"Are there any legal liabilities for scaring the deer away with paintballs and Airsoft?"?

Why not just do what my bitchy, wealthy neighbors did…complain to the DNR? Then you’ll have a sniper come in and take out half the population each year.

Be prepared for a fight though!

BTW-What you are describing sounds like animal cruelty to this particular animal activist.

The deer were there first.

Airsoft doesn’t seem to even faze them! They are more surprised than anything else. We have over 100 deer per sq mile here in town. A real safety hazard and a stinky problem when we have a massive die off.

Maybe try an air horn or bullhorn instead? Also, check out this google search I just did.

I would love an infestation of deer on my property. They’re such gorgeous animals.

The popular humane method seems to be motion-activated ‘deer scarecrow’ sprinklers. Have you tried this method?

@peedub: Send me your address and I will point the herd that hangs out here in your direction; I will also be happy to provide maps and a high-end GPS for the leader.

@gailcalled I may have just revealed how much of an urbanite I am. I’m sure they are pests and probably destroy one’s flora.

Another humane method: sonic defense.

you need a license to hunt deer. they have to be in season, can’t shoot does, etc. it’s not expensive. but you can’t just crazy shoot them , they have to be of a certain weight points all that stuff

@majorrich I know this is a concept many home owners that consider wildlife a nuissance don’t consider a real solution but I’ll offer my advice anyway…Wlidlife can easily be controlled with inteligent, humane methods.

*You can squirt them with your hose
*You can set up senors on your lawn irrigators to squirt them
*You could plant things like Pyacantha, or barberry around your landscape to end bedding down in your yard.
*You could put Ivory?Irish Spring soap around your garden hanging off ropes on your trees, or grated in your beds.

I can go on for hours…BRING IT ON! ;D

@gailcalled I have a wildlife friendly garden…send ‘em on over.

I actually planted all of my fruit trees & thickets for the wildlife! Imagine that!

@SpatzieLover: Very few señors here willing to squirt deer.

@trailsillustrated Not really hunting, just popping them with non-lethal projectiles. I really don’t think your list applies.

@peedub Deer are a huge problem in many places. They’re not cute, they’re not nice, and if they run out in front of your car it can cause serious damage and even kill you.

@avvooooooo I know I know. What can I say, I’m a city slicker, and I love animals, even pests.

I also love taxidermy. When I read ‘massive die offs’ above, I thought deer head-filled living room. I’d be out, roaming the land with my basket of deer parts. I would make French gun racks for people to hang their hats on; a form of recycling, right?

Make your own deer repellent

@avvooooooo >>>>Deer are a huge problem in many places

Reading DNR propaganda? ;P

@SpatzieLover No, I just live in the country and have to be veeerrryyy careful driving. Know of one 16 year old killed when she hit one and it went up and into her windshield. I also have relatives who live in an area where deer are all over the neighborhood. Much to my dismay, I’m a country girl and have a different kind of view on hunting, population control, and overpopulation problems.

@avvooooooo That recipe you posted won’t even keep a rabbit away.

You need real stink or soap (think bitter stuff) to rid yourself of the problem.

@avvooooooo I was raised into a 6th generation dairy farm family ;)

There are humane ways to handle every living thing.

Lost nearly my whole crop this year to the bastards. Even species they don’t normally take like comfrey and nettles. These deer are so habituated they fear nothing. I was (no kidding) 10 feet away from a 10 point buck friday morning. I was going to brain him with a shovel. (It is primitive weapon season after all) His spoor is bigger than grapes! Newark is working on a controlled cull in the city. Me and my Shovel stand ready.

@majorrich During rut they don’t care what you’re carrying or saying to them.

MIne eat juniper which is akin to swallowing steel wool. They practically join me for breakfast; having devoured the salad bar outside.

I know no one here who drives, who has not had a major collision with a deer. One ran into my car when I was going 35 mph and cost me $12,000 in repair bills.

The are starting to rut here. Got my little cherry tree covered with chicken wire. Experimenting with Bamboo as a natural barrier. Tyvek seem s to keep it under control. City Council has gotta move fast!

@gailcalled Juniper is edible to squirrel, deer and rabbits. If you put in a thorny ground cover your problem is solved. Holly works well too.

I expect to see their names on the ballot for the local town council elections next week.

I have netted all my roses, but when the branches grow thru the netting, they are nipped off.

@majorrich I don’t cover my cherry trees with anything. They’ve yet to touch mine. They eat off the thickets and the crab apples instead ;)

They ate it nearly to the ground this year! and it’s a 7 year old plant. I was lucky to get 4’ out of it this summer! It’s nuts!

lol dude I live in columbus, can I come over and shoot these deer with paintball guns. sounds like fun

I’ll set you up a stand in the phone pole in the corner. you can get almost the whole neighborhood from there.

Pee around your yard, it repels deer. Most prey are scared by human urine.

Deer, while beautiful animals, are a REAL nuisance in the urban and suburban areas. Not only do they destroy lawns and private property, but they are a threat to automobile traffic and others. This isn’t DNR propaganda face palm, this is a fact of anyone who knows squat about the real lives of wildlife and not the Disney-esque picture perfect beliefs of animal activists.

When a herd of deer reaches critical mass, they will start to die off due to starvation and/or disease. Wil animal populations need to be controlled, much to the chagrin of the activists who really don’t understand what the lives of wild animals is really like.

To answer your question, Air Soft and paint ball guns are not deadly weapons, and you do NOT need a hunting license. You might try keeping your paint balls in the freezer, as that adds more ‘zing’ to the ‘sting’, or you might simply call the local wildlife control company in your area and see what they suggest. If some hippy dippy animal activist crusader sees you popping off shots at the local ‘invaders’, you might find yourself in court.

Good luck.

@Psychedelic_Zebra All of the beliefs I hold regarding animals were passed down to me through both sets of my farming grandparents :) Have a nice day.

Deer are beautiful creatures when they on someone else’s property. But huge herds of them on your own land is a different story. And since civilization has chased all the predators further back into the wild or killed them off completely, the deer are starting to take over the world. Similar problem here with roos and dingos/wild dogs, camels, feral donkeys. I love animals but they need to be culled because of a lot of them are starving to death slowly and painfully. The difficulty is finding a culling method that hits only the specific target animal or animals and does it quickly and humanely.

We humans have created so many and complex problems for ourselves!

Why does @Facade have three GA’s and @Psychedelic_Zebra only one at this time?

@Facade, would you explain how the deer were there first? Thx.

I gave @Facade her 3rd GA and @Psychedelic_Zebra his 1st GA. wtf?

What’s wrong with a deer fence?

Yes, you definitely need a license. Deer are protected when out of season. If you’re caught by a game warden, you can have your paintball equipment and maybe even the vehicle you’re in taken away, not to mention a hefty fine. Although it’s a non-lethal weapon, you are obviously intending on hurting the deer.

We love the deer that visit our property.

Can I send you the deer that visit mine?

As an aside, Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators describes the massive impact on our country’s ecology of the mass extermination of the natural predators of our land. It contains some very interesting information on the natural history of the white tailed deer in America.

@majorrich are there plants on your property they like to eat? Are any of your neighbors feeding the deer?

Neither human male nor female urine deters any of the deer. Irish Spring soap often has small teeth marks on the bars. A fence, in order to be effective, has to be 15 feet tall and electrified. A neighbor of mine has one and her property looks like a prison camp. Plus the cost will take a bite out of anyone“s budget.

Recent sitings here include one wolf (confirmed on video), moose, brown bears going after the honey bee hives,foxes, coyotes by the dozens, feral coy(ote) dog herds, bob cats and an occasional mountain lion. Last night an opposum waddled by, on the outside of my basement sliders. (Milo went insane.)

@JLeslie: The deer here seem to find more and more plants palatible that they used to shun 10 years ago. I have lilacs, forsythia, fragrant roses, yews, rhododendrons, and cone flowers denuded.

If you throw in the Japanese beetles and rabbits, it is sometimes very frustrating.

@gailcalled my deer, and various other animals, don’t eat my plants/bushes. None are flowering plants. I HATE bees, which you might have seen on a recent question by someone else about bees, so I don’t have flowers near my house. A bear and mountain lion would freak me out! We have coyote and bobcat that already make me nervous (I have not seen them, but others have. I do hear the coyote in the middle of the night sometimes howling and barking in packs). We also have racoons, armadillo, foxes, moles, mice, turtles, frogs, snakes, and who knows what else. I think I am ready for the city again LOL :). But, we love the deer.

@JLeslie : Dozens of people here (including my b-i-l) keep honey bees due to the inexplicable swarming and disappearance of so many of them. Bees keep vegetative life going (as you know far better than I). MY b-i-l has 12 hives inside an electric fence and 5 outside.

Last week a brown bear rolled one of the unfenced hives off the site, down the hill and into the woods.

My sister, safely inside, said that the bear looked like he was competing in an athletic event.

We share the same animal life except for your armadillos (so far). Honey bees will leave you alone if you don’t mess with them.

@gailcalled bees come right up and sting me. Have since I was young. My husband now defends me, previously he didn’t, because he witnessed a bee come right up and sting me while He, another woman, and I were just standing and talking. I did not even realize the bee was next to us, so I was not waving my hands or anything. It actually stung me on my foot.

I am not a lawyer this is not legal advice

One thing you may want to be carefull of is: Some states can and will classify airsoft/paintball guns as firearms you might run into some legal stickyness if people (read cops, DA’s) wanted to be pains in the ass if you got caught.

@JLeslie: You must be emitting some secret and sweet pheromone. The hornets and wasps occasionally sting me if I accidently mess with them. Painful but short-lived, thank goodness. Now, black fly bites are another matter.

@gailcalled yes, I have decided I am very sweet :). Just Kidding. The worst is in the last 10 years about half of the time when I am stung by a bee, or bitten by red aunts I get a cellulitis infection and wind up on antibiotics. It’s not like I get stung every year, but it is enough to be annoying, actually it has been several years since I have been stung. I know people who have only been stung once or twice in their lives and that is amazing to me.

@JLeslie I am the same way, but with me it’s mosquitoes. I am often the only person in a group of people to be riddled with bites.

This post has really disappointed me.

@SpatzieLover oh me too. Mosquitos love me. My happiest time was when I had a house with a big screened in pool and could be outside without fear of flying insects. I miss living in my bubble.

@JLeslie In Wis, I have no bubble…I want one!

@SpatzieLover get one. Here in TN they rarely do it also. I mean I live in the deep woods, huge mosquitos and other flying things. They are so behind here. I really screwed up buying this house, I should have built my own. The house is beautiful, but does not suit my desires and needs. All I care about is a big family room, decent size master with large closets, and a large screened in patio, I did not get any of those things this time.

Gosh it’s been a long time since I visited this question. My property is located in a draw between a couple other features that funnel deer through my yard. They are still like locusts and eat everything their little lips can grab. I tried spreading out ‘Milorganite’ which smells terrible and was recommended by the extension service. We have been granted a nuisance permit for the six properties contingent with mine, but my health has declined somewhat so that we haven’t made use of it. My Neighbor’s dogs seem to be affecting the flow of traffic now that I have allowed his wireless fence to encompass my back yard. Other than the poo it seems to have slowed the Daytime traffic.