I thought the worst of my deer pressure would be over now that the trees have no leaves. Even with the electric fence wire up (not electrified) a darn buck worked his way into the enclosure and used his antlers to rip the black deer fence tubes up over the tree and then continued to rub my first year planted Pristine Apple. You can see the bark scars in the photos. Do you think this will kill the tree or can it survive this? The total length of damage is probably 16 inches or so.
It’ll survive it. May take a couple of years for those scrapes to callus in.
If it bothered you enough, you could prune it below the lowest lesion and re-grow it from that point… but I probably wouldn’t.
Those look fresh enough that I’d be inclined to wrap the damaged tissue with Parafilm and hope that some of the cambium cells are still viable… could help speed up closure if there are some islands of viable cells here and there.
5 Likes
Had that done to a Macoun about that size last year. Hooked a cage I’d made out of concrete wire mesh and got to the tree. It looked about like that and I just decided to lop it off below the damage. It put on a TON of growth this summer. Of course it’s set back from what it would have been, but I just feel like it’ll have a super root system and it’ll be awhile in making apples but I still have my tree.
1 Like
To quote a certain husband of a certain recent Pres candidate: “Ah feeel yar payn!” Worked his way thru the enclosure, and ripped the fence tubes off with his antlers? That’s one determined and smart deer! Guess he really likes Pristine. I have a one year old Pristine as well.
I put 4ft high, 1x2in square wire mesh fencing around all my fruit trees, and anchored them down with stakes after having some of them damaged by the devil deer back in the summer. Just minor damage, some branches nipped off. They’ll be OK, but it was enough at the time to set me off on a barrage of loud profanities that hopefully no one heard. They are a infuriating bunch.
1 Like
We’ve had sightings of coyotes running in a pack as large as six and I came across three coyotes running on our street one night. I’m hoping they are keeping our small deer population in check.
They always get one or two of my trees. They got one of my black locust trees and a sour cherry! I did scare the heck out of him because I snuck up on him and caught him! Another one pruned my sweet cherry!
I have a number of trees that have looked like that over the years. I was at first heart-sick (finally netted the surrounding shrubs. No deer, no damage. The trees recovered and are just fine (scarred but fine). 
2 Likes
I would try to clean up the loose wood around those wounds so that it can heal more easily.
Apple trees have always come back better than other trees for me. If I had to bet, I’d bet that one comes back if you get no more damage.
I have only lost a few limbs completely. Usually the deer don’t rub all the way around. I have many mature trees which still have old signs of rubbing on them, it has only been cosmetic - not any more problem with canker etc at those spots.
1 Like
Johnthecook,
That monster makes our coyotes look like puppies! That looks like a real wolf! This is what our coyotes look like http://ksoutdoors.com/Hunting/Furharvesting/Furbearers/Coyote
We had one like that around here several years ago - it was noticeably bigger than the rest of its pack.
And it wasn’t especially fearful of humans. I once went to run it off, and it stood its ground and gave me The Look before turning its back.
1 Like
Ltilton,
Once in awhile the real wolf shows up even in Kansas. Black bears , wolves, and mountain lions are all very rare in Kansas but all have been confirmed in Kansas in recent years http://ksoutdoors.com/Wildlife-Habitats/Wildlife-Sightings. You never really know what’s out there! Bobcats and coyotes are common and relatively harmless. I would rather have harmless preditors like coyotes around because with all the rodents and deer we need them. I did not like the coyotes much when I was trying to raise chickens.
Yes it’s been interesting around here lately with sightings and them standing their ground which is more Coywolf behavior. The three I was following were working their way down my road with no fear of cars. I thought maybe it was one of their nightly rounds looking for road kill on the road. No deer sightings for me in a while I’ll bet they are eating them or making the deer more shy now.
2 Likes
Boy I’ll say yours are bigger!
Here’s a couple of trail cam pictures of coyotes here fairly recently. One in September and one in November.
I’ve also noticed that just within the past couple years that bucks have been rubbing my mature apple trees. I quick threw up a little fencing once I noticed it this year, but they went clear around my State Fair last year and it died.
The first pix is the old Mac and you can see they’ve began raking on the closest limb last year so it’s all dark now. But I figured they’d finish the job this year if I didn’t do something.
The last one is a Haralson tree that has both old and new damage.
But even after they raked up my State Fair, I still kind of assumed it would survive. It put on a crop of apples and things were looking good then all of a sudden it was in rapid decline, then totally dead. Just nothing to feed the top with once they girdled it.
It’s just maddening to have to now think about trying to protect mature trees as well as younger ones. The Mac has been in since '91 and the Haralson since '94.
3 Likes
Kinda surprised to see coyotes during the daytime. We only hear them howling here at night, it drives our dog crazy. Thankfully, he keeps his distance from them, but I did see one chasing him one night in our yard.
Just curious, what kind of production have you got out of those two 20+ year old trees?
It is rather unusual to have daytime sightings here too, I have far more trail cam pix of coyotes at night. We kind of have an infestation of them, and have lost some outside cats as a result. We now garage the remaining cats every - single - night!!!
Here’s a picture of some boxes of apples off the McIntosh tree from '13. We had that many plus two or three more boxes that we’d already given away. It’s close to this amount on this tree most years, although some are a bit lighter.
Here’s a shot of some apples on the Haralson, it’s a semi-dwarf so is much smaller than the full size Mac, but it gives us a ton of apples every year too, and does not seem to be biennial at all. Gives fairly good size apples even with my lack of thinning…
5 Likes
I’ve had several trees rubbed pretty hard by deer but I have never had any of them die as a result.
