New pear…grafted last year. Working on scaffold branches … higher up… deer pressure here. Working on those scaffold branch crotch angles.
TNHunter
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I started a lot of my new trees pretty close to 12” off the ground. I realized after a couple winters the rabbits just gnaw all of my lower limbs off or close to off. After observing this problem, mine are now about 2-3 feel from the ground for most and newly planted trees are started about a foot or 2 higher in my yard. I’m fenced in so no deer to worry about, but rabbits are everywhere by me.
I could use a wide circle of chicken wire to keep these scaffolds lower but I opted to raise them a bit and continue using my plastic tubes in the winter which is far easier for me. I already have to use the chicken wire with bush cherries, blueberries, honey berries and a couple other things so I prefer to use it only when necessary.
Took out two HUGE rats and a ground squirrel eating their way throughny seedlongs. Mosy pear and apple wjll come back but they got a bunch or pretty red leafed crabapple. 
I have observed over the years that having my dogs pisding allover the place seemed enough to keep the rabbits out of my yard. Maybe some animal urine repellant would work.
I have a small garden at my cottage with light deer pressure. Plantskydd which is pig and cow blood worked great. They smell that blood and they leave afraid.
I really struggle with this because while we have a 7’ plastic deer fence we consider it temporary since we’re clearing some area around it and didn’t want to put in anything permanent yet until we’ve got it at final dimensions. I have some really nice low scaffolds there on these young trees! Trees outside the fence I use 4 or 5’ welded wire circles and deer don’t get into them, so their fate is sealed to have higher first scaffolds. Liquid fence works to some extent but I’m not sure if it would be bulletproof in a tough winter. We had a 5’ fence at our previous home and it kept deer out, but they had plenty of other things to eat. All it takes is one hungry deer. Had a wayward buck get into our plastic fence when a storm dropped part of it low and he wandered around trying to get out, eating some off of every tree until he figured out how to get out… all caught on a trail cam.