Here's where I begin to wonder what will live and what will die. Daddy deer took several swipes at our maple trees, dogwood and Yoshino tree with his antlers of anarchy. As you can see I've managed to wrap them with a rudimentary measure of protection. The black plastic mesh might be all I need to keep the deer from sharpening his antlers on the young trees. Let's hope so! I'm tempted to get some corrugated drainage tubes to wrap around the trees. It may not look so hot but it should prevent the rutting damage from continuing.
My next task is to figure out a way to aid the trees in the healing process. The first step is to trim the rough edges around the wounds. If there were enough of the shaved bark lying around the tree it might be possible to reattach it and tape it down with masking tape. Unfortunately that bark looks more like hamster bedding than bark. I've read that you should avoid adding a dressing on top of the wound so I won't do that but I am tempted to remove some bark from the branches of other maples and essentially graft it to the tree. We have a few silver maples that should make good donor subjects and if I only use bark from the branches and not the main trunk I shouldn't hurt those trees. Perhaps a transplant from a donor tree is in order!
