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Battling Bambi - Page 10

© Marge Talt

The sample on the left is much heavier with larger openings (approximately one inch x one and a half inches (2.54 x 3.81 cm). It's also more expensive. This netting is still prone to catching on every possible twig going, but the heavier weight means it's easier to unhook and it doesn't catch on buttons, glasses and other parts of your anatomy as easily. It will withstand more impact than the light weight net, but will still break under the weight of a full-grown deer. It is, however fairly easily mended by lacing it up with twine or patching an extra bit over the tear.

The lower part of the fence is chickenwire. It was originally the heavy duty green plastic garden fencing that is also readily available at the DIY stores.

I had hundreds of feet of this to begin with - also left over from my annual shrub containment program.

I bought more of it and had reached the last hundred feet (30.48m) of the project when I ran out and none was available. In desperation, I purchased a four foot by one hundred foot (1.21 x 30.48 m) roll of chicken wire. I found that it worked much better than the plastic, which was too flexible.

Deer were rolling under the plastic fencing during construction, as though it wasn't there.

If you want to watch something humorous, provide your deer with a flexible fence and watch them go under it. Despite looking like some enormous insect with legs askew, paddling a canoe in white water, they can get under a fence in record time.

In the end, I went back around the finished part of the fence and added a layer of chickenwire on top of the plastic that had been installed.

My fence wouldn't be quite as visible if the green plastic had been removed. It tends to stand out more than the netting, which is virtually invisible, or the chicken wire, which is quite shiny to start with, although it does dull down with weathering.

This image shows the overlapping join between the bottom wire and the top netting.

I discovered that it was necessary to wire these together at approximately three foot (.91m) intervals because deer can also insert themselves between layers if anything is at all flexible.

As I mentioned, deer go under as fast as over, so any fence needs to be secured to the ground if it has any give at all. Ignore the advice of some sites to leave netting loose to flap in the wind. This might startle the deer initially, but they'll soon learn they can just roll under it.

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