Tomato damage

[Barbarish]

I am wondering if this is rodent activity or hornworm or hail damage. . . I just don't know. I've searched and searched and have not found any hornworm. We had a hail storm the evening of the 4th. I'm wondering if that caused this damage? I'm posting a picture and any insight would be *very* appreciated. I grew all my tomatoes from seed and this is crushing me.

[rainbowgardener]

It's not looking like hornworm damage to me. I would think you would know if it were hail damage, because then your whole garden would be damaged with holes in the leaves and damage to all different kinds of plants. If this is localized to tomato fruit, I doubt hail could be selective like that.

So that seems to leave rodents or birds....

[Barbarish]

Thanks so much for your response!

There was pretty widespread hail damage in the garden. Some branches were broken on the tomato plants, holes in leaves, blooms knocked off, etc. The hail was probably around pingpong ball size. Below is a pic of the hail.

[Marlingardener]

Gardeners in Texas are pretty familiar with hail damage, and that doesn't look like a hail damaged tomato to me.
Do you have raccoons, opossums, or woodchucks? Sometimes these pests will take a bite out of a tomato to get moisture, and the big slit looks like a bite, not a hail mark. Hail usually makes small holes and large bruises on tomatoes.
The holes and torn branches aren't all that terribly important--your tomato plants will recover. Sorry you had such a bad storm!

[Barbarish]

Thanks so much for your response. My garden is pretty protected from bigger things like groundhogs. I was thinking maybe a chipmunk or squirrel? I haven't found any more tomatoes like this one since yesterday, which is somewhat encouraging. I have a fence around the garden (mostly for decoration since I live in a plan) and then I have wire "planted" around the inside of the garden to keep bigger vermin out. I haven't seen any security breeches there. lol