Well, There up!

My neighbor approached me this spring with the same conclusion about our shared fence line that I had come to; He was chasing the deer into my place, while I was busy chasing them back onto his property, and in reality, the deer never made it back into the wild lands at all.  I informed him about my prior research and we agreed to try a few one way gates along our fence.

In my last post I looked at a couple of designs of animal gates that used poles that were curved as the gate material, but I found another design in use that utilized plexiglass for the doors, very simple, light, and the animals can see right through them making them more likely to pass through. The only issue with the plexi was its tendency to crack in the cold, so I decided to upgrade to lexan. Only issue we found so far was that because the doors are full length a strong wind could actually push them open! We drilled some holes to allow the wind to pass through, it seemed to help.

The neighbor did the install, and despite not having any extra fencing I think they did a pretty good job of funneling the fence back into the doors so that the deer will be herded in.  Also important is that a board is nailed across the bottom to prevent digging under, and fencing is stretched across the top to prevent jumping over. Time will tell if the animals don’t find some way of coming in the wrong way against the fence, we will just have to keep a close eye on the matter.

The gates have been up for about a week, I haven’t seen any tracks around them yet, but I am keeping an eye on it, maybe if I can find a couple of cheap game cameras I will put one up to see what the traffic is like.  The worst animal traffic happens in the fall right before harvest so we will wait to see how the gates hold up, fingers crossed I hope they help get them out and don’t let them back again!