by Brian Haynes
Wildlife Fans,
I got tired of making exclusion cages for the wildlife plots and ran out of fence. So I decided to make a large exclusion fence. It is 6 feet wide and about 400 feet long and has a 20-year-old Patriot solar fence charger hooked up to it, and I found out the hard way that it still works FINE! It is working pretty well, with a couple of exceptions as you will see. The crops inside the fence are much taller in some cases and a little taller in all of the plots. I took Kale out of our Frozen Forage mix because deer like it too much, too early, and that is holding true in this plot.
The following list ranks all the plots they like the most, based on what’s chewed down outside of the fence:
Bayou Kale - probably 10 inches taller inside the fence after less than a week of the fence being up.
Dwarf Essex Rape, chewed down quite a bit on its own but in the Frozen Forage plot not so much. Sidenote - Rape was by far the slowest to germinate.
Scavenger Radish - maybe 3-4 inches taller inside fence.
Jackpot Turnips - about the same as radish.
Frozen Forage – also about the same as Scavenger Radish and Jackpot turnips.
Big Tine Last Stand - not a lot of chewing; a little more than Purple Tops.
Purple Top - very little chewing on these at all right now but will supply soccer ball size turnips later on.
Pearl Millet borders - they like the brassicas a lot better!
I like brassica plots that build up lots of tonnage in August and September. Brassicas can be a little bitter while they are growing and the deer leave them alone; however, after they get nice and tall in October / November, they become much sweeter and are a tremendous draw after a hard freeze. At that point, they start to smell like rotten cabbage, which attracts the deer from far and wide – that smell is sweet to them.
We don’t want to put clover in the brassicas because that will draw the deer in before hunting season even starts – and they’ll get eaten to the ground. At that point, they aren’t much good during hunting season!