Rabbits, Groundhogs and Voles

If the damage in your garden is below knee height, it is probably not deer. Getting this wrong is expensive, because a deer fence does nothing about a rabbit and a rabbit fence does nothing about a vole.

The one test that separates most of them

Deer have no upper incisors. They grip a shoot and tear, so a browsed stem ends in a rough, shredded stub.

Rabbits and rodents have upper incisors and cut like scissors, leaving a clean surface angled at about 45 degrees.

Look at the end of the shoot, not at the plant. That decides it faster than anything else.

Rabbits

Signature: clean angled cuts below about 2.5 feet. Whole young stems taken off rather than tips nibbled.

Winter tell: bark stripped from young trunks at snow height, with visible tooth grooves. Snow depth is the giveaway, because the damage sits in a band that matches where the snow was.

Fix: two feet of chicken wire with the bottom six inches buried or bent outward into an L. Rabbits dig under before they climb, so the buried lip matters more than the height. Trunk guards on young trees before the first winter.

Groundhogs

Signature: whole plants gone at ground level, often overnight, concentrated in vegetable beds. A row of beans can disappear in one visit.

Tell: a burrow entrance 10 to 12 inches across with a mound of excavated soil, usually against a structure, shed or fence line. Groundhogs dig a main entrance and at least one hidden bolt hole.

Fix: genuinely harder to exclude than deer. Fencing needs to go about 12 inches underground and have a floppy, unsupported top 12 inches, because they both dig and climb. A rigid fence they can grip is a ladder.

Voles

Signature: plants that wilt and die for no visible reason, then lift out of the ground with no roots left. All the work happens below the surface.

Tell: narrow surface runways in turf, most obvious as snow melts, and quarter-inch holes with no soil mound. The no-mound part distinguishes them from moles, which are eating grubs rather than your plants.

Fix: hardware cloth baskets around bulbs and the root balls of valuable shrubs. Pull mulch back from trunks, because mulch against bark is cover and voles will not cross open ground willingly. Repellents do nothing underground.

Squirrels and chipmunks

Signature: freshly planted bulbs dug up and eaten, usually within days of planting, with small excavations and scattered soil.

Tulips and crocus are the targets. Daffodils are ignored, because they are toxic to rodents as well as deer, which is why daffodils solve two problems at once and are the default bulb recommendation wherever wildlife is a factor.

Fix: lay hardware cloth over newly planted bulb beds until the ground freezes, then lift it. Most digging happens while the soil is still loose and smells disturbed.

Slugs

Signature: irregular holes chewed through the leaf rather than the leaf being removed, plus a dried slime trail catching the light in the morning.

Worst in damp shade, which is exactly where hostas grow, so slug damage and deer damage get confused constantly.

The distinction is simple: deer remove whole leaves and stems. Slugs leave the leaf in place with holes in it. If the plant looks lacy, it is slugs. If the plant looks shorter, it is deer.

Buck rub, which is not feeding at all

Signature: bark shredded vertically on a young trunk, roughly one to four feet up, with the wood scored underneath.

This is antler rubbing in autumn, not browsing. It girdles young trees and kills them, and it happens on smooth-barked saplings by preference.

Fix: trunk guards before autumn. A repellent does nothing, because the animal is not eating.

Why it matters which one you have

Each fix is different and mostly incompatible:

• Deer: height, or a small enclosure. Fencing or repellents with realistic expectations.
• Rabbits: a low fence with a buried lip. Height is irrelevant.
• Groundhogs: buried and floppy-topped fencing.
• Voles: physical barriers underground. Nothing sprayed will work.
• Squirrels: temporary cover at planting time only.
• Slugs: an entirely different category of control.

Building an eight-foot deer fence around a garden being eaten by rabbits is a common and costly mistake, and the torn-versus-cut test above takes about ten seconds to run. If it does turn out to be deer, keeping them out is the place to start, and the deer FAQ answers the questions that follow.

More detail on reading deer damage specifically, including browse lines and what regrows, is in identifying deer damage.

The deer identification signs here come from extension guidance and are consistent across sources. The other species descriptions are standard extension identification rather than trial data.

The garden design FAQ covers what to do next: where vulnerable plants belong, whether to fence the beds or the boundary, and what a browse line is telling you.