On my daily walk this morning I happened upon a doe who'd caught her back leg in the top two strands of a barbed wire fence. It must have just happened before I walked by because she was alert, and the leg didn't appear broken. I jogged home to get wire cutters and help. When we got back to her she was thrashing around, and when we cut the wire which freed the leg, she took off sort of through the fence, almost getting caught again. She stumbled a little, but then ran off just fine. Even though I occasionally get deer in the garden and hate their increasing numbers, I'm so glad we were able to rescue her; caught on a fence is no way to die. We were wondering how often that happens. Deer seem to leap fences so easily. You never think of them getting caught.

-- Katherine in KY (KyKatherine@Yahoo.com), October 01, 2001

Answers

I think they see the strand they are jumping over but not the others. Sometimes if a tree branch lays on the fence, it will move a few strands out of alinement.

I had a buck put his head through the strands and climb through. Unfortunately, the horns decided to take some of the fence with him. He did have a big rack. 16 points

-- Dee (gdgtur@goes.com), October 01, 2001.

A deer will never go around anything it can jump over. And it will never jump over anything it can sneak under. In a subsistence situation, this is something to remember. I am awed by your sense of justice in refusing God's gift of fat, tender October venison! GL!

-- Brad (homefixer@SacoRiver.net), October 01, 2001.

We had the same thing happen last year. I believe the doe had got it's leg caught between two strands of barbed wire and it twisted around it's leg. By the time we saw it early in the morning, it had obviously been there a long time, probably most of the night. It had actually dug a hole thrashing about trying to get loose. I do think it injured it's leg but when we cut it loose it took off and later in the year we saw a deer who was limping so we assumed that was the same one. I'm sure it happens a lot. Like you, there are too many deer at least around here. It's hard to have a garden for them but nothing should suffer like that, not even an animal.

-- ugly (here@home.com), October 01, 2001.

Speaking of to many deer. Here in central Indiana the DNR is having deer reduction hunts in some or the State Parks but the ones out here eating the farmers crops and causing wrecks they protect. I plant trees and the deer eat them but that is not allowed in the Parks. I guess their do more good than mine.

-- Mel Kelly (melkelly@webtv.net), October 01, 2001.

Have had barbed wire fence and lots of deer for 20 years now, and have never seen a deer caught in the wire, but, then again, there's a first time for everything!!! We keep our fencelines cut and cleared, so maybe they can see the fence well and don't misjudge the distances to jump them, although mostly they scoot under them.

-- Annie Miller in SE OH (annie@1st.net), October 01, 2001.

We have our yard fenced off in cattle panels....I've yet to see a deer jump it, but then again we have a goat who can sail right over it! CJ

-- CJ (cjtinkle@getgoin.net), October 01, 2001.

Really it happens quite often. If you notice that when a deer jumps a fence they jump just high enough to barely clear the fence. But a lot of them do manage to set thereself free when it happens. Also it is true that if a deer can go under it or through it they will before going over it. I seen a nice big 8 pointer go up to a fence as if he was going to jump over it, and instead he wiggled his antlers between two strands of barb wire and crawled right through it as if he had done it a million times before.

-- r.h. in okla. (rhays@sstelco.com), October 01, 2001.

When I was a kid growing up on the farm I saw a dead deer hanging upside down with one foot twisted in the top two strands of barbed wire. When I told my Dad about it he took one of the strands out, and spaced the others further apart. I never saw it happen again.

-- Daniel in TN (traderx@junglemate.com), October 02, 2001.

Several years ago we saw a fawn get its head stuck in our neighbor's wire fence. We cut the fence & never did tell the neighbor, but I don't think he would have minded. After all these years I still enjoy watching the deer. Any plant I really want to save I protect with fencing.

-- Bonnie (stichart@plix.com), October 03, 2001.

At a farm where I used to work, I had one of the guys in the dairy ask me to help him out one morning. When he had let the cows out, they had wandered right out into the hay field because all the electric tape he had spent the whole afternoon running the day before was gone. I went down to help him out and we found the entire fence lying in a pile with what looked like cow prints around it. Apparently a moose must have wandered into the fence that night while grazing and gotten the hot wire tangled into its antlers. From the looks of what it did to that fence, it didn't like having an electric fence strapped to its head!! What a mess! We were picking up insulators and fiberglass poles from places far from that pasture for a long time!! There was no sign of the moose. I'm sure he was glad to be shed of us!!!

-- Sheryl in ME (radams@sacoriver.nt), October 03, 2001.