I planted a couple of hundred short leaf pines and another couple of hundred cedars along a quarter mile fence line. They don't bother the cedars, but the pines... UGH!!! The issue with the pines was that they were eating the tops off them and grazing around the lower branches enough to kill roughly a third of them. But now that the survivors have gotten up to 3-5', the rubbing has begun. They couldn't pick a dozen or so to thoroughly work over, but appear to have walked along the tree rows and set out to hit one after the other and kill all of them?! They did the same to 2 large Wisconsin willows I planted very near the house. (Not cheap!) Since there were only two of those, I thought I'd protected them in a very similar manner to the video's example, except I used T-post and some heavy white hot wire rope, some of which they tore out. One of the T-post was bent and completely out of the ground. I'm convinced the top wrap of hot rope is knotted around some bucks antlers since it was no where to be found. Either he stuck around to finish the job, or his work to tear out my work opened the tree up for another buck to come in and shave off one side where the bent post now laid on the ground. I surveyed the property yesterday weaving all over the wooded areas looking for rubs among the literal thousands of various wild saplings and young trees they could potentially rub and found only a handful had been touched - all the more infuriating since their apparent preferred target trees are by far and away the trees I broke my back to plant. At this point, I'm thinking that fence line needs an additional fence line inside the existing fence line to turn it into a quarter mile dog run. The other option is to just give up on the idea of mixed conifers and replace all the dead pines with more eastern red cedars since they don't bother those. The nice thing about the willows is they'll likely come back from below the rub, although it will be a few years before they reach 8 or so feet again. I have some hog panels to cut up and wire around those for the next go around.
I hear your pain. There is no perfect solution that works all the time. In a large planted section I would consider fencing the new trees in with a solar fencer and wire. It eliminates part of the land for a few years but... The other alternative is to grow your own trees so losing whatever the bucks rub isn't as costly. I will show you how this can be done sometime in a future video. Hope you've had a great year.
@@SeedstoDreamsDeer I like your thinking because I recently bought a load of 10' T-Posts. I didn't even know they made a 10' T-Post until I described why I needed, "the tallest posts they make," and discovered I'm hardly the first person to come in with a deer problem while trying to improve wildlife habitat. (Oh, the irony of that problem!) I also grabbed some direct burial wire to run a hot wire from a 110v fence charger to a section of pasture currently using the solar charger to free it up for exactly what you described. Thanks for the reply that illustrates great minds think alike. 😄👍 (Even though I had to fail before realizing I needed a better plan and discovering your channel.) Happy New Year and I wish us all the best for 2022!
@@jimmyyounger618 yeah, I have thought of that frequently, the irony of wildlife habitat improvement...we want the deer using it BUT ONLY WHEN WE WANT THEM TO! Keep me posted on how your project is going with the solar charger!
