ORIGINAL: Snoogsdad
We have a few apple trees on our hunting property and both the deer and I love the apples. With a few different varieties of trees the deer start eating apples near the end of summer a there were still a few apples on the trees yesterday.
The trick is to keep the deer from ruining the apple trees while they are young. You have to protect them.
Ain't that the truth. If you want any bark/bud left, you have to put some decent fencing around each tree. With larger trees they'll nibble off anything they can reach. That has a negative impact on the tree and in some cases that will lead to dead lower branches. The varieties comment is true too and I'll add that depending on conditions during flowering/pollination, you may get some varities that don't produce a thing because pollination was timed with some real bad weather. So having different varieties increases the chance that you will actually get some apples from your stand of trees.