What type of animal did this - flower damage

[oldfella1962]

Rabbits are tasty

Yes I love eating rabbit. I live in a subdivision so I would have to use a pellet gun of course, which I do have already to kill rats every summer.

 

[LTZ25]

I go outside this morning and all my young sunflower plants had the tops missing. The plants DID NOT have flowers yet! They were not tall enough - they are dwarf sunflowers in planters, and the tender tops - not flowers, just tender areas of new leaf growth - were chewed off.
The planters the sunflowers were grown in WERE NOT knocked over. The sunflower plants were about 12 -18 inches tall measuring from the top of the gravel mulch in the containers. I have a variety of flowers (impatiens, petunias, etc) with flowers currently blooming in the yard, and none of these flowers were even touched. From these pictures, what is the most likely culprit? Deer, rabbits, squirrels, or what?

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I've got the exact same thing going on and I live in downtown Fayetteville ,
I thinks it's deer .

 

[oldfella1962]

Update! I left the sunflower plants alone (I kept watering them along with the rest of my flowers) and sure enough, new flowers started forming (not from the chewed spot of course) and they are all doing great - sunflowers are looking good! Now I bring them into the garage in late afternoon before the rabbits get active and put them back outside around 10 AM or so when most of the rabbits are inactive until late afternoon.

 

[fishfryer]

Thanks, but there were no actual flowers blooming yet. They just bit/chewed the tender new plant growth. That said, would deer still be the likely culprit?

Yes