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What Do Deer Eat?
Bob Whitney
County Extension Agent-Agriculture
Texas AgriLife Extension Service, Williamson County
This has got to be one of the worst
Falls I have ever seen. It is so dry and hot for fall weather and all
of this has taken a toll on plant growth. Just look for an acorn crop -
there isn’t much of one and on top of that most of the browse, forbs and
grass deer might eat is dry. Anyway with all the problems landowners do
need to know what deer eat to manage for this important resource.
One of the best publications for plant
identification in the Cross Timbers I own is “White-Tailed Deer: Their
Foods and Management in the Cross Timbers.” This is a publication of
the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation and is probably the most valuable
book anyone interested in deer management could have, but it also makes
an excellent reference because of its color photos of area plants. In
the front of this publication is an appendix that lists the species
composition of deer diets from Summer 1985 to Spring 1987. This chart
shows hundreds of plants and basically how much of them a deer eats.
The top plants for the fall and winter
may surprise you at least they did me. Bromes and tall fescue can make
up to 25% of the diet composition. These are the green grasses that you
see growing mostly under trees and resemble wheat or oats. Two to eight
percent of the fall diet can be made up of honey locust but not
necessarily the plant mostly the seed pods. Osage orange or Bois d’Arc
(horse apple) trees can make up 17% of the diet mostly for their
leaves. Deciduous oak trees like post, red, blackjack all are very
valuable in a deer diet most of the year but acorns can account for a
significant percentage in the fall if the acorn crop is good. In 1985
42% of the diet was acorns but in 1986 only 1.5% was acorns, owing I’m
sure to a bad acorn crop. Coralberry is a significant plant for the
deer diet in the fall and winter of every year. As much as 31% of the
deer diet in the winter of ‘86 was composed of coralberry. What is
coralberry? Around here we normally call it buckbrush and it is a
shrubby plant 3 - 6 feet in height found in woody to open sites. It
produces a small fruit but for deer all the plant parts are like t-bone
steak. Here’s one you may not ever guess that deer eat, mushrooms.
Almost every fall deer diets will consist of 4-5% mushrooms and I guess
they don’t have a problem with the poisonous kind like we do.
Story Continues Below
Lastly let me add that small grains (wheat, oats, rye, etc.) can make up a
significant portion of deer diets especially in the winter. In 1985 these
were 21.5% of deer diets but almost 0 in 1986 when other plants were
available. I am constantly amazed at deer hunters and landowners who want
to provide small grains as a source of nutrition in deer diets in hopes of
having bigger bucks and does, especially trophy bucks. If you want to
produce trophy deer, extensive deer habitat management is almost always more
important and more efficient than intensive management i.e. planting small
grains and providing feeders. Plus the management of deer habitat means
that they get the nutrition earlier in the year when they need it to produce
the big antlers and develop good body condition.
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