Wild Animals
Deer Repellent

Summary: Growing deer populations have become a problem most communities can no longer ignore. This article, offers deer repellent ideas that best keeps deer from eating your gardens, trees and shrubs.

Over the years many products have come on the market claiming to control deer browsing and rubbing. Deer repellent products as varied from coyote urine to Dial soap and from human hair bags to large cat feces collected from zoo animals. There is even a special motion detector for deer that turn on hoses, spraying animals (or humans) if they walk within range of the motion detector.

There are claims of success from all, but we're going to give you our assessment based upon a study performed at a tree reserve in Illinois. Here are a few products and their test results:

Coyote Urine: Works about 50% of the time. Can be expensive.
• Deer Chaser: It was applied to two trees. There was no deer damage at any of the three assessment periods on either of the trees.
• Dial Soap: Hung from two trees, there was no deer damage to either tree on either of the assessment periods.
• Hot Pepper Wax: Applied once to two trees. It had severe deer damage.
• Deer No No: Only one application occurred to two trees with no damage to either tree.

Here is what we learned. Deer repellents are very expensive to use and are labor-intensive to apply. The results are not guaranteed and depend on many factors such as time of year applied, weather conditions, application rate, following exact label directions, suggested re-applications, and the total number of trees to be protected.

From the results of this study, taking into consideration cost, time involved, and effectiveness, I think a trip to the grocery store for good old Dial soap would be my choice.