In my case, the deer have plenty of undeveloped National Forest woodland and swampy area to browse in, but they are drawn to easier pickings and open lawns in the lake shore developments. Not helped by stupid people who put out winter feed for them for their selfish viewing pleasure in their yards, despite recent state regulations against it. Mostly to prevent nose to nose spread of wasting disease, but also conditions them to close contact with humans and their dwellings. One guy I know was so proud that he could walk among "his" herd of eating deer, pretty sure his neighbors did not appreciate those deer stopping by in the summer to see what the offerings were then.

ddsack wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 8:56 am In my case, the deer have plenty of undeveloped National Forest woodland and swampy area to browse in, but they are drawn to easier pickings and open lawns in the lake shore developments. Not helped by stupid people who put out winter feed for them for their selfish viewing pleasure in their yards, despite recent state regulations against it. Mostly to prevent nose to nose spread of wasting disease, but also conditions them to close contact with humans and their dwellings. One guy I know was so proud that he could walk among "his" herd of eating deer, pretty sure his neighbors did not appreciate those deer stopping by in the summer to see what the offerings were then.

Wait until one of those bucks go into rut and gets protective.
A good hoofing and a rake with the horns will set him straight.

I hope you can find a way to get local hunters to help out. PA has a "successful bowhunter" course, which is basically a certification that you know what you are doing, at least on paper. It is not required for an archery stamp, but I carry the card with me when asking permission.

I know it will be hard if you have anti-hunters that want to throw a wrench in the works. Hiring sharpshooters/paid killers, the very idea makes me sad. I know some people that do that, and they aren't any safer than other hunters I know. Just better insured. They are the same type of person that killed off the bison. That's all I will say.

Shooting bow/crossbow from a treestand is inherently pretty safe because the arrow is going into the ground right near that deer, hit or miss. And if these are big deer, which I would think in Wisconsin they would be, the vital V is pretty big. Establish a limit of 25 yard shots and there shouldn't be many misses with modern equipment. Thirty yards is where there starts to be more possibility of bad hits due to wind or the deer ducking at the sound (aka jumping the string).

They're hiring these so called sharpshooters in congested populated areas.
I'm not a fan of it either.
But here in Texas they are building faster than the deer have time to move and public hunting land is practically existent.
Unless you own property or know someone subsistence hunting is not an option.
Even with the high cost of meat these days paying to hunt on land with a lease is sport hunting not subsistence hunting.
Sadly my days of hunting are over with.
And I have free places to hunt.
I just don't want to go to the trouble of going there.
I was raised hunting on my own property or property I lived on later on in life.
Just the other day the darn deer topped my pepper plants.
I have to drive about 10 miles an hour on my road in the morning so I don't hit one.
They are literally in everyone's yard.
A few years ago one jumped over the front wheel of my motorcycle.
Scared the devil out of me.

I thought I posted this this morning...how my day is going.

Well, color me stupid. Even though the other day a deer ate the top off one of my 2 in-ground tomato plants, causing me to raise my lifebuoy and sachet of Plantskyyd further up on the tomato ladders, I failed to do anything about the 16 plants that I have in legged planters that stand about 3' high. This morning I thought I'd pick my first Artisan Taste Patio that I gave "just one more day" to ripen...except it was gone, along with my ripening Sunorange and Blush, and a bunch of others that were still green.

This is even though I have multiple products...I just didn't use any of them. Just preoccupied with other things I guess, but I actually said to my wife about that Taste Patio, "I hope the deer don't eat it" to which she replied "the deer can't get their head in there, can they?" (referring to the tomato cage) to which I replied "sure they can"...and then did nothing about it.

Been trying to keep everything watered (very dry here), spraying for blight and aphids, trying to stay on schedule at work...so I guess I just zoned it, again, even though, we have been seeing deer in the yard during the day. I already put my remaining lifebuoy pouches (Deer Repel--one of the Amazon reviews said "I think this is just Lifebuoy soap in a net bag"), poured Plantskyyd on the surface, now I'm going back to do some sachet bags of Plantskyyd to tie to the cages. I just can't bring myself to mix up the powdered Plantskyyd to spray on the plants.

Anyway, meh.

Update: So I'm out there hanging up bags of blood, I walk back around to the other side of the planters and there's a deer, looking at me, so I chase him/her away. Then I went inside for a bit, came back out and she (I think it's a she) is eyeing up a couple of large green tomatoes that she already ate one of...so I shooed her and went back in and got my "I Must Garden" spice spray, and now I'm mixing up the liquid Plantskyyd, so I will have deployed all my countermeasures.

Thankfully, about ten days ago we got our first rain in 31 days. Since then the deer that were ravaging the garden have disappeared as things in the surrounding area have greened up. The squirrels are still thieving the tomatoes though. I feel your pain!

The deer are fierce this year and as bold as can be. My next door neighbor has a mulberry tree that is fruiting right now. Deer are coming into the yard in droves. I can chase 2-12 of them away at times in the evening. Once it's dark they have free reigns. I am furious with them even using all my deer deterrents they have eaten all of my Bee Balms, cuphea, begonias, impatience and hosta. My new Summer Sweet shrubs have been eaten on as well as Weigelia. The yards here just can not handle this amount of deer pressure. The deer are eating things that they don't care for because everything that they do like is already gone.

They set up an all night poker game in my front yard.
Complete with booze and loud cursing.
Kept me up all night.

worth1 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 09, 2022 9:02 am They set up an all night poker game in my front yard.
Complete with booze and loud cursing.
Kept me up all night.

They tried that here too but ended up eating their cards.

Well, desperate men do desperate things...this was stuff I had lying around, I ran out of orange fencing so I'll have to make the "door" out of something else:

Ok, got the door up...I wanted to put a "do not disturb" sign on it, but no one here knew how to write that in deer. Hopefully this will hold up for a few weeks until the tomato plants get tall enough for the fruit to be out of the deer's reach.

I'm just about defeated--twice I've chased deer out from INSIDE my "paddock", they apparently jump over the 4' high snow fence. The first time I didn't see how it got out, the second time it ran through the black netting. Apparently fencing needs to be 7-8' high or they will jump over it. They are slowly stripping all the fruit off of my plants. I picked a lot of mature and some green fruit last evening, but I've got some weird Artisan varieties in there that won't ripen off the plant (Green Bee and Agi Red), and still a lot that are within (deer) reach that are immature.

Add to that I had to take the legs off one of those planters after a microburst knocked it over last week, so that one's lower. This evening I'll pick some more and give the planters a dousing with the "I Must Garden" stuff, maybe that will dissuade them a little, or maybe the liquid Plantskyyd, or maybe both. I am coming to the conclusion that now that they know they like tomatoes, nothing I do will keep them out. I thought about buying several rolls of wooden snow fencing and placing that on the ground to create an unstable surface that they won't want to walk on (as suggested in another thread), but that's likely to be several hundred dollars and I don't have much confidence it will deter them, now that they know what the prize is.

I have put up a 6 foot high fence around my garden. Then I also use my extra cages on the inside of the garden to act as a second fence any place in the rows that they could possibly jump and make it for an unpleasant landing for them.

worth1 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 19, 2021 3:06 pm I had one come out of the woods and jump over the front of my motorcycle.
I was only going 10 miles an hour in a 30 because I knew one would jump out at any minute.
The hooves were literally in my face as it went over.

Yeah, a few years back a guy I knew was killed by a deer while riding his motorcycle !

We are finally having another deer cull in the neighborhood. It is long over-due. While setting up the blinds on the golf course adjacent to us they spotted 60+ deer. I think that we only were issued 50 deer tags so I do hope that they will be requesting more. All meat is processed and donated to the homeless shelters and food pantries. I think that we have far more deer than people realize and we could easily harvest 150 per year and the population would still be just fine.

MissS wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 9:06 pm We are finally having another deer cull in the neighborhood. It is long over-due. While setting up the blinds on the golf course adjacent to us they spotted 60+ deer. I think that we only were issued 50 deer tags so I do hope that they will be requesting more. All meat is processed and donated to the homeless shelters and food pantries. I think that we have far more deer than people realize and we could easily harvest 150 per year and the population would still be just fine.

Sounds like a smart move. I'm an admirer of wildlife, but I've also experienced the damage they can do. Even worse is when unmanaged populations are allowed to get to the point where they exceed the carrying capacity of the environment and starve during hard winters. Fortunately there are regular hunting seasons around me and I otherwise cope with electric fencing, Irish Spring soap shavings hung in nylon stockings, and buying bulk sized minced garlic jars the contents of which I fling into my corn patches and just about everything else they eat.

Well the cull did not go as well as planned. Perhaps it was too cold for the hunter's to sit out there. They managed to cull 17 deer. So now the DNR is sending in a group. They have 40 tags and will be issued more if they want them. We now have a plan with the DNR that there will be an annual cull until we get the herd down to their recommended number of 33 deer per square mile. As of now we have 180 per square mile. This is great! Maybe in a year or two we can start to replace all of our landscaping that has been destroyed.

Almost zero public hunting land in Texas.
And the darn things have infested my area.
The lady passed away that had the deer feeder out next to me and I haven't seen it refilled lately by her son.
You ask me the whole family is and or was weird.

worth1 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:13 am Almost zero public hunting land in Texas.
And the darn things have infested my area.
The lady passed away that had the deer feeder out next to me and I haven't seen it refilled lately by her son.
You ask me the whole family is and or was weird.

Texas has expanded publicly available land to hunt deer and other game, now over 1 million acres, but that number might be some lands without deer. https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/hunt/public/

I’m thankful deer aren’t regular visitors to my plot. They are seen more frequently 100 yards across the lake. The squirrels are bad enough. Some friends of ours live in a neighborhood infested with deer. Their garden has to be fortress.

@karstopography
This year a super combo hunting fishing license will only cost me 32 dollars.
Since I'll be 65 or older.
I'm kicking myself in the butt for not buying the lifetime license back when I was 21.
And I sure had the money to do it.
Something you need to talk to your kids about.
It isn't going to get any cheaper and it's for the rest of their lives.