Where do you live?? Could be bears, raccoons. Many animals can climb a fence.

Thanks for responding, I live in far Northern California, a mountain valley. There are bears around, but I think they would smash the 8 ft tall wire fence if they tried to go over it. Raccoons a definite possibility however. Do you think they could get out to the end of branches though to pick every last piece of Fruit? If so - what to do?

Raccoon weight would break smaller branches. What is your squirrel population like?

How many trees and for how many years has this happened?

This has happened for many years, it involves about a dozen trees. It may be telling that the two trees we have nearer the house do not seem to have this problem. We do have ground squirrels, quite a few actually.

Squirrels love tree fruit! Them and rats are my biggest problem for tree fruit. Birds for berries.

I vote for raccoons as the most likely possibility with squirrels as the next most likely. Racoons are constantly milling around in my nor cal garden this time of year probably because all of their natural food sources are gone because it is so dry. They are highly intelligent and resourceful.

I hate to tell you but even an 8' tall fence is not sufficent to keep a determined deer out of an orchard or vegetable garden. White tailed deer can easily jump as high as 15', provided they can clearly see the obstacle.

I'd put up a trail-cam or two. They're fairly cheap.

It wasn't me. I promise.

Deer would be my guess too, but 8' fencing should have kept them out and deer always leave the pits (if you can look for them, they will eat the fruit in place and leave the pits).

Birds, nope. They would peck at the fruit on the tree and leave big holes.

Squirrels, nope. Squirrels would drop some, miss some. And they move their stash around; you'd find fruit in weird places since they steal back and forth.

I'd say racoons.

We have 1/4 of an acre in Zinfandel and we keep the vines wrapped in bird netting. Keeps all the critters away. it would be a royal pain to wrap a tree though.

Wow, this Great! So many responses. Thank you. I hadn't thought about the trail cam ideal, that's a good one.

If it's deer they would probably be chewing on your lower branch leaves too so that might be a clue. Squirrels are the bane of all my fruit trees except the Asian persimmons, they seem confused about them. I did save several pears this season by wrapping them in small paper bags, the squirrels got all the ones unbagged, squirrels don't share.

Thanks, I think it must be squirrels. It just seems that even squirrels would have a hard time getting out to the end of a branch to get a piece of fruit. Maybe I will try the paper bag idea next year.

Paper bag will not stop squirrels, they will just rip it apart and take the fruit. Birds net won't work either, squirrels can chew through it.

The only solution works for me is to use rat poison (just one bite) to get rid of them. I understand that may not be a option for everybody.

http://www.urbancarnivores.com/poisons/

Anticoagulant poisons accumulate in the food web and kill much more than their intended victims. I hope all will please consider other methods of prevention, and try to maintain peace with animals' survival needs.

"Paper bag will not stop squirrels, they will just rip it apart and take the fruit."

Maybe next year the squirrels here will wise up but this year the bags did deter them, the bags also kept the stink bugs at bay. It was a pleasant surprise to me too as I thought the varmints would see a bagged lunch and snatch them up. Now that all the fruit trees are bare the squirrels are rapidly picking apart my neighbors pecan trees.

Do you have opossums in your area? They are fruit eaters.

No opossum. We saw to raccoons in a pear tree last night though.

This has happened to our loquat tree every year about this time for the 10 years we’ve lived here in the foothills of the Sierras. We go from a tree covered with hundreds of loquats to the next day every single loquat gone with no partial fruit, pits, or any trace left. We have many other fruit trees of many varieties ( apple, fig, citrus, grapes, pomegranate, quince, etc) and it is only the loquat that completely and mysteriously disappear in one night every year. The tree is in our 8’-high fully fenced backyard and even the fruit 20 feet up on the furthest branches are completely gone. We have several external cameras and catch squirrels, foxes, raccoons, skunks and deer as regular visitors, but no surge of activity and not ever the quantity of critters to explain hundreds of fruit disappearing in one night… We are so puzzled.