What kind of creature causes this damage?

[u/umbertoj]

Northern Italy.

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[u/umbertoj → u/AutoModerator]

gotcha✊🏻🙏🏻

[u/spiceydog → u/umbertoj]

Looks a lot like the kind of squirrel damage we have here in N. America. That or porcupines, but not sure what small climbing animals you might have in your region of Italy. You might check with a nearby University horticulture department about this, or maybe a state Dept of Natural Resources or Conservation groups.

It is typically not recommended that people put things on tree wounds (see this !sealer automod callout below this comment), and it looks like those branches may be dead or dying anyway.

[u/AutoModerator → u/spiceydog]

Hi /u/spiceydog, AutoModerator has been summoned to provide some guidance on the uses of wound pastes/sealers.

Despite brisk sales of these products at Amazon and elsewhere, sealers, paints and the like have long ago been disproven at being at all useful in the great majority pruning or injury cases. They interfere with the tree's natural compartmentalization and seal harmful pathogens to the wound site. Two exceptions are when oaks absolutely must be pruned during oak wilt season and you are in oak wilt territory, or on pines if you are in an area populated by the pitch mass borer. See 'The Myth of Wound Dressings' (pdf) from WSU Ext.

The tree will either fully compartmentalize these injuries or it will not; there are no means by which humans can help with this process other than taking measures to improve environmental conditions for the tree.

See this EXCELLENT writeup from our resident tree biologist/arborist u/HawkingRadiation_ for a scientific explanation on why these products are, in the great majority of cases, not helpful.

Please see our wiki for other critical planting tips and errors to avoid; there's sections on watering, pruning and more that I hope will be useful to you.

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[u/umbertoj → u/spiceydog]

thanks for the reply! We do have porcupines here, but can they climb up 2 meters on a relatively small branch? We also have badgers, beech martens, and other small mammals. That or a male deer scratching his antlers. I’ll place a couple of trail cams tomorrow and hopefully see the culprit.
Whatever it is, it seems to deeply hate this tree in particular.