Wolf-Urine: it works

How do I keep deer out of my gardens?

After talking to Jim Spencer this past weekend, I now believe there’s a solution. Spencer owns a garden center in Shelburne and his stock is ravaged annually. Pots of rosebushes are stripped of blooms, fruit trees are denuded,and hostas serve as salad for the hungry deer.

He says he’s tried everything in the past, including electric fencing, which proved to be more of a nuisance than anything else as workers and customers moved back and forth through the area.

This year he gave wolf-urine a try. The results have him raving about the product. “They haven’t eaten anything!” he said. “Nothing’s been here since.”

In nature, the daily routine of every animal is affected by predators, which mark their territory to signify dominance. Prey like deer and rabbits react to the marking scent by seeking to avoid those predators at all costs. That’s why wolf-urine works so well.

Spencer devised a system whereby he moistens a strip of absorbant cloth with wolf urine and places it in a glass jar without a lid. He straps this to a post and nails a rubber flap to fit loosely over the jar. He has less than a dozen of these jars placed around the perimeter of his selling yard and remoistens the cloth once or twice a week.

In the past I’ve suggested people tie net bags full of Irish Spring soap shavings, to leave a radio on, or to tie tin pie plates to a string to repel deer. I’ve also suggested they plant deer resistant varieties like yarrow, monkshood, lady’s mantle, poppies, primrose and more.

But when a man with as much experience as Spencer has with deer problems tells me he’s blown away by how well this stuff works, I know what I’ll be recommending from now on.

In the USA problems from deer damage are becoming more serious. The deer population is estimated at 30 million animals. Two deer without predation can produce a herd of up to 35 deer in just seven years.