Jon,

I feel your pain. I am less than 10 miles from downtown Atlanta, and we
have a large deer population in our area, too. I have tried all of the
suggested voodoo magic over time with limited results until I installed a
very low voltage electric fence. It's not unsightly, either....blends in
rather well with the landscape. The charge can be supplied by either
standard current from your house, or via a solar unit. It's not the most
inexpensive method to control deer's natural eating patterns, but it has
suited me best over all other methods tried.

Good luck,

Sean

FWIW, Mike has a good post on alternate methods. Unfortunately, I didn't
have succes with any of them....the deer became accustomed to the motion
detect flood lights and the motion detect water spray.


"Jon Maurer" wrote in message
.. .
The ultimate answer is to learn to live with it. My guess is you
moved out of the city and into the country. Essentially you did this
to yourself. The deer is only trying to survive on it's land. Quit
chewing up mother nature's land and move back to the city. You could
of course round up some coyotes and stick them in front of your house
or bow hunt the deer. As a conservationist and hunter, seeing people
move into the country and then try to eradicate the wildlife hacks me
off.


I'll ignore the implied insult that being a city-dweller makes a person
somehow inferior to their rural cousins. As it happens, I have not
lived in a city as such since around 1966, and have not even lived in
the suburbs of a city for the last 16 years.

My ex in-laws who live in a large town (city) in mid-state NY and far
from what I would call a rural setting, are completely overrun by deer
and don't even bother to plant much in the way of plants anymore. The
deer there are so fearless that you can usually get within 10-15 feet of
them before they bother to get up from a resting position among the
trees in the back garden. Sadly, this has led to my ex father-in-law
getting lyme disease and being very sick, but that's a completely
different issue.

I am no stranger to wildlife on my property, which is in a semi-rural
town whose primary zoning for all non-commercial property is
residential/agricultural. In addition to all manner of small critters, I
have seen moose on my property, my neighbor has seen bears from time to
time, and we sometimes hear coyotes in the woods at night. There have
always been deer around too, of course. However, it's only recently that
the deer that obviously use the woods around here to live and travel
have started damaging my garden, perhaps because of new development in
the area eliminating some of their habitat.

I am not asking to eradicate any wildlife, I'm just asking about how to
maintain a reasonable balance in terms of sharing our beautiful country
in peaceful existence.

Anyway, now back to our regularly-scheduled programming already in
progress.

Jon