On the PNW coast, black-tailed deer eat rhodie flower buds, they can strip the flowers to be in minutes, right in front of your eyes, and they also nibble hard on Douglas-fir and western red cedar shoots. Big-leaf maple is another target, as is vine maple. To grow all these trees, you have to protect them until they are more than 7 ft tall. They leave crocus and daffodils alone, however. A BT deer ate the budding shoot of my lone surviving grown from seed Eremerus one year. Kathleen