Mark hit the nail right on the head with his review of the Night Guard deer deterrent.  But, in fairness, I do have to say a couple of things in the product's defense.

Night Guard has excellent customer service policies.  Of the four units that arrived in our gift order, one was not working properly.  I gave the company a call, and they sent out a new deterrent along with a self addressed, stamped envelope to mail my defective unit back.  The procedure was entirely painless and left me with a very good taste in my mouth.

Also, although the Night Guard product didn't seem to do diddly-squat in our garden, my father had different results.  He affixed Night Guards to four sides of the homemade stand shown here, moving it every day within his garden, and reported that it kept the deer away.  It's quite possible the deer were just repelled by his increased presence in the garden though.  The deer population in my father's area appears to be considerably lower than ours, and at those levels most of the mainstream deer deterrents work well.  Click here to see how your region stacks up on the deer population scale.

We got a gift about a year before we started making our own deer deterrents of these "Night Guard" units. It seems like a good idea. A small solar cell charges a battery during the day and at night a little red L.E.D. light flashes with the intention of mimicking the eye of a predator and thus scare away any deer intruders.

The instructions tell you to move them around every now and then so the deer don't get used to them and we did, but it only seemed to provide a brief pause for our deer. Within a week we were seeing additional signs of nibbling and hoof prints in the garden.

The website states "Night time predators see the flashing light and believe it to be of another organism and feel threatened, so they stay away". I think it looks more like a VCR when the clock needs to be set. Perhaps this technology can work for a smaller deer population, or maybe in a different situation, but I have to give its performance around here two thumbs down.

Maybe this idea could be refined to look more like the real thing? I would like to see an improved version someday, but for now I 'm going to stick with the home made deer deterrent plans available for free on this website.

One of the reasons our deer deterrent works so well is because of the movement of the golf ball.  I was reminded of this when a deer walked quite close to me in the woods the other day.  I had stopped to rest, so the deer had a hard time deciding whether my still form was just another stump in the forest or was something to be afraid of.  It watched and waited, stamping its hoof to try to startle me into motion, then decided I wasn't a threat and wandered on its way.

The most effective deer deterrents always seem to include some kind of motion.  I encourage you to keep this in mind when designing your own!

Here's a short updated video of how the latest mechanical deer deterrent is faring after the winter. I've got it timed to miss the target from time to time in an effort to make the interval between hits a bit more random.

Even though our deer deterrents work like a charm, this fall I decided I wanted to learn to hunt.  I figured that if I cut down on the population a bit, the deer wouldn't press quite so hard up against our boundaries.  Plus, I liked the thought of low cost, free range meat.

On the night before hunting season began, I turned off the deer deterrents, then woke at 5:51, dreaming of deer hunting.  At dawn, I opened the door --- and two deer fled up the hillside out of the yard.  Was that my one chance, gone?

Still, it was the perfect dusky morning, just the time when deer like to travel.  I leashed Lucy, made sure the safety was on the gun, and headed off for our morning walk.  In the powerline cut, I startled another set of deer, but these two only ran a few feet and stopped.  I crept forward and the deer watched me but stayed put.  My second chance!

I silently ordered Lucy to sit, then crouched down myself and took the safety off the gun.  Lucy is a good dog, but she's not used to hunting --- she tried to crawl into my lap with the gun, and the ensuing scuffle sent the deer running again.  But again they stopped and waited.  Again I crept forward.  This time, Lucy sat, I crouched, the deer watched. 

I'd been practicing to hit the heart, just behind the front leg.  But the deer in my sights was only visible from the neck up.  I could try for a head shot and risk missing entirely,  or guess where its heart might be and fire blindly into the weeds.  I chose the latter, checked one last time to make sure my aim was accurate, then pulled the trigger.

I can't even remember the gun going off.  Suddenly, the second deer was fleeing in huge bounds, her white tail a brilliant flag against the brown woods.  The deer I'd shot at was invisible.  Did I hit it?  Wound it?  Kill it?

I beat a path through the brambles to the spot where the deer had stood.  Nothing.  But I faintly smelled a hint of gunpowder and blood so I let Lucy off the leash, hoping she'd track down the wounded deer.  She set off like a shot and I raced behind her until she crossed the creek to the neighbor's hay field.  Was my deer really gone?



I circled back around toward home and nearly stumbled upon my deer.  It had fled about twenty feet, then died just outside the powerline cut.  Upon further inspection, I saw that my shot had been about five inches off, hitting the lungs instead of the heart --- still a pretty good hit.

I have to admit that at this point, my adrenaline was pumping so hard that I couldn't think what to do next.  So I made sure the safety was on the gun and ran home to my husband, waking him out of a sound sleep to come help me gut the deer, tie it to a board, and carry it home.

My very first deer!  I guess I shouldn't have felt so special since the newspaper is always full of photos of six year olds and their first kill at that time of year.  But I was oddly exhilarated, floating on air.  A deerslayer wannabe no longer, Mark has taken to calling me "Killer."