Mulberry trees and sunchokes stripped of leaves

Last year I heavily pruned two mulberry trees.
This year they have all new growth, with green branches.
Last week I noticed the leaves were stripped from these branches.
I had already lost all the greens I planted out to some nibbler,  but these leaves were at 4 to 6 feet off the ground.
Today I noticed the same pattern on a nearby sunchoke.
I suspected a ground hog ate my greens, but the higher up damage has me confused.
Here is a photo of the damage:

I am thinking it could be deer.  I gave my parents some sunchokes and the same thing happen to there sunchokes. And I know that deer can get in there back lawn.

Also, cool to see another person growing mulberry and sunchokes together! I planed sunchokes next to my mulberry tree this year.

The stems seem to be intact.  I do not know their range but I have had leaf cutter ants decimate a mulberry tree before in a very short time. make a sticky trap and try to catch one.
Some caterpillars can strip the foliage off in a day or two as well. We have a swallowtail caterpillar that gets our citrus trees every so often.  They eat a few leaves, then drop off and hide in soil..repeat......  
Could be a deer or something too, looks for tracks or scat.

Wow, deer!?
Actually getting that makes some sense.
Cincinnati has lots of hillsides that are not worth building on, so they are covered in woods and deer, turkeys, coyotes,  etc make thier home in them.
I've never had deer in my yard,  but the yarden is a "vacant lot" around the corner from my house.
No dogs either.

Hmm.
Do you think they will eat young corn plants?
They haven't so far, but the corn is not protected at all
I was hoping to put off building crop cages till later,  since I was only worried about racoons eating the mature cobs.

I have also been feeding the soil under the corn with some old bottled pee, so maybe that is what's keeping them off the corn?

I have exactly the same problem. Someone posted that problem on the site 6 yr ago. Consensus - squirrels. This makes sense to me, since we have a family of rock squirrels living under our house.