For most people seeing a deer in the wild is great wildlife encounter. However, for woodland managers deer are becoming an increasingly troublesome problem. With no natural predators in the UK deer numbers are believed to be at a 1000 year high with around 2 million individuals. There are six species of deer found in the UK: red, roe, fallow, sika, muntjac and Chinese Water deer, with only red and roe being truly indigenous. All six species are found in the Wildlife Trust BCN area.

Only two species (roe and muntjac) are currently present at High Wood and Meadow reserve (in the West of Northamptonshire). However, their impact can be spotted across the woodland. Deer will eat a variety of plants in the woodland including flowering plants such as bluebells as well as young scrub and coppiced hazel. This leads to a lack of understorey which means less nesting places for birds, like blackcap and chiffchaffs, and generally less diversity of species. They can also strip the bark from more mature trees causing them to die.

High Wood is managed as a traditional coppice woodland with a hazel understorey, which is cut on a 7 to 10 year rotational basis, and ‘standard’ oak, ash and cherry trees as the main canopy. This allows light onto the woodland floor and recently coppiced area will have a proliferation of flowering plants such as wood anemone, primrose and bluebells.

The last coppice area or ‘coup’ was cut in the Winter of 2022/23 and the whole area was fenced, thanks to a lot of help from volunteers and WTBCN staff, to exclude the deer. This has produced great results with the coppiced hazel reaching over a metre in height in the first growing season. The coppiced stools outside the fenced area are faring much less well and are being regularly grazed off by the deer. Although this worked well it could not necessarily be replicated across the entire site due to the ground conditions and difficulty of getting materials onto the site.

With this in mind we were excited to hear about a product called Trico that acts as a deer repellent. Trico is a completely harmless smell and taste based deterrent, made from emulsified sheep fat, which deer will avoid as they find the smell and taste totally unappetising. The team in Cambs have been trialling the product and were encouraged by the initial results. Although the product is not cheap the amount of time and effort saved from not having to fence coppice areas would be substantial.

A small area of the next coppice coup scheduled to be worked on, in the south- west corner of the wood, has been cut so the Trico deer repellent can be tested at High Wood. The area was coppiced as per normal with some larger trees removed to reduce canopy cover. The stumps were treated with the Trico using a backpack sprayer in February this year and the protection is supposed to be effective for up to 6 months. We will monitor the growth regularly during the Spring for signs of nibbling and retreat if we feel it is necessary.

Updates will be provided to let you know how it is working.