Winter's Nutritional Bottleneck: How Hunters and Landowners Can Sustain Wildlife Through the Toughest Season

As the cold months settle in, wildlife faces their toughest challenge– finding enough nutrition to survive. Winter is sometimes referred to as a nutritional bottleneck for wildlife, a period when natural food is at its least abundant and most deficient. Fortunately, there are solutions that hunters and landowners can implement to provide nutrition in this time of need. 

It helps if you understand how nutritional needs change throughout the year. Spring and summer are periods of growth for both plants and animals. The latter needs more protein to promote growth. When fall comes, it is time to fatten up before winter, even for those who find a cozy cavity or den to sleep it off. Winter is a period of survival. Animals may go into winter with a healthy layer of fat, but at some point, the balance tips. They cannot find enough nutrition to compensate for what they burn, and they begin operating at a deficit. 

Deer and turkeys thrive on food high in carbohydrates and fat during the winter, making hard mast, like acorns, essential. However, chestnuts provide an even better solution. Chestnuts are more consistent and reliable because they flower later, avoiding late damaging frosts and lacking the cyclical nature of oaks. They are more precocious and proficient, producing mast at an earlier age and more mast at maturity – as much as 2,000 pounds of nuts per acre. They are also more nutritious, providing more carbohydrates that are so important for winter wildlife. That means animals like deer expend less energy to feed, and because of their size and selective breeding, Dunstan Chestnuts reign supreme. 

Deer have a diverse diet that typically includes a healthy proportion of coarse woody browse, even when hard mast is readily available. In contrast, other species, like rabbits, do not eat mast at all. This is why it is crucial to maintain a diverse habitat. Planting soft mast-producing species like mulberries, plums, and persimmons provides a means for wildlife to lay on the fat that will carry them through the winter. It also provides cover for protection from predators and the elements. This indirectly enhances winter nutrition because they enter the bottleneck in better condition and expend less energy surviving the frigid months. 

Simply leaving fallow, brushy areas benefits wildlife, as does selective timber harvesting. Both provide more woody browse, essential to the winter diets of deer, rabbits, and other wildlife. Furthermore, an abundance of natural woody browse reduces the impact of browsing on mast-producing trees and shrubs so they can continue providing better nutrition in their appropriate seasons. 

Discussion on winter wildlife nutrition would only be complete with a healthy serving of food plots. Most are designed and intended as warm-season perennials – for high-protein summer diets – or cool-season annuals – for attraction and fall nutrition. Both are great, but adding winter plots will compound their benefit. These may be winter

wheat or rye in southern areas or brassicas that will produce nutritious bulbs and tubers that will still provide food even when the ground is frozen. 

As alluded to above, diversity is the most important habitat component for wildlife nutrition. Each plant mentioned above provides some, but when combined, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. By diversifying food sources and maintaining habitat, hunters, and landowners can play a vital role in sustaining wildlife through winter. Implementing these solutions today will ensure a thriving ecosystem for future seasons.

Alachua, FL

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