There are several wormy type creature than can do this. Last year I'd had a small family of cut worms eating the buds and flowers off Polar Express. Until I caught them. Usually when it early in the year it the curled rose slug. They are large soft bodied green worms. I just pulled one off a bud yesterday. On hot sunny days they hide. I can find them easiest on cloudy or rainy days. They eat large portions of leaves on there way up to the bud.

Later in the year it can also be grasshoppers, flying crickets and cicadas. To name a few.

For the soft bodied bud eaters you can also go out at night with a flash light. Not a good photo but heres the curled rose slug from yesterday. They can get a lot larger than this. They ate almost all of my Lady Of Shallot buds last year.

Most likely rabbits if the missing buds are close to the ground. Which one might assume from a new plant. I make protective hoops out of vinyl covered hardware cloth purchased from Home Depot. A 2' x 25' roll is cut in half lengthwise, then used to make 8 or 10 large hoops. Instead of wire cutters, I used a hard wire cutter, which is actually a shear, to cut the hoops--the ends of the wires are flat and less likely to cause dangerous puncture wounds--my last Tetanus shot was 5 years ago.

Please post a picture of the damage left behind on the canes. Are there ripped looking places? Then most likely deer. If neatly bitten off, probably rabbits.

Jackie

There is nothing left behind from the missing buds and they are neatly bitten off as if I had pruned off dead blooms (flower portion only) Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of that. I haven't found any buds on the ground. The actual leaves are not damaged, a few leaflets were broken off from the cane still barely hanging onto the cane.

I don't have any deer in my area

I was going to post on this exact same thing. I never noticed it before this year, but then again, I wasn't checking on my roses umpteen times a day. I also have sawfly leaf damage. Mine is both high and low to the ground and there are squirrels, a chipmunk, but no deer in this location. I'll try and get a pic and see if our damage is the same.

Zack- can you please post pictures of your protective hoops? I am having a difficult time coming up with a mental picture.

Thanks!

It's either deer or rabbits or even squirrels.

I've had a lot of experience with deer damage, and the first thing I thought of when reading about your problem was deer. I know areas are being invaded by deer that never had a problem before, including here, until the last few years. They do their damage at night or early in the morning, just before dawn, so it's very hard to actually see them "at work". I've also found they pick on certain roses to the exclusion of others, and who knows why. I use a very effective repellent, but some people find a tall fence is the only thing to keep deer away. Diane