How High can a Deer Jump

[fasteddie]

https://www.fieldandstream.com/hunting/how-high-can-deer-jump/?utm_term=FAS W365 - 072423&utm_campaign=Field %26 Stream_Whitetail 365&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email

[Doc]

I can think of at least 4 instances where I have seen deer carcasses hanging from a standard American wire farm fencing. So deer may be capable of jumping amazing heights, but do they always make it? The hanging dead deer that I have seen likely were weakened by winter starvation. Three of them were at the huge deer yard over at the southern end of Honeoye lake where I know their strength was being destroyed by starvation. And the fourth was hanging from one of our boundary fences on the old farm. How high is standard American wire fencing? ......4' perhaps? Did these deer misjudge the top of the fence? Were they compromised by starvation? I really don't know, but I do remember the gruesome sights of these dead and rotting critters hanging by their back legs. They figured they could make it, but they figured wrong.

One thing that helps with gardens is electric fence. A deer only has to get zapped once, and it seems that every deer in the area knows about it. Our garden has been protected by electric fence that is a little higher than 4' off the ground, and no deer has tried to jump it in decades. 

[jperch]

I was a grad student at Penn State and was allowed to hunt on one of their large farms.  At the time they were conducting research on cost effective ways to keep deer out of large ag fields.  The basic scenario was that the ag fields were in the valley and there was large, quite hilly forested land bordering the fields.  Deer generally moves down to the fields in the evening and spent the daytime on the hills. The hills were quite steep and rocky.  I talked with one of the researchers and I knew one of the farmers.  As I recall very high fences were only somewhat effective.  Some deer jumped, some got under in low spots, it appeared they did some digging!  I do remember them saying that deer were unlikely to jump a fence if they could not see what was on the other side.  There were tons of deer, this was before Gary Alt's  deer management program was initiated.  (At the time Mr Alt was in charge of the states' black bear management program, I went to a couple talks he gave.) They also had noise cannons, various scents, etc.  The problem is nothing worked for very long, deer are very adaptable and it's hard to keep them out of corn and beans.  On our small farm we had a horse pasture with electric tape.  Sometimes the deer would get excited and run right through it.  They could, and often did, just jump over it.  It contained the horses fairly well.

[New York Hillbilly]

Good timing for this topic it seems. There is at least one deer that has decided to start ransacking my sweet corn field. The corn has not even tasseled yet, and the deer knocked my fence down, and was in there busting entire stalks over.

This morning I cleared a wide swath along the back of the cornfield with my tractor. My plan is to try repair my fence, and  to spend a couple evenings at dusk back there like I would deer hunting. If deer come out I think I will fire my shotgun into the dirt bank at the far end from where they enter. My hope is it will make them leery about hanging around and go eat elsewhere. 

[airedale]

My pastures are fenced with woven wire that is 4 ft high, the Deer go over it easily. I had one three acre field fenced with 6 ft high woven wire and never had one clear it that I know of. I saw a couple of attempts, but those particular jumps were failures and they just crashed into the fence.

Al

[fasteddie]

I remember seeing deer hanging on the spiked fence on Wadsworth property on the Avon Road many tears ago . 

[Four Seasons]

11 hours ago, New York Hillbilly said:

Good timing for this topic it seems. There is at least one deer that has decided to start ransacking my sweet corn field. The corn has not even tasseled yet, and the deer knocked my fence down, and was in there busting entire stalks over.

This morning I cleared a wide swath along the back of the cornfield with my tractor. My plan is to try repair my fence, and  to spend a couple evenings at dusk back there like I would deer hunting. If deer come out I think I will fire my shotgun into the dirt bank at the far end from where they enter. My hope is it will make them leery about hanging around and go eat elsewhere. 

25 years and going and have never had one name the 8ft jump of our fences. Have seen a few brave ones fail over the years. Now the fawns.:..  They can go right thru the 4-6 inch squares. Crazy to see.    Sorry. Meant to quote Airedale. 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Four Seasons

[Daveboone]

Kind of like Olympic high jump/pole vaulting... a damn few can make the leap, fewer make it clean, most of us stumble against the posts. Probably the same with deer. Many will attempt the jump, especially when chased/etc. not all make it.

 

[Doc]

I think a lot of deer are capable of jumping a lot higher than they dare to. I know that deer can jump higher than my 4' highest strand of electric fence, but they don't even try. It may be that they touched there nose to the wire at one time or another and learned a lesson without even trying to jump over it.