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Battling Bambi - Page 9

© Marge Talt

The fence posts are about six feet (1.8m) apart. The fence line location was determined, in part, by the location of standing trees, which I used in lieu of posts as often as possible. There are pros and cons in using trees. They help stabilize the runs because they don't bend under tension, but they also tend to drop branches or fall over during storms, taking out many feet of fence with them and necessitating major repairs more frequently than I'd like.

My posts are a Jerry-rigged combination of materials. I had numerous T-posts on hand from the yearly enclosing of shrub groups. I also had an unending, regenerating supply of bamboo poles from two stands of running bamboo. My solution was to combine these two items. The metal posts, pounded into the ground provide stability. The bamboo, wired to the metal, supports the netting to the desired height. Deer netting is not heavy, so the light-weight bamboo supports it well. I found that leaving an inch of so of branch when trimming the bamboo provided me with a snag to hook the netting on, to keep it more or less in place until it could be wired to the bamboo. While the bamboo eventually rots and is subject to breakage from falling wood, it's easy to replace. So far falling branches and trees haven't done serious damage to any of the metal posts.

You can see in the image on the right that the bamboo for this post is connected with green plastic covered twist-tie wire. I've used everything I can get my hands on, but the best (and hardest to find) is a round plastic coated wire about 22 gauge. It's thin and flexible enough to twist without too much damage to finger tips but tough enough to last. The twist-tie wire tends to break with time and any real pressure.

There are two weights of plastic netting readily available at DIY stores like Home Depot and Lowes. When I was buying it, both come in rolls seven feet by one hundred feet (2.1 x 30.48m).

The sample on the right is the light weight - and cheaper - type; also known as bird netting. I hate it. It catches on everything and is the devil to work with. It's also not strong enough to withstand deer impact and it's a snake death trap. I've lost a couple of lovely black snakes who got tangled in it and died before I found them and could release them. I have miles of it in the garage and no idea what to do with it. Save yourself a lot of grief and avoid this netting like the plague.

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