Deer Damage

[Bayou Buck]

Took a chance on not caging a couple trees and I lost the bet. I guess the deer like the taste of my pear tree leaves.

 

[SEC]

I once did the same thing.

 

[JCDEERMAN]

They started doing that to my plum and apple trees earlier this spring. I fenced them up right then and there

 

[BSK]

Just wait until fall and bucks rub those trees to death. For whatever reason, bucks LOVE rubbing on fruit trees.

 

[SEC]

Just wait until fall and bucks rub those trees to death. For whatever reason, bucks LOVE rubbing on fruit trees.

That also once happened to me.

 

[ROUGH COUNTRY HUNTER]

go ahead and cage them

 

[LA man]

I caged. All my fruit trees and the deer eat everything they can reach

 

[fredfred]

Get a permit and kill em all :whistle:

 

[Bayou Buck]

I have got away with it in the past because of all the clearcut around me. Plenty of other browse. The deer population in the area has exploded the last year or two so I guess I need to be a little more careful with my trees now.

 

[PickettSFHunter]

Definitely gotta cage. Id hate to think how much Ive spent on wire for 150+ trees.

 

[tn droptine]

Yup, lost that gamble once myself - last time I planted a tree without caging it

 

[JCDEERMAN]

Just wait until fall and bucks rub those trees to death. For whatever reason, bucks LOVE rubbing on fruit trees.

They sure do! We planted some apple trees 2 years ago. Around mid October, I walked through that field and was wondering where my 7ft trees were. Most were yanked out of the ground. The rest were on the edge of the field from getting stuck in their antlers

 

[Football Hunter]

I have a couple that I didn't cage,and were more or less broke in half,but they are coming back!Cage em when you can.

 

[Hunter 257W]

I just found one of my 2 yr old Gala apples laying over on the ground this past weekend. I blamed it on deer until I got up to the tree and found that the wood stake I had tied to the tree had rotted off. I had heard that apple trees had real shallow roots and now I'm convinced that's true. The tree was hinged over flat on the ground with no apparently damage. (I'm hoping the tap root is not broken....) I replaced the wood stake with a fiberglass one. For one, it won't rot but also the fiberglass stake flexes and supposedly allows/forces the tree to develop stronger roots compared to a tree that is rigidly supported with a stiff wood stake. Sounds like it would work that way to me. Only time will tell as I'm replacing most of the wood stakes on my other trees too with fiberglass.

Anybody here got any thoughts or positive results of root strength improvement by using flexible fiberglass tree stakes?