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

Yes, I've seen that method suggested for deer and other animals, too. I do not know if it works well, or not. Well worth a try, I'd say.

Thanks everyone - I guess the idea was to play off of the habit of deer to not jump horizontally very far - similar to the way people use two 4 ft tall fences running parallel to each other, spaced about 5 ft apart, to control deer.

But maybe the outer barrier actually needs to be tall (as opposed to laying on the ground like I'm considering) and not just a certain distance away from the inner fence. I'd probably set the chicken wire a couple of feet out from the fence, so the edge of it would be more like 6 - 7 feet away from the actual fence. So the deer would need to jump 7 feet horizontally and then still clear the fence at the endâ¦

There's also something like this with just wire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbRRgIbYKgw

I was hoping to avoid needing to rely on sprays and other such deterrents - it's a fairly large area that I want to keep them out ofâ¦

:(

Geez, I don't think that would work. We had a community garden in town and the lady had to use a double electric fence to keep the deer out.

You would need something with a mesh that would trap the deer feet, like a 2 inch by 2 inch mesh, laid parallel to the ground but about 6 inches above. Laid on soil would not trap their feet enough to make them leery of trying to cross. The same affect could be made with fish line stretched at the same height to cause the buggers to stumble a bit.

I think I'm going to try a couple of strands of fishing line strung on some fence posts. Thanks for the input everybody. This will be the cheapest way to experiment and from everything I've read/seen, it seems like it can be quite effective.

Hopefully between that, our fence and our dog, they'll decide to stay out.

Thanks for all of the input! I'll try to remember to post back here in a little while with an update in case anybody else is thinking about trying it...