Welcome to the deer-haters club.

When I've had damage like this to spruces and a fir I at first assumed it was deer also. Although after I had wondered long enough about it involving large pieces being clipped off right through stem sections of some diameter I realized it was instead rabbit damage. After winter nesting material, perhaps?

Except when rubbing off velvet on suitably stiff plants like young spruce trees deer damage seems to usually consist of the snipping of little short pieces of foliage. Kind of like the harvesting of tea leaves on tea plantations, although with partial leaves often being left on the plants. Even when the animals are more driven during snowy periods - doing things like the familiar eating down of accessible arborvitae foliage to nearly the quick - there is a tendency for it to consist of a large number of small bites. And with it to stop at the point where stems of much firmness and size are encountered (the quick).

Also: do deer ever eat pine family conifers?

Not only rabbits, but squirrels will do this to my Pinus nigras. Any pix of the damage?

tj

Those definitely build winter nests out of plant material.

We don't have deer but our jack rabbits are almost as big...and they bite pieces off the conifers and generally just leave them lying there. I've gotten to be a pretty good shot.

Count me in on the deer haters club. They got to 4 of my conifers this year.....so far.

lolol! Im just getting into Hostas (now that I have no real space or sunny spots to plant in), deer candy for sure!

Rabbits will usually cut as sharp as a grafting knife, with deer a lot of times there's pulling,twisting and grinding. I used to grow a nice looking 'Firefly' that rabbits had excavated underneath to nest and not only dug a deep hole but ground some pretty large roots up like they were big carrots and killed the tree. That's when I started thinning the herd...

Al

Yes Al, that is what it looks like! As if someone was snipping off scion wood...

Deer don't have the big incisors of rodents, any damage seen that looks as though clipped off with shears will not be caused by deer.

Also: do deer ever eat pine family conifers?

Deer are notorious for eating the candles off of pine trees in the spring time. So much that our MN DNR installs 'bud caps' on the main leader of whole plantations of various pine trees to prevent this from happening. pictures of bud capped pine trees.

Deer can severely set back the growth and development of pine trees in this way.

To keep the deer away from my tulips in the spring is I rotate scents every two to 3 weeks. Dog hair, moth balls and irish spring. You have to rotate because they will get use to a scent and start their feeding again. It has worked for me for the past 3 years. My arborvitaes I fence in during the winter.

Bill, I didn't know or have ever seen that before. That's really cool and makes lots of sense...I've seen the tubes at planting time around here but never the caps....Nice info!

Al

I see this same damage on the wild jack pines that sprout on my land, I see the forestry caps plantations of that species too. From winter bud stage until the candles are a couple of inches long is the critical time. Once it warms up enough in the spring so other things that the deer like begin to sprout, then the pressures off.

I've never seen the forestry remove the caps, they're just cheap paper that bio-degrade and the staples rust away. Usually before the next season.

They also tend to favor tender new growth of other kinds browsed, due to it not having full concentrations of defensive chemicals. Yes, snipping off and leaving behind of fairly sizable sections of mature growth would not be deer. The fir I mentioned lost branch sections maybe even a foot or more long.