They are messy, sometime stinky, and often time ineffective.
As we have said before, while deer can be fun and mesmerizing to look at, they really can be destructive for your yard. Deer, like humans, are creatures of habit. If they find your garden and shrubbery to be a tasty treat once, they are likely to return again and again. Therefore, it is important to keep them from entering your property in the first place.
Many homeowners and gardeners take to homemade deer repellents to try and keep the deer out of their yard. Popular solutions include dogs, rotten egg sprays, shiny ribbons, red hot chili pepper spays, dried blood meal, and fabric softener sheets. All of these solutions are a great effort. But in reality, it is impossible to keep a dog outside at all times. Even Fido needs a break sometimes.
Homemade deer repellents that just don’t work
Shiny ribbons that glisten in the sun may work in the beginning, but deer are intelligent creatures. They will pick up on the fact that the ribbon is always in the same place, and may be able to work it out for themselves that the ribbon is not a threat.
Fabric softener sheets are an interesting choice. The theory is that the strong scent from the fabric softener sheets would repel the deer away. After all, deer put a lot of their brand effort toward their sense of smell. It’s believed that the deer’s ability to smell is actually 10,000 times stronger than that of a human. Thus, putting something with such a strong scent should be bound to work, right? Unfortunately, that is not the case. If you try fabric softener sheets, the deer won’t seem to mind, and you’ll simply be left with a fabric-softener-smelling garden.
In the case of homemade sprays such as the rotten egg spray or the red hot chili pepper spray, these don’t work all that well either. As eggs contain sulfur compounds, as they decompose, they release a noxious gas referred to as hydrogen sulfide. The smell is quite strong and will keep deer out of your yard. Unfortunately, the smell is so bad that you won’t want to be in your yard either. With the red hot chili pepper spray, it will also work well to repel deer. But the actual process of making the right concentration for this spray can be dangerous. Habanero peppers are extremely spicy, so when blending them, you need to be careful not to get them on yourself. Then, when you spray the solution in the yard, you need to keep dogs away as the habaneros will be too spicy for them to come into contact as well. Even worse, if the dog gets the habaneros on his snout, he will incline to wipe his face with his paws, which can make the solution come into contact with his eyes.
Dried blood meal would seem to work in theory as the scent of blood should be a signal of danger nearby for the deer. Unfortunately, blood meal attracts carrion-eating birds. So, instead of repelling deer, it may attract crows that you don't want in your yard. You also need to be careful as the high-nitrogen content can be harmful to your plants.
The best deer repellent continues to be organic solutions that play to a deer’s natural fears. The coyote is the deer’s number one predator. Therefore, the scent of coyote urine is the best strategy to keep deer away as it will signal to the deer that there is danger nearby. Further, when using a repellent pack
, the deer don’t come into contact with the actual product when it is hanging in its breathable, weatherproof pouch in your garden. This makes the repellent generally safe for pets, children, and less-destructive animals.
