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Deer damage...

D

Dave H (MI)

Well-known Member
I have mentioned in passing to a few on here that I have a terrible deer problem. The damage was very bad in 2018 so it was not much of a stretch to decide not to plant when the weather was so bad in May this year. I did plant one small field up by the barn which I thought was far enough from the woods to protect it. Less than 10 acres. Thought I would share a photo of it. This is a month or so ago...it is far worse today. Before you jump to any conclusions, this was well planted and a good stand came up on 30" rows. It was fertilized and sprayed and fairly jumped out of the ground. Almost immediately the spacing on the plants started to increase from a few inches to a few feet. Then the larger plants were eaten to about a foot high. This started at the back and worked forward. In the end only about 10 rows encircling the barn were left. I walked out last week to evaluate it and found only 3-4 ears in 2-300 feet of row. Today there are NO ears in this field. Hunting doesn't even put a dent in the population. Keep in mind...I also have all the other predators. Anyway...a picture to show just how bad it can get:


cvphoto41651.jpg
 
Your local ag extension office should be able to get you crop damage permits. Normal hunting isn t enough when they re that bad. You need to stack em up.
 
There is deer damage here also, but yours... WOW !!!!

I have heard that pelleted nitrogen fertlizer spilled in fields and not cleaned up will become a lick spot for deer. And they do not survive the ingesting of fertilizer.
 
You need to convince someone that your area needs a pack of timber wolves. In the past I have had damage nearly as bad as yours, but since the wolves have moved in, damage is very little. But they don't chase away bears.
 
Come to the UP where the snow and wolves thin the deer herd down to a healthy level. Just keep an eye on the livestock as the wolves can be trouble. Also the short cold growing season makes corn an almost impossible crop.
 
Sure was nice when it came up. Wish I had pics of that. I have easily $1000 in inputs there. Yield is exactly zero.
 
In my neck of the woods, we crop producers consider deer the exact equivelant of a field mouse. One eats the crop from the bottom up and the other eats from the top down. Both of these pests are worthless and costly if not controlled. Years ago we had hundreds of deer in a 50 mile square now you're lucky to see one in the same area. The cure is that several farmers purchased old used backhoes and several 50 round magazines for their favorite AR. Now since the deer population is gone we have no hunters leaving our gates open etc and currently have a healthy coyote population to take care of the lowly mouse. Now we can get back to guessing the weather.

Sometimes everybody has to get together to solve a common problem.
 
Copper sulfate in cow mineral works on goats n sheep,some extra copper sulfate set in with mineral in tubs scattered areound might help
 
MAny years ago a local farm had similar crop damage, they were able to get a nuisance permit and thin the herd.
 
Do like a couple large farms in Northern VA have done,plant the fields for deer to eat and charge for hunting,one farm is getting $100 day to hunt and extra if you kill
a deer,bear or turkey.
 
Me too. not so much this year, but I've had similar damage. One year I lost most of my oat crop. Or the year that they kept my sweetcorn down to under a foot tall in my backyard garden. (We plant about 1/2 an acre - sell some. Feed stalks to livestock.) I could see places in my hay where they put a dent in my oats and hay this year. Ate half of my sweetcorn this year. Later this week, I and some invited guns are going to try to put a dent in the deer overpopulation. I got no other solutions. (We're in the CWD area, maybe that will slow the population. - I'm not for that. Hoping we can delay the inevatible progress of CWD.)
 
Wolves is not the solution. Ranchers have been shooting them since the beginning of time to keep them out of cattle. Piling them up like cord wood is probably the cure over time. Talk to your DNR guy to see about some block permits. Should help. Give the deer to people you want to.
I would definitely have your conservation officer see the field. He might even offer you some ideas for solutions.
 
Looks like a feed lot there are so many tracks. My cameras have been picking up four bucks moving together, easy to tell them apart. The does are harder and are almost constantly in front of the cameras. This farm is 20 miles from home base and I just cannot keep driving out there at night to chase them. I have started the process of switching it over to hay but that comes with it's own set of headaches as it spreads the equipment for that pretty thin. Need to work on a plan.
 

Electric fence is the only solution. I could not raise a simple garden without an electric fence. Deer, raccoons, possums, and rabbits.
 
Yes, I hate CWD too. My daughter the vet to be won't let me eat the darn things if I don't get the head tested. I don't know what the process is for that as I haven't killed one yet. Last year a fella gave me $2K to hunt the place after I showed him pictures and antler sheds I had around. Told him where to sit and he killed an 8 point the first day. Spent the rest of the season bumming around the place making a nuisance of himself and killed nothing.
 
My DNR guy is a girl and not sympathetic, but she IS tired of getting her ear chewed on. What finally swayed it was the numbers. This is a very small field. Last year I planted the field behind this one. That one is 30 acres and, once again, a very good stand. But by November when I pulled the combine into the field it looked like the picture above. When I was done I had half a day in the combine and just shy of 300 bushels. That worked out to about a $6K loss on one field. I'm just happy I kept most of my fields, owned or leased, in hay. Keeps my head above water as long as I do small squares.
 
We are abundant with them here too. They do these to soybeans, not sure how the large operator who plants a 20 acre field behind my woodlot makes it work with beans. I see he did more beans than corn this year. They decimated this field, I have photos from earlier in the season.

Geese decimate corn if near the large pond here. There is a 30 acre field that is adjacent to this 20 acre pond and adjacent to my overgrown field. This was always a very productive field. Geese in recent times have ruined a planting of hay and the last year it was in corn, just decimated it. He stopped planting it, now in all kinds of weeds. The geese for some reason have either lost all their young for 2 years now or someone oiled the eggs. I think it's snapping turtles. Yours truly has released hatchlings over the years when I could get to a nest of their eggs that was not disturbed, skunks or some other animal gets every single nest unless it rains to wash off the scent. So, the corn crop may have a chance and you can get the depredation permit to kill 25 or 30 geese. If more than that need to get permission somehow.

The deer have an awful lot of browse and they like all the areas I keep cut that is always green, mostly grasses, with some weeds. If the area was just ag crops and little of anything else like it was years ago, they would be even more of a problem.

I'm not sure how this one local vegetable/farm stand does it every year with sweetcorn, they plant what looks like 10 acres, very little is disturbed. Unless sprayed with repellent, my sweet corn would not stand a chance.
 
I have a low area the geese like. I found out years ago that if I wait for the entire flock to arrive, then shoot one of them, they learn quick and find a better spot. I just leave the dead goose there for a reminder. I have seen them fly over and catch sight of it then fly away.
 
Exodus 23:29 "I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild beasts multiply against you."

My Grandpa's brother thinks the deer have come back so strong because of the lack of cow herd presence in the Minnesota countryside. They even have bears roaming around where he grew up now, something he NEVER saw as a boy...

He grew up north of the twin cities with dairy farms all over the place in the 1930s and 40s.

I say there could also have been a shift in perspective from the mentality of the olden day farmer defending his 80 acre home parcel from crop damage, to that of absentee renter farmers dealing with huge total acreages.

Less "close attention per acre"...

Where did all the country people go? To the cities, only to have smaller and smaller families? Here come the deer to stake their claims!
 
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