Some deer are resistant even to the very toxic Kalmias. But there seems to be curious variability. As nearby as the suburbs of Philadelphia, people on the rhodo yahoo group say that deer will eat any and all rhododendrons. OTOH, my deer won't even take a bite of my rhododendrons or azaleas, barring one species, the Japanese R. kaempferi. But they haven't even liked that in the past year or so. Some cultivars of camellia they've periodically browsed, some they never have. It's odd. Deer behaviorists say they don't eat grass, but I'm convinced that by leaving the grass and some brush in a semi-swampy area of my yard high all winter, they eat that rather than my plants. I just can't believe that for a ruminant, lush native grasses and forbs aren't more desirable than lignin-filled, poisonous Ericaceae branches. Even if they can be detoxified, they still have to spend metabolic energy doing so. The most serious problem I've had w/deer in the past couple years are: 1) rutting against small to medium sized trees - one just knocked a whippy 6' Magnolia 'Vulcan' over, I think I righted it in time and 2) "sampling" small plants. They almost always seem to reject/spit out the plant, but if you're talking about something that is 4" high, that can be the entire top growth they destroy. It's the same with rabbits. There seems to be few ornamental plants they actually like the taste of. But they can be very destructive with their sampling. Longterm we really should do something about these antlered rats - like exterminating them from all but a few reserves - because they are irreparably harming what's left of fragile native ecosystems. Unfortunately, the hunting lobby insists that they be relatively easy to hunt, to satisfy their blood lust, and the moronic Bambi lobby goes apesh-t every time a municipality tries to control them. If New York City didn't kill its rats, they would be knee high and eating people's children and small pets. New York City is not a "natural" environment; but neither is the eastern third of the country in its entirety, and without higher predators that used to control them, deer are destroying native plant and animal communities. (Obviously I don't have a problem with people hunting deer where they are overpopulated. In that sense I'm probably helped by being in a rural area compared to somewhere like Northern Virginia. It's just that states "manage the herd" for the benefit of hunters, not the environment. What the Cristol article just touches on is that their ungulate "clear cutting" also favors invasives over natives, because invasives are less palatable to them. They help spread, for example, the dreaded Asian mile-a-minute vine, but they don't eat it.) Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/opinion/why-bambi-must-go.html This post was edited by davidrt28 on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 19:55

OK, this is a wild-card solution, but it works for those with an appetite for homesteading and keeping chickens or ducks. IMO, putting up an 8 foot fence is MUCH harder/heavier work than putting up a 6 foot fence. If you're having pros do it - no problem. 6' isn't enough. BUT - deer are fearful of a double fence, it's hard to gauge the distance for jumping. So I did a double 6' fence around my garden, with the two fences 3' apart (and some white cotton 'flags' tied to both fences so they could see it). I used that enclosure for my chicken run. When working in the garden I tossed weeds etc. into the run, and the chickens loved scratching through it, eating part and shredding/turning it as they explored for bugs and turn it into compost. If you use ducks, they'll catch & eat every single slug trying to cross their run to get to your garden. At the end of the season, turn the chickens or ducks into the garden to give it a going over. They'll find most of the bugs that wanted to over-winter and eat them. After the chickens have had fun in the garden at the end of harvest, clean their run and coop, spreading all of that compost over the top of the garden to mulch it and finish breaking down over the winter. (If you use true deep bedding for your flock and keep layering in flakes of straw, you only need to clean it once a year. If it smells, you're not using enough straw. There should NEVER be an odor.)

Last August I moved from the Eugene valley into the Southwest hills ~800-900 ft. above sea-level last year the herds of deer, who quickly decimated nearly all of the plants with which I had brought. Deer danced right up the concrete steps and ate all the tomato plants, leaves and green tomatoes and all. They crunched on them like they were apples. Pretty much anything tropical they ignore (banana, palm, indoor tropical - actually they even nibbled on my bananas last year but this year there are many more other interesting plants) as well as yucca, prickly pear. This year after the plants had gotten a spring start, the deer pruned my fig, persimmon, pomegranate, daisies (flower), marigold, fuchsia (yummy), currant, grape, strawberry, aronia, blueberry, sea berries, mulberry, thorn less blackberry, flame azalea, sea berries, Canna lily, apple tree (they knocked my columnar in a pot over to get to it), goji berry, honey berry, cherry, pear, and another vaccinium. I let them freely prune the ivy the previous owners had left in a protected pot. They haven't touched the creeping cranberry, creeping raspberry, any fern, hardy orange, gardenia, any of the 4 varieties of palm or bananas or (the large windmill palms survived the hard freeze last winter, and the hardy bananas came back, although I do ensure much mulch is added pre-freeze). I do a lot of moving pots to and fro the porch when I leave for work and go to bed, and I plant and set plants in between the large set of juniper and creeping piney something in the front yard. I have been growing beans in hanging pots (if I hang them too low they become convenient snacks for brave, hungry bucks). I plant all flower and edibles with herbs. In a bowl of flowers, curry is quite attractive. Oh yes... they leave my delphinium, spikes, foxglove, snapdragon, alone. Last year the deer chomped and threw my hens and chicks around but have abandoned them for yummier stuff this summer. Oh they even ate the new growth off of a new Rhodie, they killed my camellia, and they have nearly killed a laurel I put up for a screen. I got a larger wax leaf laurel (?) and it seems to be okay right now. They love the fuchsias and petunias and daisies and will leave everything else alone just to eat the blooms. They haven't yet touched my elephant ear that just came up, but they did eat the cyclamen flowers. If we have a hot and/or dry spell, I'm afraid I'll have to put up more barriers, although fences aren't allowed.

Darn it foiled again! It's funny, when I lived in the city I thought I loved deer, now that I live on an acreage I still love them- in my freezer that is! Its been 3 years since we bought our acreage and only last year did they start jumping my garden fence and eating my veggies. So your reports are very troubling! Back to the drawing board then, my spot is not going to work. I had dreams of putting my trees by my bee hives and having citrus flavored honey. Thanks all! I have a motion sensored thingy hooked up to a garden hose that shoots a jet at anything that moves and it worked last year but is kind of a pain. It doesn't discriminate between people and pests!