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Deer Damage in Crops

F

Fergienewbee

Well-known Member
This is not intended to anger anyone and I'm not nieve about economics, yield, and the high cost of farming. The other day I noticed that the deer have stripped some of the giant ragweed and nipped the tops off other weeds. Is there a direct correlation between deer damage in crops and the use of herbicides? Could deer be discouraged from crops if natural foods were available? I've read that birds actually prefer choke cheeries to cultivated cheeries. Just some idle thinking, which can be a dangerous thing.

Larry in Michigan
 
Deer prefer a variety in their diet. They especially like the good stuff that we also like. Crop damage will continue.
 
Deer by nature are browsers, and will try just about anything once, so their natural foods are what they find. Are you asking if deer avoid crops that have been sprayed?
 
My six deer here who chose to live and have Bambies on my little five acre place on this side of Michigan love: strawberry tips, green bean sprouts and tips, dry bean tips, sunflower leaves, cabbage and brocolli sprouts, lambs quarter(only weed I've seen them eat), sweet corn of any size, mulberries fallen on the ground, mulberry leaves, ladino clover in the fallow plot, ripening pears, apples, and whatever else they can graze upon from Spring to Fall. As cooler weather approaches, they will start harvesting the neighbor's field corn to store up for the cold winter.

They also like to hide behind every mailbox along my road to town.................

I would have some very tasty, tender venison stew come this winter, but there's hardly any vegetables,except turnips, left to put in the pot that they haven't already eaten......

I've got to electrify next year. And buy a box of 12 gauge slugs............
 
larry, this crop damage is clearly the result of an overabundance of horse operations in your area. Suggest you gather up a gaggle of traditional farmers and demand compensation!

Seriously, though- I think deer seem to have a pretty clear idea of what they like the taste of. The deer on my farm will pull the pears off the trees on my lane, walk them 150 yards down to my riding arena, roll 'em around in the stone dust (salty, maybe?) and eat them there. They will do this all night long and hardly touch the apples on the trees in the same area. They also seem to prefer them right off the tree, rather than off the ground. Many nights I have seen them in my headlights as I pull in the drive with 2 front legs up on the trunk of the tree snagging low hanging fruit.
 
Well actually horse farms here don't want anyone killing 'Bambi' about 98% of the time so their farms are breeding/protection areas for deer so there will always be a good supply to eat all the surrounding farmers crops.
 
There are some crops deer apparently will travel miles to eat with Blackeye Peas being #1 on the list.Which is why I always plant a wide strip of them along the road that goes thru my farm so the Roadhunters won't have far to drag them to their pickups.Keeps the deer population under control pretty well and keeps me in good standing with some of the rougher elements of society whose kids might not be eating so well otherwise WIN-WIN-WIN situation
 
OK,I'll try and stay off the soap box on this one. We now have a larger deer population than when Columbus discovered America. Between more deer and losing much of their feeding area to development, the deer have started expanding their diet. When I started deer hunting 40 some years ago you never had crop damage as you do today. I better stop as I'm getting closer to the soap box all the time.
 
Don't know about horse people in your area but I sure wish one of my horses was trained in such a way that I could safely shot a gun off its back. I have rode my horses right up on a deer and 10-20 yards sure is a better shot then 100 yards is. So at least on my horse farm we hunt and even invite people to hunt on my place an there welcome as long as they follow the rules I set up
 
There are 5 deer stands on the back side of my property, and as long as i don't find trash, beer cans or dead appaloosas those hunters are welcome back. These are bow hunters, and I know each of those dudes by sight- any oddballs out back and Uncle Ben White on Rice I am out there.
I find that bow hunters seem to be more respectful of property (out here, anyway) than gun hunters (just an observation, not meant to offend).

I find that the TFs out here are the tightest about hunting on their property because, frankly, they've been screwed by them so often before.
 
Appreciate your restraint and self control Robert. I understand how you can feel the way you do, even though I feel differently.

Don't you agree, though, that the deer population is way beyond anything that nature would have allowed? And that is not good for them, or us?
 
Bruster;

No, I'm not asking if deer avoid sprayed crops. I guess I'm asking are we eliminating all the weeds they might eat leaving only the crops they do eat. And yes, I agree we have far too many deer. I accompanied a wildlife biologist on a crop damage complaint. He asked the farmer if he allowed hunters and if they killed does. The farmer was adamant that he only wanted bucks killed. The biologist told him, "It's the does that are dropping twin fawns every year."

I am not a "bambiite" and have absolutely nothing in common with Roberto's philosophy. I hunt every chance I get. I just prefer bird hunting to deer hunting. And they get in my weedy garden too.

Larry in Michigan
 
I have a little 1.5 acre field that is a funky triangle shape with some tight corners. Hard to spray. It has a creek on two sides and woods on the other. This is the only place I have noticed "real" deer damage this year. They have the beans eat down to the ground in the crabgrass, ragweeds, and johnsongrass. With as many deer as we have around here, if deer liked weeds more than beans and corn, we would not have to spray.

Just what I have seen round here, other deer may like other food stuffs.

Dave
 
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