What Do Deer Eat?

Genuine question. Funny thing is; In all my life, I've never actually had cause to consider it!

Thing is, I'm finding them tripping my perimeter alarm system, late at night. I think I've noted, in passing, some of you guys mentioning laying down corn, to bait them? Only, I've started putting down wild bird seed, to bait birds.

I'm wondering if the deer have caught onto there being a source of grains, on the track. Nothing else, on my land, that there isn't miles and miles of around me. Grass, basically.

Thanks.

a lot more than people think....we were sneaking into a bear bait a few years back, and suddenly a doe picked up her head to look, she had a hot dog bun in her mouth

Kinda confused by the question

But Hay this time of year is safer for them than corn

deer and these buggers both do it here.

Grass,clover,grains,all types greenery, nuts,fruit,and tree browse

Mineral blocks this time of year

Tree/brush buds this time of the year here.They will come into bird feeders and clean up the sunflower seeds and other grains available!

Chris

This time of the year grain and corn.

Got to be close enough to a deer yard to get them to come in here.

Corn can kill them if introduced this time of year

Bruce T and Hodag seem to be confirming my ~ seemingly crazy ~ notion then? Only hay here is in my stables, behind a bolted gate. No salt licks. Only thing differentiating this little plot from miles and miles of surrounding countryside is that little skid mark of grain on the paved track.

Amazing! Maybe I should set my trail cam to it? Only, I'm probably spooking the deer when I go out there and play a beam, to make sure it is only a deer.

Wife's tale

They'll come in for corn the fastest but it can be detrimental

I believe what you call corn is the yellow stuff that comes on a cob? None of that in the bird feed.

There Is a guy prowling about with a .303 though. He's a bit of a health risk to them. He sets my alarm off too!

Alot of miss information out there due to states being scared to death of someone shooting a deer over bait.

That picture I posted is at northeast carry up on moosehead lake.They have feed these deer corn since I was a child with no I'll effects to the deer at all with alot of the big bucks with names that came back year after year after year.

They like milo and sunflower meat

Mares eat oats and does eat oats........

Bruce, that pic is awesome and I believe ya!

Deer will eat grains, browse, legumes, fruits and grasses, Get them stressed enough and they will eat bark, evergreens in order to survive.

I was amazed early on in watching a doe and fawns in back of our home, and they had a real lust for what we call wild lettuce here, a milky sap, plant with spines when it gets older. They do have taste though as I was growing heritage pumpkins and they ate them, only bit my neighbors commercial giants, and threw those up.

All herbivores will eat just about anything, but their favorites are legumes like alfalfa and clover, fruits like apples, grain in corn kernels and they enjoy small corn plants Put out a free meal though, which is safe by your house and they will eat bread, as that is grain and will eat bird seed as that is grain too.

And little goats eats ivy! (And Don't they?!?)

No its not A wives tale...picture of deer eating shows just that deer eat corn

If

If they havent had it in their diet... get it? And then its laid out for the first time late in the winter they can get a form of the scours and not recover.

Those deer in the picture are in the north maine woods far from any fields or corn.They are fed corn only during the winter time with no I'll effects what so ever.Of course they are also eating their browse as well.

That picture was on every Bulletin board in Wisconsin ...bars and sports shops during the 90s

Nice try

I think, if one trips my alarm again tonight ~ which is practically a given, by this point ~ I'll go hang my trail cam, tomorrow (It's dark now) and see if I can catch one

Picture was claimed by 47 Photographer s in 17 states

If deer are very hungry(near starvation) and dont have enough other stuff to eat and you give them a large supply of grain that they aren't use too they can over eat and produce a high level of toxins that can kill them. But it does kind of have to be the perfect "storm" for this to happen

Made up news made from road killed deer.

Yup but I know that exact spot and where it truly came from.Been going there since I was a child.

Fact!!!

Which is being exploited.

Much safer alternatives which are equally effective

I always heard that the western blacktails we had in CA would die if you fed them high quality hay and alfalfa without browsing. The browse that was normal for them helped to produce stomach acids to digest everything. I know that the roe deer and red stags here browse a lot, but eat their share of grass as well. Grain is not an option for them around my place.

Pete

My understanding from reading biologist studies is that deer need browse to be a high percentage of their diet for the stomach to work perfectly. If deer hunters knew how much corn a deer will eat on a daily basis in good habitat they would be scratching their heads trying to figure out were all their corn is going. But deer do love corn especially in cold weather but will only eat a pound or two a day in good habitat.

OP, what kind of deer do you have?
Some deer are browsers (brush, leaves, etc) and some deer are grazers (grass).

I've had deer beating a path into my back pasture since October.........eating forage turnips and a mix of winter rye (forage type) and red clover. Almost every night....rain or shine, fair weather or blizzard.

To a deer, turnips must be more addictive than crystal meth. They started out on the green tops.....are now eating the turnips like apples.

As I understand it on feeding shelled corn, concern is spread of chronic wasting disease through saliva. Otherwise, our Midwest deer get pretty fat grazing in the cornfields all winter........the only dead ones you find there got that far after a car hit em.

We have Fallow, Sika, Red and Roe. I got a look at one in a beam. It was way bigger than a Roe!

Just to point out that I lay just a litre a day. The birds clear the best part of that. Barn rats come off the bank and eat their share, as the light fades. These deer are really just getting a taste, from licking the road.

I've seen crazy stuff, trying to attract birds. Watched a red vixen, in a coat Cilla Black would have loved, sitting there, feasting on Rolled Oats?!

Best one though was 'my' pheasant, " Seiko " was pecking up his share when the ~ quite possibly the same ~ vixen came down the track. She was bimbling down this dead straight track. Well over a hundred yards, in clear view on a sunny day.

Seiko could clearly see her. She could clearly see him. I was grabbing for my camera, about to make history! Fox was well within twenty foot of the pheasant. Clearly intent only on the seed. Then, my infernal little JRT burst upon the scene and scattered everyone concerned!

There went my Pulitzer Prize!

If corn killed deer there wouldn’t be a deer alive in the South. We do have a few thousand we’d donate to ya though!!

I believe what 330 is saying in your harsh winters, after scrounging for anything edible, corn will have a devastating effect on their digestive tract. Our deer down here get corn and for the most part protein year round.

The stomach of deer changes to allow it get nutrition at different times of the year, if in the browse stage (twigs/brush) the feeding of grain has little to no value then as the ability to use the benefits of the Grain cannot be absorbed by the stomach. The digestive system needs to change over to start benefitting, so in other words at the wrong time of year a deer would starve with a full belly of grain.

That is why when your out beaver trapping in the spring the deer droppings look like a cross of beaver scat and is toothpaste looking in shape as the change over is in the process.

I doubt the deer down you way yard up and ever get into a browse cycle like the another deer do up North.

Nope, hence the reason I mentioned y’all’s harsh winters. Heck, we still have green browse. Not a lot, but still some green still around.

Honey suckle, green briar, ragweed, clover, acorns, muscadine, etc...

Here in northern maine whatever they can find as people have cut down most of the winter cedar deer yards.

If cedars are not available the deer in the UP would eat on the balsams and get nothing out of them and starve over time. If they cycle back to grazing is not complete again a deer can starve in the spring as the new food is not processed right away then.

That's the problem we now have here in northern Maine.

MI tried a mass planting of cedars and fencing the new trees off to get them to grow the mass planting was showing some hope back then. Here in SD the war is on against the cedars now lot of cedar beaters on skid steers whacking in the river breaks the last several years.

Sadly most of the cedar winter deer yards have been cut down and the deer are sure suffering because of it.

Right now what is left in the bird feeder and the wife's shrubs. Have a dozen that come down every night and make the rounds to all the neighbors.

Here, a wide variety of food like prickly pear, sage, pinon, grass, acorn just to name a few

Different types of cedar.

In your country side its eastern Red cedar, in the northen edges of the eastern us it white cedar.

It’s the only cover in most places here our weather is not that harsh for long periods like up North but the cedars are important habitat in many places. I walked by one this year cat trapping and you see it was grouse roosting tree dropping all under it. The thermal index was the tool they used back then to determine impact on the herds.