Will deer eat up watermelon vines?

[greybeard]

Wife wants me to plant seeded watermelons. The big ones, not those 1/2 watermelons all the stores sell nowadays. I have somewhere to plant them but it's not fenced off and aboout once a week, I find deer droppings in that part of the yard. Will it be an exercise in futility?

 

[Named'em Tamed'em]

I know they'll eat the flowers.

 

[50/50Farms]

They can be hell on melons and flowers sometimes but I've never seen them stifle a vine. That ain't to say it can't happen, but for about 5 years running we planted a good sized melon patch and never had a problem with the vines.

 

[Ebenezer]

Oh yea and bust the melons, too.

 

[M.Magis]

I plant them quite a bit, 6' from a soybean field with heavy deer traffic, and I've never had them bother them at all. Never say never, but I wouldn't worry much about it.

 

[sstterry]

If you don't fence it, you will never get the chance to eat the melons. My experience is that they will break and eat the melons.

 

[Hogfarmer10]

They will eat the foliage (leaves and blooms) but generally they won't eat the vines. The vines get damaged more from them walking through them. I don't know about eating a "good" melon but if you've got one that gets soft or blossom end rot, they go nuts over them. I've seen a few watermelons with just a bite or at most 2 bites in the rind. Cantaloupe, on the other hand, they will absolutely destroy a cantaloupe field!

 

[TexasJerseyMilker]

I miss those giant watermelons that took up an entire refridgerator shelf.
And the seed wars too.

 

[coachg]

I've had more trouble with coyotes than deer eating my . Suckers will eat just the heart out of each melon