Height is the only thing a deer respects.

What actually keeps deer out

A deer will clear a four foot fence without breaking stride and will go under anything with a gap at the bottom. Deer fencing is therefore a height and a bottom edge problem before it is anything else, and a fence built two feet short is a fence that cost money and changed nothing.

The second thing is that deer will not jump what they cannot see through to a landing. A tall fence on the boundary of a wooded lot works better than the same fence in the open, because the animal cannot read what is on the other side. That is worth knowing before you decide where the line goes.

Third is the ground. Deer push under far more often than they jump, so the bottom of the fence gets held down to grade across dips and swales rather than bridging them. Every gap you leave is the one that gets used.

• Height set for exclusion, not for looks
• Bottom edge carried to grade across dips
• Posts bored and set on line over long runs
• Gates built tall enough that they are not the weak point
• Corner and end assemblies braced to take the tension

Ranch rail, and what it is for

Ranch rail is boards on posts, usually three or four high, and it is the fence you see on every horse property between here and Statesville. It is a containment fence and a boundary fence. It is not a privacy fence and it is not a dog fence unless you add mesh.

The rails carry the load, so the rail to post connection is where a ranch fence lives or dies. Anything an animal can lean on gets fastened to survive being leaned on, and the corner and gate assemblies get braced rather than being another post in the row.

One customer had a six foot privacy fence around the back yard and ranch rail around the chicken coop on the same job. Mixing them is normal. Different parts of a property want different fences and there is no reason to pick one for all of it.

Gardens, orchards and small enclosures

Not every deer fence goes around a property. A lot of them go around a vegetable garden or a young orchard, where the fence only has to hold for the years it takes the trees to get above browse height. That is a smaller, cheaper job than fencing acreage and it is worth asking about separately.

Small enclosures have their own trap, which is the gate. People build a good tall run and then hang a four foot gate in it because that is what was in the shed. The gate is now the lowest point of the fence and the animal finds it inside a week.

If the enclosure is small enough, mesh over a light frame does the job for a fraction of what a full run costs. We will tell you when that is the right answer, even though it is the smaller invoice.

Acreage, and being straight about it

Fencing acreage is a different scale of job. It is long, the ground varies, and it is the kind of work where the difference between a good estimate and a bad one is whether anybody walked the whole line before writing a number.

We walk it. All of it, including the wet corner and the part behind the treeline that nobody wants to walk to. Terrain is what moves a fence price, and finding it in week two is worse for both of us than finding it on a Tuesday afternoon with a tape.

Our Google profile says we work and communicate with every customer in a professional manner no matter how small or large the job is. On a long run, communication mostly means telling you what the ground is going to cost before you commit to it.