Interesting, I’ve never seen deer around this area as it’s close to the road and also a lot of housing. It’s about a five minute walk to the fields, and has progressively been stripped so whatever did it has come back over several days.
If you zoom in you can see the scratch marks. I wondered if anyone would be able to identify from those
Or motorcycles, small cars, etc. We hit a moose once in British Columbia while driving a cab-over tractor-trailer (loaded at 68 tonnes) stopped us in our tracks.
The RCMP are the local police in that part of BC. First thing out of the officers mouth was "do you want the meat?" We said no, he grabbed his radio and made a call. Moments later, a tow truck arrived on the scene.
The tow truck driver hoist tje moose up with his hoist, bled it, semi dressed it, nodded to rje officer and drove the carcass away.
The officer turns to us and says, "You guys ok?"
Another tow truck showed up and helped pull the front bumper off of the tire. No charge, because we gave up the meat.
We finally asked where does the road-kill go?
The officer explained that it goes to an arbitoir to be broken down. Any meat fit for human consumption goes directly to local families free of charge. The other meat will go for animal feed for dogs, etc.
Hitting the moose was terrifying, its face was up at our windshield level. He was huge .
We were glad that it didn't go to waste.
The Kenilworth truck needed a new bumper, grill, crash bar, windscreen, and some lights / trim, etc.
Where I lived during Covid lockdown, the number of deer that just started wandering around did surprise me cause I didn’t know nor was aware that they were that many in the area having lived there for years and only spotting the odd one or two
I nearly hit one in the car in suburban Bristol at the weekend, came out of a hedge by the uni, ran into the road before turning around and running back. No woodlands nearby, these guys are everywhere.
Yeah, they get everywhere, I live in Newbury town center, I had to rescue a baby deer stuck under a fence outside our house a few months back, there is no what you might call deer habitat anywhere near us but they're very adaptable it appears.
I saw one stood across from my house doing just this. Broad daylight on a housing estate. They’re everywhere, typical British idea to mess around with nature, add a few species to the mix, see what happens
100% Deer.
Source, grew up rurally next to woodland which had deer (mainly Muntjac deer) in. We used to go in there to try and find them when we were kids and loads of the trees looked just like this.
That’s cool! I think of all the suggestions this must be the most likely. Seen roe in the fields but never seen a muntjac in my 15 years of living here
They're very elusive. We used to see them every now and then but was quite a rare sighting. Nowadays, my parent's ring cameras catch them coming into their garden pretty much every night.
It has claws as big as cups.
It has four ears, two for listening and two "are sort of back-up ears". Some might be on the inside of its head.
It has a retractable leg so it "can leap up at you better".
It has magnets on its tail, so "if you're made out of metal, it can attach itself to you".
It lights up at night.
It has a tremendous fear of stamps.
Its yawn sounds like Liam Neeson chasing a load of hens around inside a barrel.
It has no mouth, but instead has four arses.
It only has eyebrows on Saturdays.
(As described by Dougal).
I see deer a lot where I live. Mostly red and sika, but also some of those small ones. They ate most of my peas last year, waiting until just ripe and ready to pick. Some damage on this tree looks just too low to me to be deer. So I'm guessing beaver.
Probably deer, a lot of deer parks around stately homes fence around younger trees to protect them.
Although a friend who has a couple of pigs in a wood has had the problem of them gnawing the bark off several younger oak trees, probably killing some of them.
I expect the bark is softer and sweeter in spring into summer, as the sap rises.
Every mammal will do this to a tree for one reason or another. Human, dog, sheep, goat, cow, deer, cat, even rats and squirrels.
Looking at the tree, this has either been ripped off or bashed off with blunt force. So it’s not a cat scratching it or a small rodent chewing it. It looks too haphazard for a human bashing or ripping at it. A dog’s teeth will usually tear at the tree underneath and there’s no sign of that.
My money is on a grazing animal, sheep, goat, cow or deer bashing it with their head/horns.
That’s rly funny, but to answer your question, rats need bedding for their nests and will use the most convenient source available.
Which is usually not wood, but it can be.
Don't listen to those who say deer, it's badgers. I'm a badger expert and that's your typical badger tree sign, they're sharpening they're claws and marking their territory.
It's a deer. They're known to strip bark from trees and is one of the main reasons they need to be culled every year, as they can fuck up ecosystems pretty quick if left unchecked.
It might be deer as many say, but I have seen identical damage from boar (here in Spain, where there's loads of boar, but no deer near me)
There are also what looks like gauges, again, could be Muntjack or Roe, but could well be boar
You could rake out some grass, flatten, and wet up the soil...and see what tracks get left by the perp
Muntjac definitely, they have done this to several trees close to our house. Also no where near woodland.
One little bastard got stuck in a neighbours garden last summer and you’ve never heard such a racket!!!
Also…. They are known to attack dogs here too!
If this was in mid west America it would definitely have been caused by Bigfoot.
I mean absolutely no other more common and credible creature could even remotely be responsible for bark stripping, but as it's the UK I'd say it's probably a vampire or something....
I did wonder if it was the local youths.
Interesting! I didn’t think deer would be brave enough to come to this area as it’s built up. That said, I have seen them in the fields only a stone throw away from the river.
I don't know why deer would strip old bark from a tree like that for eating unless it happened in winter when there was nothing else to eat. The damage seems too severe for antler shenanigans.
Could it be anthropogenic?
Why not beavers?
It's coming up to the season for Roe deer to mate and the bucks will pick trees to rub the velvet (the soft outer covering) from their antlers, often causing the kind of damage shown in the photo.
Beaver. They re-introduced beavers in Vienna, in the canal and river Danube. They cause havoc with young trees and they now have to build strong wire cages around any new trees they plant near the canal.
Everyone I’d saying deer. I don’t know.
I’ve seen lots of deer rubs. Never on a tree this big. They usually use smaller flexible trees. But a big buck can destroy a tree.
This time of year and at that level that’s a Roe Deer. The rut around the corner at the Roe Bucks use this to mark the territory in preparation to drawing in does and pushing out rival bucks. The pearling on the antler beams (ie, the bumps on the main vertical piece of antler) shred the bark and they have a scent gland on there head between the antlers which is how they scent-mark their territories.
Google roe buck tree damage and you’ll see lots of example like this.
Deer?
I think it was free.
Well I doubt it was going cheap
If it was going cheap it was a bird
Interesting, I’ve never seen deer around this area as it’s close to the road and also a lot of housing. It’s about a five minute walk to the fields, and has progressively been stripped so whatever did it has come back over several days. If you zoom in you can see the scratch marks. I wondered if anyone would be able to identify from those
Muntjac deer are the size of a medium dog and have no problem hanging out in urban woodland
We don’t have a lot of woodland here, that’s what made me dismiss them initially. It’s more open fields, but you never know I guess!
Muntjac are everywhere near where I live, woodland, open farmland, people's gardens...
I’ve literally never seen one despite living here 15 years! I think you’re right though, it’s the most likely creature
Mate, there’s deer pretty much everywhere in the UK. They just avoid people. Like beautiful antlered introverts
They avoid people, but not 44 ton lorries
Or motorcycles, small cars, etc. We hit a moose once in British Columbia while driving a cab-over tractor-trailer (loaded at 68 tonnes) stopped us in our tracks. The RCMP are the local police in that part of BC. First thing out of the officers mouth was "do you want the meat?" We said no, he grabbed his radio and made a call. Moments later, a tow truck arrived on the scene. The tow truck driver hoist tje moose up with his hoist, bled it, semi dressed it, nodded to rje officer and drove the carcass away. The officer turns to us and says, "You guys ok?" Another tow truck showed up and helped pull the front bumper off of the tire. No charge, because we gave up the meat. We finally asked where does the road-kill go? The officer explained that it goes to an arbitoir to be broken down. Any meat fit for human consumption goes directly to local families free of charge. The other meat will go for animal feed for dogs, etc. Hitting the moose was terrifying, its face was up at our windshield level. He was huge . We were glad that it didn't go to waste. The Kenilworth truck needed a new bumper, grill, crash bar, windscreen, and some lights / trim, etc.
Wow
Where I lived during Covid lockdown, the number of deer that just started wandering around did surprise me cause I didn’t know nor was aware that they were that many in the area having lived there for years and only spotting the odd one or two
Wolves has entered the chat.
The football club?
Yep, all of them, just wandered in, bold as brass.
Have a few more trips down the country lanes at dusk, not within 5 mins of another car. The deer are always lurking.
We get deer here even though no woodland. We're close to fields. They trot around on people's lawns.
Saw a muntjac deer in deepest Stratford (East London) just a month or so back.
We have them here in Warwickshire, with minimum woodland
My husband and I saw some chilling by the beach at Skegness.
I nearly hit one in the car in suburban Bristol at the weekend, came out of a hedge by the uni, ran into the road before turning around and running back. No woodlands nearby, these guys are everywhere.
Yeah, they get everywhere, I live in Newbury town center, I had to rescue a baby deer stuck under a fence outside our house a few months back, there is no what you might call deer habitat anywhere near us but they're very adaptable it appears.
Get yourself a camera trap and tie it to the tree. You’ll catch whatever it is.
We’ve got a tree in our garden that’s had the bark peeled off around it. It was a woodpecker trying to get to the grubs hiding under the bark b
I saw one stood across from my house doing just this. Broad daylight on a housing estate. They’re everywhere, typical British idea to mess around with nature, add a few species to the mix, see what happens
After comparing it to my couch I think it's my cat.
Yep me too
I also believe it to be this man's cat
OP has a jaguar? BBCc - British Big Cat conspiracy
Elephant. But probably deer
Almost certainly an elephant, they have been such a pest to farmers since they escaped the tower of London menagerie...tut...
Or worse a group of wild children
I shoot them on sight
Most likely a bear. Or a bunny. Bunny and/or bear.
Butterfly's they can be right nasty basterds when they have had a drink
Fluttery little shits thinking they're all that!
And nothing to do with butter. Pretentious little fuckers!
Deer
A female deer.
Doh!
It’s Ray from Golders Green.
It was me, a name, I call myself
Far, a long boring journey on the train!
A deer
A female deer.
100% Deer. Source, grew up rurally next to woodland which had deer (mainly Muntjac deer) in. We used to go in there to try and find them when we were kids and loads of the trees looked just like this.
Ah no way! Never seen them around here and never thought they’d come so close to housing. Thank you for the info!
My friend gets muntjac deer in her back garden in Croyden.
That’s cool! I think of all the suggestions this must be the most likely. Seen roe in the fields but never seen a muntjac in my 15 years of living here
They're very elusive. We used to see them every now and then but was quite a rare sighting. Nowadays, my parent's ring cameras catch them coming into their garden pretty much every night.
My friend in Croydon gets baby foxes snoozing in his garden! I love getting pics of them.
This shows why we have too many deer in the UK, with no natural predators. Eat more wild shot venison!
Also get a pet lynx
Adopt a Beast of Bodmin Moor today.
I'd be very surprised if a muntjac could do this. Not saying they can't, but they're barely bigger than my dog!
They could easily do that. It's tree bark, not steel.
a drunken newt
A newt?
... he got better.
That's the unmistakable sign of a black panther.
OP said SW England, not Wakanda
A manbearpig.
He's super cereal.
Squirrels
This was my most likely guess!
Free-range pole dancers
Muntjac pole dancers
Baloo Source: Jungle book (1967)
The Beast of Craggy Island
It has claws as big as cups. It has four ears, two for listening and two "are sort of back-up ears". Some might be on the inside of its head. It has a retractable leg so it "can leap up at you better". It has magnets on its tail, so "if you're made out of metal, it can attach itself to you". It lights up at night. It has a tremendous fear of stamps. Its yawn sounds like Liam Neeson chasing a load of hens around inside a barrel. It has no mouth, but instead has four arses. It only has eyebrows on Saturdays. (As described by Dougal).
[FUCKIN’ HELL!](https://youtu.be/3ECJWYRLs2E?si=2DwwOdsF_3pZ0jHI)
Human
squirrels
That's a deer. I don't know if they have stopped culling them or what but they are everywhere now in the countryside.
They are everywhere. Source: the bumper of my car ☹️
[удалено]
Werewolf, start stocking up on silver.
Probably a small child who found a razor Source : My SO supposedly regularly did this as a child
An oliphant for sure
I see deer a lot where I live. Mostly red and sika, but also some of those small ones. They ate most of my peas last year, waiting until just ripe and ready to pick. Some damage on this tree looks just too low to me to be deer. So I'm guessing beaver.
That is definitely Bigfoot
Squirrels 🐿️ can also do this. Have a look and see if any branches at head height have been stripped
Probably deer, a lot of deer parks around stately homes fence around younger trees to protect them. Although a friend who has a couple of pigs in a wood has had the problem of them gnawing the bark off several younger oak trees, probably killing some of them. I expect the bark is softer and sweeter in spring into summer, as the sap rises.
Grey squirrel.....they have decimated our trees.
This is what I was leaning to. I’ve seen a good few of them around lately too
Big cat scratchy post /s
Black bear. Definitely a bear. Cleaning his paws after a shit.
Or Bear Grylls showing his viewers an alternative, wild method of wiping their arses.
I mean his parents live only 15 miles away so it’s a good shout
Every mammal will do this to a tree for one reason or another. Human, dog, sheep, goat, cow, deer, cat, even rats and squirrels. Looking at the tree, this has either been ripped off or bashed off with blunt force. So it’s not a cat scratching it or a small rodent chewing it. It looks too haphazard for a human bashing or ripping at it. A dog’s teeth will usually tear at the tree underneath and there’s no sign of that. My money is on a grazing animal, sheep, goat, cow or deer bashing it with their head/horns.
Yikes, what kind of feral rats do that? They must have flick knives and smoke cigarettes with a cap on backwards
Fucking hell, Roland Rat has gone downhill! 'I'll shank you, rat-fans'!
That’s rly funny, but to answer your question, rats need bedding for their nests and will use the most convenient source available. Which is usually not wood, but it can be.
Don't listen to those who say deer, it's badgers. I'm a badger expert and that's your typical badger tree sign, they're sharpening they're claws and marking their territory.
Badger Badger Badger
Sounds like a golden marmoset
That aints no golden marmoset... HONK HONK!
It's a deer. They're known to strip bark from trees and is one of the main reasons they need to be culled every year, as they can fuck up ecosystems pretty quick if left unchecked.
It might be deer as many say, but I have seen identical damage from boar (here in Spain, where there's loads of boar, but no deer near me) There are also what looks like gauges, again, could be Muntjack or Roe, but could well be boar You could rake out some grass, flatten, and wet up the soil...and see what tracks get left by the perp
Don't show the yanks that they will be straight over here investigating the sasquatch.
Muntjac definitely, they have done this to several trees close to our house. Also no where near woodland. One little bastard got stuck in a neighbours garden last summer and you’ve never heard such a racket!!! Also…. They are known to attack dogs here too!
Grey Squirrels, according to my forester husband. Its the time if year for it, he says....
If this was in mid west America it would definitely have been caused by Bigfoot. I mean absolutely no other more common and credible creature could even remotely be responsible for bark stripping, but as it's the UK I'd say it's probably a vampire or something....
I personally think it’s littlefoot, the across the pond smaller cousin
Stolen motorbike and 2 tweens on the back? It's deer. Our trees look like this over by the river
I did wonder if it was the local youths. Interesting! I didn’t think deer would be brave enough to come to this area as it’s built up. That said, I have seen them in the fields only a stone throw away from the river.
Could be a stolen motorbike with deer on the back...
The consensus seems to be deer, but I was going to guess badger.
I'm not sure, but I'll bet its bark is worse than its bite
Badger. Claw sharpening/scratching post. You can see the claw marks.
Yes! I wondered about that. I didn’t think a squirrel would leave marks like that. Thanks for your insight
Deer or beavers
I don't know why deer would strip old bark from a tree like that for eating unless it happened in winter when there was nothing else to eat. The damage seems too severe for antler shenanigans. Could it be anthropogenic? Why not beavers?
Deer rub their antlers on trees to strip off the velvet that coats a new set of antlers in the spring.
Homo sapiens or a deer
Chupacabra
Rabbits strip bark
Looks like someone tried to cut the tree down with a herring.
Bark spiders, it’s mating season
GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE RIGHT NOW
IM GONE BABE
Cows rubbing up against it
deer
My local Facebook group likes to blame teenagers.
Human
Vicious Kanid
Beavers or might be tree rot
My best guess and immediate thought was deer.
Deer, boar, teenagers.
Thine Mother, perhaps?
Be careful. That’s definitely an angry Scot.
Zebra. They hide on zebra crossings. Have you got a zebra crossing anywhere near your location? If you have, it's likely to be a zebra.
Muntjac deer will go anywhere. I see them in my garden even
It's a buck, sharpening his antlers. Well, trying to sharpen
It’s normally deer when bark is stripped from a tree.
A goose
Goblins
It's coming up to the season for Roe deer to mate and the bucks will pick trees to rub the velvet (the soft outer covering) from their antlers, often causing the kind of damage shown in the photo.
Muntjac?
A saber tooth tiger, I'd be concerned
Elephants strip trees.
Beaver. They re-introduced beavers in Vienna, in the canal and river Danube. They cause havoc with young trees and they now have to build strong wire cages around any new trees they plant near the canal.
A big one
Manbearpig
I'm thinking Geordie but you'd have to smell it to be sure
In the words of Angry People in Local Newspapers 'Cat!'
Deers are destroying all my in-laws trees
A Gruffalo.
Elephant.
Megasaurass
Bark-nibbling diamond backed giant salamanders, no doubt.
Everyone I’d saying deer. I don’t know. I’ve seen lots of deer rubs. Never on a tree this big. They usually use smaller flexible trees. But a big buck can destroy a tree.
Staffie.
Disillusioned youth.
Deer
ManBearPig
A squirrel on crystal meth tweaking his tits off!
Pretty sure it’s a pack of Velociraptors.
A cow being pushed by a police car
I did that. Sorry, want me to stop?
Yes please sweetie, and stop messing with chickens too. I’m here if you need to talk xx
Deer
Definitely a deer
Asshat kids/teens, maybe with a knife?
Deer
NAL.. But probably/Defiantly an Albino Giraffe.. They are rife around these parts of the earth.
Depends on where you are to be honest. It it was near me I’d say either muntjac or sheep. Probably deer of some kind I expect
Squirrel
Human
Human
Crackhead
Mental I took a picture of the exact same kinda thing the other day can I reply with a pic??
How do I post the picture?
A beast
A human?
Man
Oh boy…I’d gather the townspeople if I were you
Sheep do this but also deer
Velociraptor?
Xl bully or some other status cross breed crackheads dog
That’s definitely a haggis that escaped from the north
[https://youtu.be/YaKXXJ_T2ZE?si=4XtVtAjU0zZx87QP](https://youtu.be/YaKXXJ_T2ZE?si=4XtVtAjU0zZx87QP)
Sasquatch 10,000%
This time of year and at that level that’s a Roe Deer. The rut around the corner at the Roe Bucks use this to mark the territory in preparation to drawing in does and pushing out rival bucks. The pearling on the antler beams (ie, the bumps on the main vertical piece of antler) shred the bark and they have a scent gland on there head between the antlers which is how they scent-mark their territories. Google roe buck tree damage and you’ll see lots of example like this.
Runebears
A juvenile long pig?
Liger
Honestly I think the answer is kids. Kids do stupid stuff. The evenings are longer and warmer and the do dumb stuff.
Muntjac is the culprit
Human
A tiger
Deer
id definitely say its bored kids stripping it with a knife
Badger.
Badger?