Are grey squirrels doing this? Something is stripping bark off the maple trees.

Porcupine

Yup, porkie.

Not meant to hijack but will porkies eat the wood on the inside like a glorified woodpecker hole?

Do you have pack rats? Them filthy varmints will eat the bark off a tree too.

so what i want to know is that birds eye ? looks like it to me. might want to saw that into lumber.it is small but could be real nice,

Im betting a squirrel wallowing out the hole if i read you right.

Look for droppings under tree. With that much chewings there's bound to be some. That'll tell ya whether
squirrel, rat, or, porkie.

I think it is birdseye. Not my tree, unfortunately. .

Furstroker there's holes chewed out of a pine the size of basketballs peppered through the tree till like 10 feet from the top.

Possibly the work of a pileated woodpecker??

Great Northern Basket-Weaving Sasquatch.

Moosetrot

I vote porky

That is not Birdseye it is the tree healing itself from a sap sucker woodpecker from past years.

I'll post a pic of it in a thread next time I go back there. We do have a lot of those funny looking woodpeckers around.

When I first read the title my thought was an elk. If you've never seen an elk stripped maple they are neat.

Then when I opened the thread and looked the pics, I'm in the either a hungry porkie having a good time, or a sap sucker healing tree camp.

I've seen squirrels do this but mostly just all the branches

Next time I am out there I will take some more pictures. Most of the trees where this has been done are stripped at the tops only. Might be both squirrels and porkies working on them.

When you go back, take a gun with you and watch in the tree tops...you have a porky at work and they are normally close by. They are unprotected and can be shot year round in Wisconsin.

This is what porky chewing looks like , all maple trees