Fruit trees won't typically grow as fast on a woodline or inside the woods, in my experience anyway. And they may still get rubbed. Have cedars here that get hit inside the woods here every year.I would think planting them in an open field or food plot would lead them to be rubbed on more than if planted inside the wood line? Numerous podcasts talk about putting a rub post(most of the time a 2-3" diameter limb) in a food plot and its gets hammered.
Yes deer will destroy everyone you plant if they are not protected while young. I have had good luck with planting bare root seedlings in tree tubes then placing a small circular 5 foot fence around each, roughly 1.5 feet in diameter.I got 100 bare root trees, apples, pears, and peach through a deal with my forester for about $8 each. You can get wholesale pricing with the nurseries if you get a forester to call for you. My trees came out of Smithville. But here is the rub. The deer have destroyed almost all my trees either eating them or rubbing them. You will likely have to put up a tall fence to allow the trees to reach maturity.
Has that worked well for you? I ask because I've got a few different trees that I've drove t-posts and put fence around to protect them. If I can get away with just corrugated pipe, that would be much easier for us, especially on the trees we'll plant in the future.I protect mine with tree tubes made of 4" corrugated black drain pipe
I've planted about 15-18 over the last 3 years. They are anywhere from 2-4 years old. Some are over 10 foot tall already and 3 had burrs this year. But I picked them off to let the tree put its effort into growing vs just a few chestnuts. I got 6 more this fall from Walmart I got to get in the ground soon. They are fast growers. But all of mine are caged as well.Does anyone have any experience with Dunstan Chestnut trees from the nursery down in Georgia? It is supposedly ran by the grandson of the man that developed the Dunstan Chestnut hybrid back in the 1940s or 1950s.