When I have seen deer damage it looks to me like they grab the stalk and then strip upward with their teeth clenched. And you get teeth marks on the stalks and more shredded leaves. This is very clean and uniform but I really don't know which is why I asked.
I appreciate your and everyone's answers. Really hadn't thought about deer because of the fencing but there is a gate and it is not impossible for deer to hop an 8' fence (one study showed 5% of deer could do 8'). There are deer elsewhere on the property but I have never seen any on the field, even before the fence went up.
Found this:
One research project showed nearly all of the deer jumped a 6-foot fence, most jumped a 7-foot fence, but less than 5 percent jumped an 8-foot fence. That doesn’t mean the other deer couldn’t jump 8 feet high, it simply means they didn’t during the study. While I was in graduate school at the University of New Hampshire we had a deer at our research facility get spooked and jump over an 8-foot fence after taking only 1 to 2 steps.
http://rackpack.qdma.com/featured-articles/how-high-can-deer-jump
The fence wasn't cheap. It would be just my luck to have Olympian deer. Maybe it is time for a critter cam.
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