Operation High Jump!

[heavyhitterokra]

Woodeye has been my constant inspiration over the past few weeks of winter, and I want to thank him for all he's done through his stout-hearted tenacity in electing to build the highly acclaimed "Iron Curtain".  Reading about his project has really helped get the ball rolling on my own undertaking here.

In documenting his success, he has no doubt helped many others gain the needed fortitude to begin a few projects of their own.   Not to mention kindling unspeakable joy in the hearts of many by causing hardship on the local deer population, due to their exclusion from that fawnistic red dirt basketball court they will no longer be enjoying, since he recently closed the gate on the "Iron Curtain".  

That being the case, I've decided to stake our families' name, our reputation, and our fortune on going forward with my own fencing project here.  For days, I've been busily hauling in fencing materials, and preparing to do my utmost in order to begin construction on this, our future, deer-proof garden fence. 

(If there is such a thing?)

I've got a 160' foot x 160' foot garden spot, so it's gonna take a lot of cattle panels.  I think I've got about 60 steel posts driven so far, and several corner posts dug in, but I've only got 15 cattle panels hung in place so far for the first tier.  There will be two tiers of fencing, one above the other when I'm finished.  My finished height is going to be slightly over 7' feet tall because my steel posts were only 8' feet tall to begin with.  Because of it's height, I'm dubbing this project, "Operation High Jump".

Hopefully, I'll have no takers from the deer this Summer, in the way of high jump contestants after I'm all the way completed with construction of the new fence.  Mine will have a 12" inch electrified stand-off facing outward along the top, sort of like the barbed wire stand-offs along the top of security fences as an additional deterrent.

My fence won't be quite so robust as Woodeye's chain link fence though.  Two things which I am lacking here, are an abundance of 20' foot steel pipes to use as bracing the way he did, and multiple spare piles of chain link fencing materials.  I can see deer bouncing off Woodeye's fence, like light off a mirror! 

You go! Woodeye!  Thanks, for the inspiration! 

[FrostyTurnip]

There’s gonna be a lot of disappointed deer in Oklahoma this year.

[woodeye]

Yeah, I can see the headlines already, "Lazy deer of Oklahoma forced to eat grass and acorns instead of garden crops, fears of malnutrition forthcoming"

Operation High-Jump sounds great, heavyhitterokra! So happy that you are forging ahead on your endeavor to disallow the deer beasts from freeloading on your crops. Hopefully between the two of us we will see some starve-outs. 

A couple of mornings ago I looked out at the backyard and the mama deer and one of her offspring were munching on the little patches of grass and weeds that is starting to show up. Later in the day I rode down to the Iron Curtain and saw deer tracks leading up to within 10 feet of the fence. The tracks stopped, the deer turned around and went back to my backyard. Yay!

[heavyhitterokra]

Could have been that washout rain you thought you had a few days ago was really just teardrops from the deer that will no longer be dining on your veggies.    I wish I knew how to put deer ears and antlers on an emoji.

[woodeye]

hahaha, that could be true, heavyhitterokra

While I was out there yesterday I re-transplanted 20 onions plants that had washed out. There are more that washed out, but they got buried and I couldn't save them right now. One lone onion plant washed all the way through the chainlink fence. It took root and is standing proud on the outside of the Iron Curtain. I need to find a cage to put over it and leave it where it took root, as a monument to the tenacity of Candy onion plants. Please note that I best get that done soon before mama deer find it out there, an onion stub sticking out of the ground is harder to memorialize....

[heavyhitterokra]

Update on Operation High Jump

Operation High Jump is back under construction once more, after the week-long hiatus forced on me by the rain and frigid conditions. 

Rather than build fence last week, I spent that time gathering, delivering, and laying out materials for the fencing project.  We also laid 5,500' feet of Plasticulture and drip irrigation for a friend on a local garden project for the Farmers Market.

Yesterday, it was a balmy 76° here, so I worked on the fence all day long. So far, I've got 512' feet of cattle panels (32 of them) hung in place and 64 fence posts driven. I've only got 5 or 6 more cattle panels left to hang and another dozen or so posts to go, and then I'll be ready for the second tier of wire to complete my 8' foot high deer fence.

This last section will take a little longer to build because it has a gate in it and I will also have to arrange things so that I can remove the posts every 16' feet to drive my tractor over the laid down cattle panels when I have to re-lay my Plasticulture every Spring.

Right now, we have a 90% chance of rain for the next two days in a row, so it looks like I'll be resting up from yesterday's endeavors for at least a couple of days before I can return to work out there sometime later.

I spaced the cattle panels up 8" inches off the ground, (the thickness of a concrete block) so our little doggies can run under the fence whenever our neighbor's livestock guardian donkeys get after them.  Our neighbor has two square mile sections of land adjoining our garden fence and they have 6 donkeys out there, running with their cattle to chase off unwanted predator's.  Donkeys will kill coyotes or dogs either one if they catch them, so I made sure to leave a gap under the fence for the doggies to escape if they ever need to.  Yesterday, I saw a rabbit run under the fence, which was disheartening, but that's better than seeing one of our little dogs mauled by a donkey because of the fence being too low to run underneath.


Rabbits and donkeys aside, it sure does look good to have 3 sides of the garden fence already built 5' feet high. 

Woodeye,

Thanks again, for all the inspiration that you have been to all of us this past Winter.  Reading about your "Iron Curtain" project was a real encouragement on the days when I became discouraged, thinking the deer fence project might be more than I'd want to bite off by myself.  Thanks, for all the photos you posted as well.  I can never seem to remember to bring my camera along. 

[Tucson Grower]

I'm fortunate, my acre came, pre-installed with a 6 foot high chain-link fence on all 4 sides and 16 foot wide gate. It does work to deter the varmints, but only if you keep the gate shut.

[woodeye]

heavyhitterokra,

I'm so happy that you've made that much progress on Operation High Jump!!^©® I'm certainly looking forward to seeing it stop those dreaded 🦌🦌 beasts in their tracks. I know it's a ton of work, but once it is done, it's done. You won't have to spend all that time fixing fence all summer long like you did every time they jumped right through the electric fence. You can just sit back and count your pods...

[hmoosek]

Those deer are going to be rather upset. They may file a complaint at WAYCEA.

That stands for Wildlife All You Can Eat Association

[heavyhitterokra]

Speaking of the WAYCEA, I used to think the garden would feed the deer all summer and the deer would feed us all winter, but truth be told, we're getting kind of tired of all the deer meat. Not to mention that deer meat gets really expensive really quick when they destroy several thousands of dollars worth of crops overnight.


It sure will be nice to be able to plant a crop and rest assured that no deer will get through the fence.


There were times last season during the drought when the soil in the garden had so many deer tracks on it that it literally looked like a rodeo grounds out there.  This is a photo of all they left of some of our okra plants by mid-October.  Let me tell you, it's really tough to pull off a good crop when you can't even grow leaves because of the deer.  (Zoom in to see all the deer tracks).  Literally thousands of deer tracks.

[chrysanthemum]

I had never heard of “guard donkeys” until I moved to Texas. A neighbor was telling me a story about the previous owners of our house and used the term in describing the animals. I had to halt the conversation and clarify that because I had had no idea that that was a function of donkeys. It’s pretty common around here to see donkeys in with horses, and now I understand why.

heavyhitterokra, it sounds good to have an escape route for your dogs, given the conditions. I’m wondering, though, if the deer might be able to crawl under the fence if they’re motivated enough to get into your garden. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to worry about that except that a friend once told me a story about finding a doe and a fawn in his fenced garden. He was mystified as to how they had gotten in until he saw them army crawling in a depression in the ground under the fence to get out. His fence wasn’t metal, though. It was one of those thick mesh kind, so it would have been easier for the deer to push it up.

[heavyhitterokra]

If the deer figure out how to army crawl under the cattle panels, I'll be able to run a strand of barbed wire down low to block them later.

One or two deer would be manageable, but last year, I counted as many as 18 deer in one herd. Six of them were grazing between my house and the garden, but the other twelve of them were inside my garden, grazing on my okra. (I had a seven-wire electric fence last year, seven feet tall), but the deer learned to run at it full on, about 30-40 mph, hitting the wires so hard in mid-flight that they actually snapped the strands.

Once one hot wire falls and shorts the wire below it they start a chain reaction by burning one another in two.

(That wouldn't happen with a conventional electric fence charger).

Modern-day fence chargers only cycle once per second for safety reasons. But the deer learned to hit the fence between cycles and would often-times stroll right through without even getting hit. I mean, think about that for a minute, if a fence is cycling on/off/on/off once every second for safety reasons, there is only about a 50/50 chance of ever getting hit at all, even if you were traveling at a casual walking pace. Most deer are not casual walkers, they tend to run and trot a lot, so they were blowing right through many times without getting hit at all.

To fix that problem, I took out the cycling charger and bought a good old 1960's era 10,000-volt electric fence charger with a 'weed burner' feature built in. The weed burner feature was designed to burn weeds in two as they came into contact with the fence, thus eliminating the need to mow under the fence. The older type chargers were fully on all the time, with no on/off cycles for public safety.

That weed burner feature is what caused the strands to melt through one another when the deer broke one, causing it to fall into contact with the strand below it. There were times when 3 out of 7 of my strands were lying on the ground, broken by deer, or burnt in two from coming in contact when they fell.

The only fence that really held was my 7-wire barbed wire fence, but it was ineffective.  It was also 7 feet tall. The strands were spaced so close together that I could touch the palm of my hand on one strand while resting my fingertips on the next strand above it.  It was a pretty fence, but still, the deer would hit it so hard and so fast that they would blow right between the strands.

Sometimes, it would look like someone busted a feather pillow down there from all the deer hair left floating in the air after a deer did that. I'd see deer walking around with deep cuts running from their shoulders to their tail bones.

It was gruesome to think how painful that must have been for them, but yearling deer do not think, they just react, so not very many fences are actually able to stop a deer.

... However, about halfway through the season, I noticed a couple of fawns bouncing off some old cattle panels from my original garden spot. They must have been used to hitting the barbed wire doing a hundred miles an hour and had it in their heads that the cattle panels were no different. The cattle panels bounced them so hard that it took them a few seconds to regain their composure enough to walk away.

After seeing that, I decided this winter that I'd take down the electric fences and the barbed wire fences and replace them with a sturdy enough physical barrier that no deer could possibly break through it; hence the 7' foot tall cattle panel fence that I am currently working on.


One reason I decided to space the cattle panels 8" inches off the ground was so the dogs could escape the guard donkeys.  Another reason for the spacing is for better weed control. I used to have cattle panels around the whole garden years ago --- before I quadrupled the size of the garden but didn't quadruple the size of the cattle panel portion of the fence. I didn't leave a space under the old cattle panels for the weed-eater to operate, so out of my own ignorance, the bottom of the fence was very hard to maintain.

Over the years the grass grew so high along the fencerow that it began to catch all the grass clippings as I mowed outside the fence. Within about a decade of mowing and no weed-eating in that area, the ground got gradually higher and enveloped the bottom 6" inches of the panels, so it was very labor intense to have to pull them all out this winter to redo them.

[FrostyTurnip]

It was so satisfying to read the part when the deer nearly knocked itself out on the cattle panel.  Much sympathy to ya.  I’ve read so many stories like this and every time it is heartbreaking.  

[chrysanthemum]

Interesting to know about the modern fence chargers cycling on and off. My mother used an electric fence around her garden when I was young, and I remember holding long weeds or grasses against it when I was little and feeling the tingle through the weed before it would burn off.

That’s amazing that your old cattle panel fence around the garden got buried by soil buildup from decomposing grass trimmings. I don’t envy you having to work those free, but boy that must be some good soil around the edges.

I sure hope that my fears about army-crawling deer will prove to be unfounded. I completely understand your wanting a gap for a doggie escape route and for weed control. Let’s just hope that the deer get so discouraged in their initial attempts to pass through the cattle panels that they just give up entirely. If not, barbed wire down there does sound like a good option.

[Tucson Grower]

I am really looking forward to hearing of the success of this deer barrier.