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ANSWERS TO FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS, PAGE 12
What About Other Deer Control Measures?
Deer repellents offer an alternative that is less expensive (if one does not consider application costs) but also less effective than electric fences. They can sometimes work in the hands of knowledgeable people, but they need to be renewed periodically and also varied every few months to keep the deer from getting used to them. This need for frequent renewal makes repellents highly labor-intensive. Even so, they provide an alternative to electric fencing that deserves consideration.
Several other alternatives take the form of mechanical devices mostly geared to controlling small areas. Leaders among these are noisemakers and water-sprayers, both of which typically have an infra-red or motion detector so that they only go off when triggered by heat (from a warm body) or motion. Aside from controlling very limited areas, these devices' main problem is that the deer get used to them and then side-step or ignore them.
Another limited device that has recently emerged is the electrified and baited post. It was found that deer fences generally work (as we have noted) by attracting deer to bait and administering a shock to an exploring nose or tongue. In that case, someone reasoned, why not do away with the electrified wire altogether? Why not simply have a small fence charger built into a baited post, so that the deer get a shock when they touch or explore the bait? The main advantage of this method (doing away with the obtrusive wire or other fence conductor) is also its main disadvantage. That's because once you do away with your conductor, there is nothing to connect the posts. So each post needs to have its own battery and fence charger, which makes the system quite expensive. As long as they are kept in good working order, these posts can probably be quite useful in keeping deer away from small specified areas. And if one wishes to spend enough money and change enough batteries, they can probably deal satisfactorily with low deer pressure over a wide area. Even so, anyone trying to substitute such posts willy-nilly for any significant length of electric deer fence will need deep pockets and is likely to be disappointed.
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