The double fence for deer
A deer can jump high and it can jump far. It cannot do both at once — and that is the entire trick.
What it is
Two short fences, one inside the other, with five or six feet of gap between them. Neither one is tall enough to matter on its own. Together they are a problem a deer will not solve.
The numbers
- A single upright fence must be 8 ft to reliably stop whitetail. An adult clears 7 ft without effort.
- The double version works with an inner fence as low as 4 ft and an outer as low as 3 ft, set 4–6 ft apart.
- A slanted fence does the same job a third way: about 6 ft of fence leaned outward at 45°, presenting roughly 4 ft of horizontal width.
- Flag any wire fence with surveyor's tape every 6–10 ft. Deer have poor depth perception in low light and will run straight through a wire they cannot see.
Why it's here
Because eight-foot fence is expensive, ugly, hard to build alone, and frequently against somebody's rules. Two four-foot fences are easy to build, easy to source, and exploit the one gap in a deer's ability rather than trying to out-muscle it. The deer's depth perception does the work the extra four feet would have.
The automation angle
Put a camera on the garden for a week before you build anything. The most common expensive mistake in this whole topic is building a deer fence against a raccoon problem. Then a fence-voltage monitor at the far end if you go electric — a fence that quietly dropped to 400 volts is a fence in appearance only.
The catch
It takes up ground. You are giving six feet of perimeter to the gap, and on a small lot that may be more than you can spare — that's when you slant instead. And whichever you build: nearly every deer-fence failure is a gate, a corner, or a low spot at a creek crossing. The fence is only as tall as its shortest point.
In the guide
Appendix F of the Autofarmation guide is the full siege, field and store. Autofarmation →