Planting food plots and mast orchards is a great way to attract deer and other wildlife, but to get the best bang for their buck, land managers and hunters should consider the importance of meeting year-round nutritional needs. Most of the effort and attention are directed toward fall, but addressing other seasons will attract and hold more deer year-round. Doing that requires understanding how a deer’s diet changes throughout the year.
Spring (March - May)
Let’s start with spring, as that is the season of recovery and regrowth for plants and animals. The whitetail’s winter fat reserves are depleted. Meanwhile, the growth of a buck’s antlers and the development of unborn fawns are accelerating. This creates a greater need for high-protein herbaceous vegetation, which can be met with plants like clover, alfalfa, and soybeans, among others. This protein-rich diet will also soon be essential for the nursing newborn fawns.
Annual food plots will help greatly with this as spring green-up progresses. Still, perennial plots can be even more important as they are already established and will provide food as soon as the ground warms up, long before spring planting time. A common theme that will become more apparent as the seasons change is the benefit of diversity, providing a variety of food.
Summer (June - August)
Antlers are among the fastest-growing tissues in the animal kingdom, reaching peak growth rates now. Meanwhile, fawns also need a high-protein diet to fuel their growth. The demand for minerals is also at its greatest now. As antlers approach full growth, they’ll go through a mineralization process. At the same time, fawns need minerals for skeletal growth that help ensure they will be big enough to survive their first winter.
All is lush and green, but summer’s end brings a sometimes overlooked nutritional gap. Grasses and forbs are maturing, going to seed, and dying, making them less nutritious. At the same time, nutritional demands for both young and adult deer are peaking. Summer is when early-maturing soft-mast species like mulberries, plums, blackberries, and early-drop persimmons, to name a few, can help bridge that gap before the next dietary transition.
Food is only one component of a habitat. Many of the above species also form dense cover that young and adult deer use to avoid predators. Water is another component. While deer get most of the water they need from the plants they eat, providing succulent plants enhances that. And if waterways or waterbodies don’t occur naturally, tanks and ponds will help, especially during drier periods.
Fall (September - November)
Deer and other animals sense the change of seasons long before we do. Decreasing day length stimulates physiological changes that prompt deer to seek foods high in carbohydrates that will help them lay on fat, first for the rigors of the rut and later for the long winter. Early fall food sources include soft-mast species like apples, pears, and persimmons, grains like corn and sorghum, and fast-growing annual food plot crops like brassicas. They will keep deer local and well fed until hard mast like acorns and Dunstan chestnuts drop.
Planting a variety of oaks is also a good idea. Some varieties drop early, others later on. Some drop over a short span, whereas others drop over a longer one. White oak acorns only take one year to mature, while red oaks take two. Having some of both is an insurance policy against annual climatic variations that might otherwise result in several years of poor mast crops. The above also provides the energy the deer will need during the frenetic peak rut period.
Winter (December - February)
The rut is over, plant and animal growth have ceased, and deer have switched to survival mode. Food is approaching a period of least nutrition and availability, when wildlife need it most. Things like remnant acorns, waste grain, and the bulbs and tubers of brassicas and turnips will help if the right varieties were planted. Even then, coarse, woody browse will make up most of the deer’s diet.
Supplemental feeding can help, but it needs to be done right. The key is to start slowly and not stop. Deer have a very complex digestive system that takes time to adapt to different foods. Browse is very hard to digest, and once the beneficial bacteria have developed in the deer’s gut, a sudden glut of “hot” food like corn could be detrimental or even deadly. A mixture, including grain, is often a better option than straight corn.
One take-home message is to think of wildlife nutrition as a chain, the strength of which is determined by the weakest link. Another way to think of it is like a bucket of water that can only be filled to the lowest hole. Meeting the year-round nutritional needs of deer by providing the right food and cover strengthens that chain and moves the holes higher in the bucket. The land will attract and hold more deer over a longer period, and they will be healthier.
