While some people do their best to keep deer from setting foot on their land, others want to bring deer to their yards. However, it’s always when you want a certain creature to be present that they don’t ever show up.
Now it’s time to take the matter into your own hands. If you want to attract deer to your yard, there are several methods to do so. Let’s take a look at each of those methods.
How Can I Attract Deer to My Yard?
Deer are simple creatures. They go to places that have good resources and stay away from places with repelling features.
Deer are docile and usually stay back from nearby humans, so you need a way to make your lawn feel safe and inviting.
Attract Deer Through Nice Smelling Things
The sense of scent is highly impactful to get animals and insects to either come to your yard or repel them away. If you want deer to come to your lawn, have things in your garden that smells sweet and inviting.
Deer love foraging foods that emit a very sweet smell. Plant things like apples and berries to attract their attention.
Have flowers that have a sweet scent around your garden. Fragrant herbs that smell great will also get the attention of surrounding deer.
However, avoid plants such as rosemary, sage, basil, and cinnamon as they will repel deer.
If you don’t want to add any more plants to your garden, leave apples and other foods outside for them to eat. The scent alone will do a good job at attracting them but they will surely stick around for more snacks in the future.
Plant Them Snacks
This closely relates to the previous deer-attracting method. Plant things like fruit-bearing trees and berry bushes in an area that the deer have access to. As the fruit begins to grow on these plants, the deer will have a snack that is super tasty.
Over time, the deer will learn that your yard is the prime snacking spot for sweet treats. They will keep coming back and you might even get a whole family of deer getting a bite to eat.
Make sure to keep up with the maintenance of your plants to make sure that they don’t get over picked by the deer. Once the food is gone, the deer may decide that your yard is no longer worth it.
Not only are fruit great snacks for deer, but they like vegetables as well. Turnips, kale, and peas are an especially appreciated treat to the deer.
Overall, if you want deer, provide them with snacks. This method tends to work with many animals like cats and birds as well.
Salt Blocks
Did you know that deer like salt?
If you have a few blocks of salt sitting outside around your yard, nearby deer will eventually be able to smell it and be attracted by it. Deer love to lick at salt and other minerals.
There are even flavored salt blocks that are meant to attract certain kinds of animals. Salt blocks that are flavored with cider or apple are even more attractive to deer.
If you plan on putting salt blocks in your yard, you have to be mindful of where exactly you are putting them. Don’t put a block of salt directly onto the ground. Salt will seep into the ground and kill the grass and make the area unhabitable to any plant life.
This is incredibly damaging to the land around you as the effects can sometimes be permanent. Place the salt block onto a block of wood, cinder block, or even on the porch. Just make sure it’s above the natural ground.
You can make other kinds of block lures to attract deer to your lawn. There are many tutorials for making lures from various materials that have worked to get deer to arrive on a lawn.
An easy method of making your own attractive blocks can be found in this video.
Pheromone Spray
At hunting shops or online, you can find pheromone sprays that will attract deer. These pheromones will be related to the kinds of pheromones that deer will release when they want to claim an area or remember an area.
When other deer walk by the yard, they will be able to smell the pheromones and will be under the impression that this yard is safe for them to be in.
It will take time and probably a few rounds of spraying, but pheromones are an effective way to bring deer into your yard.
If you get a lot of rain in your area, respray your yard after every storm. The pheromones can get washed away when there is too much rain and so you need to reapply the spray when there is nothing left.
Grow Taller Grass, Bushes, and Trees
Deer like the feeling of being hidden in the environment around them. It makes them feel safe and hidden away from any predators that could be nearby.
This is why deer are most commonly seen in the woods where plenty of trees and tall plants are nearby.
If you want to attract deer to your yard, consider making your lawn more forest-like. Allow the grass in your yard to grow a bit taller and let the bushes in your yard get bigger. If you have trees in your yard, consider letting them grow the way that they please.
By allowing your plants to get bigger, it creates the same feeling of a dense forest for the nearby deer. They will feel safe in your yard as they feel like they can hide in it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will Peanut Butter Attract Deer?
If someone has ever tried to say that making deer bait is difficult, they must have never realized that they can simply use peanut butter.
Deer find that peanut butter is both a tasty treat and also smells nice. If you place peanut butter in open containers (like an open Tupperware container or specially made bait containers,) you are likely to see deer stumble by your yard at some point.
What Smells Attract Deer the Most?
Hunters have found that using deer urine is the best way to attract deer using smell. Urine has all the pheromones that you would get by buying a pheromone spray and it is a scent that deer are very used to.
When a deer walks by an area that already smells of deer urine, they believe that other deer are nearby. When they think that there are other nearby deer, they will think that the area is safe to be in. If other deer are already there, then there can’t possibly be any predators in the area.
The smell of urine is also calming to deer because it is a very common smell that is found in forests. Again, deer like being in forests because it feels like a safe place to be in. Using urine better simulates being in a forest and does a better job at attracting deer.
Does Cigarette Smoke Spook Deer?
Cigarette smoke isn’t a very pleasant smell for any creature to have in the air. However, it isn’t going to repel deer that are in the area. This means that if you are a smoker and want deer in your yard, you can still smoke in your yard.
It still isn’t the best idea to start smoking when you are right by deer though. There are some deer that might perceive the smoke as a sign of a threat and if you plan on eating the deer that you hunt, you won’t want to smoke around them for health reasons.
What Is A Deer’s Favorite Food?
There are so many snacks that deer love to eat. They especially love pecans, acorns, and apples. Pecans and acorns tend to be sweeter nuts and are easily found in many forests. They are great snacks as they have plenty of protein and have a satisfying crunch.
Deer are known for stealing apples from apple trees and from the ground where apples have fallen. It is safe to assume that apples are at least one of a deer’s favorite fruits. Apples are commonly accessible where deer are known to roam, so they are an accessible treat as well.
Final Thoughts
Whether you want to attract deer to your lawn for hunting reasons or just because you like deer, you have several methods to attract them. Each method is fairly simple to accomplish, and you can use multiple methods at the same time to increase effectiveness.
If you have any other ways of attracting deer that we haven’t mentioned above, feel free to comment on those so that other people can try them out.
Also, comment how these methods have worked for you if you have tried them! Different methods will work for different situations, so we want to know which methods work the best for you!
