Episode 54: Living with Deer

New York State residents tend to have a love/hate relationship with deer. Many people enjoy watching deer in nature, and others look forward to deer hunting season. But when a driver has a collision with a deer, a gardener finds that a garden has been harvested by one, or a patient is diagnosed with a tick-borne disease, the admiration of this wildlife quickly shifts to frustration.

Teresa Golden, a Master Gardener volunteer, joins the podcast, Nature Calls: Conversation from the Hudson Valley, to help us understand the habits of deer to make it easier co-exist with them. Learning about what deer like (e.g., deer ‘candy’) and what they prefer to avoid makes the selection of landscape plants easier to keep them away from your garden. She also talks about the plusses and minuses of repellants and fencing to make it possible to have a more peaceful coexistence with deer.

Learning about deer will help you continue to enjoy them in the wild while keeping your landscape safe from their presence.

Hosts: Tim Kennelty and Jean Thomas

Guest: Teresa Golden

Photo by: Teresa Golden

Production Support: Linda Aydlett and Teresa Golden

Resources: Cornell Cooperative Extension | Deer Resistant Plants (ccecolumbiagreene.org); Gardening with Deer (psu.edu); Dealing with Deer (rocklandcce.org); Terravest Corporate Park (cornell.edu)

Last updated April 10, 2023