Limit Browse Pressure with a Food Plot Fence

Whether it's a food plot, tree planting, or an orchard, a fence is one of the best ways to manage browse pressure. There are many different options for fencing types, availability and price points, and there's a fencing option for you regardless of the plot size. It might be a small green plot with heavy deer density, or maybe just somewhere you want to bow hunt over, or even multiple ag fields across a large farm where you're trying to maintain food for late season to get your deer herd all the way through the winter. You can put a fence up around any of those plots. It's labor intensive, but once it's up, it's just a matter of maintenance from there and it can make a world of difference when you want to decrease browse pressure.

3D Fence

Some people like to do what you might normally picture as a fence with five wires stacked directly up between poles and electrified, and there are plenty who have success with that style. The fence type I'm most experienced with is a 3D fence. Deer have poor depth perception, so 3D fences, while requiring only three wires to form the barrier, create the illusion of a much more insurmountable obstacle than they actually are. The wire strands come in different colors too. If you want the deer to have the best chance of spotting your fence, go with the blue wires. Blue is more expensive though, and in my experience, black works just fine. Either way, a 3D fence has two inside wires and one outside wire. On the inside, the low wire is about 18 inches off the ground and the high wire is roughly between 4 1/2 - 5 feet off the ground. The outside wire is right between the height of the two inside wires and is a few feet away from them. Between the wires providing a shock due to being hooked up to an engergizer, and appearing to the deer to be a substantial barrier to entry, it's a pretty effective setup.

Fence Parts Talked About

This isn't a complete tutorial on how to set up a food plot fence - it's more of a tip on what type of fence I like to use and some best practices - but I will define some of the parts for you here in case you are unfamiliar with these things as I mention them:

• Fence energizer - this is what you need to send the electric charge to your fence wire, and these come in electric, solar, battery, or voltage-powered versions.
• Fence wire / conductor - these are usually galvanized steel or aluminum wires that form the fence and are electrified. In this video, we are using electric fence polywire.
• T posts - these are the posts that will anchor and provide the main structural integrity for the whole fence.
• Fiberglass rods - these are secondary posts that are evenly spaced out between the T posts to provide a bit more structure and stability to the wires.
• Post driver - I'm using one of these in the video to drive the T posts into the ground. I'm also using a smaller version to drive the fiberglass rods into the ground.
• Post insulators - these hold the wires to the pole, while keeping the pole insulated from the electrical current.
• Electric fence tester - does just what it sounds like. Measures whether any current is going through the fence line.

Now, on with the tips...

Keep it straight

When you mark out the corners and turns of your fence and place your T posts, one thing to keep in mind when plotting out the turns is that the straighter the fence, the more successful it will be, so the fewer the turns, the better.

Lay wire first

I used to put fiberglass rods in the ground between the T poles before I put the wire out. Now I lay my wire first then come back and put the fiberglass rods in the ground. This way, I can pull the wire tight from T post to T post and get a straight line on exactly where to place the fiberglass posts. The straighter the fence, the stronger. Putting fiberglass posts in first can lead to unnecessary bends or fluctuations and compromise the fence integrity. I like to run wire off the back of a truck to save some time and energy. You can run all three wires simultaneously that way.

Keep Consistent Height

Once I've laid out the wire between the T posts, I'll come back through with the fiberglass posts, drive those into the ground - and I'll know right where to do that now that the wire is already in place - and attach them to the wires with insulators. After that, it's a matter of walking back around the fence and checking that all connections are good, the wires are well secured and are the right height in all areas. You want to keep the wire height consistent in relation to the ground. In places where the ground dips low, if your fence spans straight across it and you don't lower the wire in relation to the ground, you've created an easy entryway where the deer can simply go underneath the wire.

Tensioning

Tensioning the fence after it's all set up is something you can do yourself, although I recommend always having more helping hands whenever possible. For that matter, having help with fencing in general is highly recommended. If, however, you must tension the fence alone, I like to use ice grips to help hold the tension from pole to pole. For example, from the starting T post, I'll pull the line to the next one and use ice grips to hold the line tight. Then I'll pull the slack out of the next stretch of line, use another set of ice grips, and so on. The tighter the fence, the better the fence. Low, sagging points are an invitation to deer to go ahead and jump it. As a rule of thumb, anything you see about your fence that might appear as a weakness to you, the deer are probably going to agree and try to cross there. 9 times out of 10, they'll probably be successful too.

Energizing

If you want "gates" or entry points for humans, you can get spring loaded rope handles for just this type of fence. They can be added where the line meets the T pole. They hook to the pole, are spring loaded to keep the tension on the wire and have insulated grips so you can grab them and unhook the wire to step inside. Once all of your insulators are in place (again, be sure to check out a more complete tutorial online if you need to know how to put one of these fences together from start to finish), you're ready to energize your fence. Whichever type of energizer you select, I recommend setting the power to 8,000 kilohertz - basically like cattle-grade for deer. Deer are stubborn, so cattle-grade is the way to go.

You can daisy-chain the electric signal. Connect the energizer directly to the outermost fence line first. From there, connect from the outside to the low line, then from the low line to the high line. Use a fence tester and test all sides of the fence. Be on the lookout for frayed wires that can interrupt the flow of electricity and cause sections to go cold.

Maintenance

Once it's set up, you just have to periodically check the conductivity and fence integrity. Also, keep your fence line as clean as possible. Something I do at the beginning of the year is mow my fence lines and make sure they're as clean as possible. I'll spray them with my Roundup 24D and my Pre-Emergent early in the year and give myself a head start on the weeds that will come in the spring.

Once it's up, you can leave it up and just keep it maintained. These electrical fences can be a real game-changer when it comes to late season food source. It can be the difference between having food to pull deer and having a super slow hunt. If browse pressure is a problem, or you have a tree planting you want to keep deer out of, try an electric food plot fence.

--Rye Ludwig, Midwest Whitetail