Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Strickland, Bronson K.

Committee Member

Demarais, Stephen

Committee Member

Eubank, Tom

Date of Degree

8-14-2015

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Wildlife and Fisheries Science

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Forest Resources

Department

Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture

Abstract

Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) are one of Mississippi’s most profitable agricultural crops. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginiaus) damage soybean every year due to the plant’s high palatability, digestibility and nutritional content. I estimated the amount of damage (browsing and loss of yield) caused by deer within 5 soybean fields in eastern Mississippi and compared damage to the number of deer using each field during the 2012 and 2013 growing seasons. I assessed the effectiveness of the chemical repellent Hinder on soybean. While deer did affect soybean height, soybean yield remained unaffected during both years of my study. Given the results of this study, the perception of deer damage may be greater than the physical damage and other environmental factors such as field margin effects may be the reason for spatial variations in soybean yield throughout fields. Hinder also improved soybean height and decreased deer damage but soybean yield remained unchanged.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/19987

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