"brown rats" or deer?

i had some 2 and 3 gallon buckets out in a really wet grassy land grown up field. 5 buckets total. all knocked over, half the dirt 'dug out' tipped on it's side and plants missing. i have seen both deer and rats there so i dont know which one it would be. they buckets were sitting on pushed over grass/ water/muck so they wouldnt have just knocked over with wind or anything, and it appeared to have been that the dirt was kind of dug out because the buckets were knocked over first either by a deer or a rat trying to get up into the bucket causing it to fall over and then when the buckets were on their sides something dug through the dirt... half of it. i wish i had pictures to show u, but i'm pissed because the plants were rgetting ready to be transplanted into other buckets.. bigger. they were SICK! i have mroe there still; thats how i know it wasnt humans.


so what do u think the cause of this is? how do i fix it?

if it's rats i'm going to set up traps, and bring a BB gun with me next time and see whats good then. lil bastards! ---- if it's deer i'm thinking about a 12- guage as much as i HATE to do it, i aint going to put up with it. there is a family of like 5 or so that i see on a weekly basis. at night usually grazing the fields.

i lost a large portion of a crop one time due to deer, what they didnt eat they trampled......fishing line is a good deer fence, set it up about 2 feet off the ground, they walk into it and dont see it, and they stop. they will not cross it because they cannot see it....the best solution for deer would be land mines...lol....know where u can get any?

well here's the thing::: i was just reading one of my grow bibles and came to the conclusion that deer stay away from blood smell. i used blood meal as part of my dirt mix and think that if anything it was the rats considering there was no tracks but if it wasnt rats it was the damn coyotes that are ever so abundant up here.

deer would have left visible signs that they were there, most likely was rats , but just in case i would do the fishing line trick and traps, if you think it might have been coyotes some legs snares should do the trick, just remember where you put them.