THE BEST DEER FENCES AREN'T ALWAYS EXPENSIVE OR COMPLICATED.
	We’ve lived on the edge of wilderness areas where deer are part of life, as are elk, cougars, bears and other wild animals. Cougars, bears, elk and raccoons either crawl under, leap over or bull-elk their way through, but deer can be kept out of yards with a simple double fence.

DIFFERENT DEER REQUIRE DIFFERENT FENCES.

Large mule deer have been known to clear fences as high as ten feet but, unless frightened or other abnormal circumstances, they don’t jump backwards or sideways, only in straight lines. Deer can do amazing things and leap over fences they wouldn’t attempt when they aren’t startled or frightened. But, they have to have room to turn and move in order to be able to leap over fences or other obstacles.

WE'VE USED THIS SYSTEM SUCCESSFULLY FOR 22 YEARS.

After sailing back from Hawaii, we lived at the end of a road on the Oregon coast. Our neighbor had a small, four foot high field fence around his garden with a large commercial ship’s rope (hawser) strung from post to post at the same height about three feet inside of it. We had deer in our garden from the first day it was planted. I asked him how the stock fence could possibly keep deer out, even the smaller ones that live in the coast range. He told me it wasn’t the field fence per se that was the deterrent, it was the fact that he had two fences. He said he’d tried a lot of different arrangements, with different types of fencing, and as long as the fences were about three feet apart, or spaced so a deer wouldn’t have room to turn around between the fences, he didn’t have deer in his garden. He said he’d settled on the large rope because it was esthetically appealing and he’d gotten it for free. We tried a similar setup and it worked. I used pvc pipe for the top rail of the inner fence because I couldn’t get the large rope.

WHITE TAIL OR MULE DEER.
	When we moved to NE Oregon, we were concerned that the system wouldn’t work because the deer there are much larger than those on the coast. The property we bought already had a four foot high field fence that was in a state of disrepair. I repaired the fence and restored it to its original height and then added an inner fence.

USE WHAT'S AVAILABLE, CHEAP OR FREE.

We’d been mulching our garden beds with wheat straw from a local farmer and had lots of baling twine, so I braided some into three strands and used it as the inner fence around our garden. We still had deer in the yard but not in the garden. Deer were browsing on the apple trees in the yard, breaking the limbs and eating the leaves and blossoms, particularly on the small trees we’d planted since buying the property. We had plenty of apples, for us and the deer, but wouldn’t if they continued to eat everything before it had a chance to fruit.

IT WON'T STOP A BEAR OR ELK.

We’d bought a fixer upper and most of my time was spent getting it in shape for the winter ahead. I didn’t have time to braid the strings so I just used a single strand as the inner fence and made the inner fence posts from pine trees limbs that had fallen on the ground . Like the man on the coast had said, it didn’t matter what the fence was made of as long as the deer couldn’t turn around and it was about the same height as the outer fence. We had a couple of bears in the trees, and breaking the limbs, plus an elk that had walked right though both the outer and the inner fence as if they weren’t even there. But, no deer came in the yard except when we left the gate open by mistake. I’d extended the gate posts to twelve feet high, using the baling twine as the fencing material.

CHEAP OR FREE IS GOOD.
	Some people in the area had built their fences eleven feet high to keep the deer out, and they scoffed at the idea saying it would never work. Like a lot of things in life, our belief systems can blind us to reality. We didn’t have deer in the yard all the time we lived there, and the fence cost nothing except the labor to construct it.

THE DEER PHOTO WAS TAKEN FROM OUR FRONT DOOR.
	During the summer, we live on a small farm in NE Oregon and use the double fence system around our garden, just like we have in years past and with the same results. The accompanying photos are of this year’s garden, it’s the same fence we used last year and didn’t take it down or do anything to it this year.

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