I’ve read a lot about deterring deer from our trees on here and at my home, that’s what I’m trying to accomplish. However, on the reverse side, I’d like to attract deer at my cabin. My cabin is located in the laurel highlands outside of the Pittsburgh area, which is zone 6.
We used to have about 10 very productive mature apple trees that would attract dear to our property. About 10 years ago my poor grandfather grabbed the wrong pesticide spray and hosed them down in round up. Now we only have about 3 trees left and they are not super productive. I think they are either golden delicious or yellow delicious.
Here’s what I’d like to do… I want to plant a few different varieties with the purpose of attracting deer during and around hunting season. I will prune them with high branches so the deer don’t damage the trees. In PA, archery starts in November and rifle starts in late November. I’m looking for varieties that will drop apples around this time. Since this is my cabin and I’m not there a lot, I’d like some cultivars that don’t necessarily need to be sprayed or pruned heavily.
As I type this post I realize that I don’t necessarily need them to be apple trees. Any fruit would be sufficient. We already have two food plots so I’d like to have some fruit that we can eat and that the deer can eat.
Here’s the few varieties I should have easy access to Incase any of them are a good fit:
Goldrush
Early Fuji
Crimson Crisp
Enterprise
Ruby Rush
Honeycrisp
Harrow Crisp Pear
Shenandoah Pear
The late frosts I think would rule out stone fruits.
Narragansett, Ed’s crazy crab, and Clark’s crab all are extremely disease resistant and produce vast quantities of small tasty apples that drop through the late fall
I would add persimmon. There’s several cultivars that would drop in that timeframe. One of them I believe is even called Deer Candy. Google Cliff England at England Nursery
Blue hills nursery specializes in fruit trees for wildlife food plots ( apples, crabs, pears, chestnuts and persimmons) https://bluehillwildlifenursery.com/ high quality trees, they sell out very fast
Not sure how well they do in your area but Winesap, Ida Red and Northern Spy are also late ripening apples to consider. I would get them on a standard or very large semi-dwarf rootstock (Bud 118). Keep them fenced for the first few years to prevent buck rubs and critters from destroying them. Prune them up so lowest branch is 6’ from ground.
There was a posting on this forum that compared disease resistance of apples. I tried but couldn’t find it. It was in the form of a paper. If I were to start over again I would plant the most disease resistant from the papers on either Anna a. Or m111. It has a chart like the bh giving drop times.
Thanks @ansayre . That is very helpful. I have my own goldrush and enterprise at home so those are two really good candidates based on disease resistance.
For deer, I planted
Apples: Liberty, Enterprise, Winesap, Keener Seedling, Arkansas Black (and grafted a couple other varieties onto them).
Pears: probably 20 varieties
Persimmons: Planted rootstock and grafted maybe 50% of them
Chestnuts
