Oh Deer!

Almost one ton of pumpkins (Three fruit) were destroyed last night by roaming
deer in my back yard in Suburbia. Of course, they gouged the three largest of
five. Two had holes over 12 inches in diameter. The remaining will be too
small to take to any wieighoff.

The largest victim was my 12 year old son's pumpkin at almost 600 pounds. It
had a sizable split to the middle. We have been trying all day to close the
wound. Captan is no longer available in our area. So we used Daconil. After
trying a number of times to close the wound with caulk, we had to stuff a 1/2
inch wide and several inches long slit with paper towels. Then, we re-applied
caulk. We are not optomistic at this point.

Obviously a major catastrphe, the learning here is to protect your fruit
against these marauders, even in suburbia. It was an expensive lesson. Our
remaining two are now fenced.

The pain is for my son Bobby as his pumpkin ws on track to finish up 650-700
pounds. It would have been somewhere in the top 20 at Oswego, N.Y. weighoff.
It's hard to tell a kid "better luck next year".

Folks, please fence your fruit in if you have any deer around.

Best of luck to all who are still in the running.

Bob Matthews

Pumpkin Nook
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