Mitigating Deer in the Residential Landscape – 3 Alternatives for Homeowners

1. Plant deer resistant plants – Visit the Rutgers NJAES website or CLICK HERE
   • Effective in low to moderate deer population areas
   • Moves problem somewhere else
   • Plants may not be native, impact on other native wildlife
   • Few ornamentals classified as rarely damaged
   • Few plants are truly deer resistant

2. Use Repellants
   • Costly, requiring reapplication often
   • Impractical for large areas
   • Effectiveness varies on availability of other food, deer hunger, rainfall (need to reapply), attractiveness of plants to deer
   • Should be used with other methods
   • May cause plant damage
   • Less effective in high deer populations
   • Problem will continue to escalate

3. Install  Fencing (exclusion)
   

Fence individual plants (tubes, netting, caging plants)

• Labor intensive to install
• Use of tubes can be deadly to birds
• Good for smaller areas
• Can be highly successful for individual specimens

Fence the perimeter (fence needs to be 6’ high or double fence spaced 4’ apart)

• Costly
• May need ongoing maintenance
• Aesthetics change
• Commercial netting can be cheaper and effective for low deer populations
• Stockade fences can add to deer trepidation about jumping fence
• Consider angled or double fencing which deer may have a harder time jumping
• Town permits & ordinances must be observed and obtained
• Fence with high-tensile woven wire effective (wire atop 6 foot fence to height of 8’)

Electric fencing

• Not recommended due to harm to other people, wildlife.
• Considered a short term solution unless continually enforced

See our Deer 101 for details.