You're never going to be comfortable as long as deer can get at your plantings. What they don't eat they may rub. Fence them out.

Hi...I have lots of deer in a very rural area of Clark County (southwest Washington) and the deer have NEVER touched either my fig or my persimmon (trees or fruit) even thought the aronia near the persimmon is their very favorite food and the fig is next to my tea plants (Camellia sinensis) which is probably their next most preferred food. I agree that deer can be very destructive in other ways but they have never even nibbled on these trees. jwww

What deer eat where is like fungus diseases in roses. Two different people in different areas can have markedly different experiences. The only thing you can count on is secure fencing. Otherwise you leave it up to the deer, who may leave something alone for years and then suddenly strip it or spoil it with rubbing.

Then there's rabbits...

We grew rhododendrons for years before a mountain beaver started clipping them off less than a foot from the ground and dragging away whole branches.

Bboy is quite right, what deer eat seems as varied as the plants available to them. While I've had them lightly nibble on both my persimmon and fig trees, the real damage came with they chose the trees as rubbing posts. And then they ignore my camelias -- go figure.

Deer hate lavender. It has such a strong scent that it irritates them. Deer have a keen sense of smell. Imagine amplifying the smell of lavender about 10 times.
I'd plant it around your figs and persimmons for the deer to enjoy.

This is an old thread, but I just wanted to say that apparently deer love both persimmons and persimmon seedlings. They just ate one of my seedlings. :(

I also live in rural Clark County WA and the deer walked onto my wood deck to eat a potted persimmon. They also ate my olive and mulberry.

They haven't touched the figs and feijoa, only a taste.

Well, this weekend a young deer ate a bunch of fig leaves off of two of my trees and a male sparred with my feijoa and tore off more than half of the limbs before I shooed him away.

I am also in Clark County WA, Battleground.

Deer maraud here frequently. They don't seem to bother my figs, but birds eat the figs and rodents - rabbits or voles - eat off the small fig saplings, or chew bark from larger branches. So I put a bird net over the trees and a hardware cloth sleeve around the trunk.

My persimmon trees are young and so far they haven't eaten from them.

I have 2 small sweet cherries, 2 tart cherries, and an Almaden Duke cherry. They nibbled one small branch from a young Montmorency cherry then left it alone. They haven't touched the other cherry trees at all. They also haven't touched ornamental cherry and we have a lot of wild cherries here, so they must not like them.

All of my other fruit trees are susceptible to deer foraging or have other challenges -
Peaches (leaf curl, trying resistant varieties)
Plums (a deer-attractant)
Apricots (tend to die off, deer nibble them too)
Grapes (deer eat the leaves and vines)
Pawpaws (still an unknown, survived a year here)
Apples - deer eat the branches. Neighbors have theirs pruned to tall forms and they are OK
Pears - Euro. Deer haven't bothered my Asian pears yet.

Deer do not eat the Feijoa tree/bush. (This is also misnamed pineapple guava.) I have several trees and the deer leave them alone. My trees have not grown big enough to bear fruit so i'm not sure how the deer will treat the fruit. It is an evergreen tree. They survived the cold to which the citrus trees succumbed.

Feijoa has been reclassified as Acca sellowiana. And it is not "misnamed" pineapple guava - that is just the common name, which is neither right nor wrong, just a kind of plant nickname.

Last August I moved from the Eugene valley into the Southwest hills ~800-900 ft. above sea-level last year the herds of deer, who quickly decimated nearly all of the plants with which I had brought. Deer danced right up the concrete steps and ate all the tomato plants, leaves and green tomatoes and all. They crunched on them like they were apples. Pretty much anything tropical they ignore (banana, palm, indoor tropical - actually they even nibbled on my bananas last year but this year there are many more other interesting plants) as well as yucca, prickly pear. This year after the plants had gotten a spring start, the deer pruned my fig, persimmon, pomegranate, daisies (flower), marigold, fuchsia (yummy), currant, grape, strawberry, aronia, blueberry, sea berries, mulberry, thorn less blackberry, flame azalea, sea berries, Canna lily, apple tree (they knocked my columnar in a pot over to get to it), goji berry, honey berry, cherry, pear, and another vaccinium. I let them freely prune the ivy the previous owners had left in a protected pot. They haven't touched the creeping cranberry, creeping raspberry, any fern, hardy orange, gardenia, any of the 4 varieties of palm or bananas or (the large windmill palms survived the hard freeze last winter, and the hardy bananas came back, although I do ensure much mulch is added pre-freeze). I do a lot of moving pots to and fro the porch when I leave for work and go to bed, and I plant and set plants in between the large set of juniper and creeping piney something in the front yard. I have been growing beans in hanging pots (if I hang them too low they become convenient snacks for brave, hungry bucks). I plant all flower and edibles with herbs. In a bowl of flowers, curry is quite attractive. Oh yes... they leave my delphinium, spikes, foxglove, snapdragon, alone. Last year the deer chomped and threw my hens and chicks around but have abandoned them for yummier stuff this summer. Oh they even ate the new growth off of a new Rhodie, they killed my camellia, and they have nearly killed a laurel I put up for a screen. I got a larger wax leaf laurel (?) and it seems to be okay right now. They love the fuchsias and petunias and daisies and will leave everything else alone just to eat the blooms. They haven't yet touched my elephant ear that just came up, but they did eat the cyclamen flowers. If we have a hot and/or dry spell, I'm afraid I'll have to put up more barriers, although fences aren't allowed.