Put Your Deer Herd on a Healthier Diet

"You are what you eat."

That old saying is generally quoted in reference to people, but it's just as true of whitetails. Poor food = poor deer; good food = good deer. It's that simple.

No other area of deer management has the potential to make such a difference in deer size and numbers. And believe me, deer herds across the U.S. are in need of help! Far too many populations, and the habitats in which they live, suffer from long-term overcrowding. In such places, the deer are stressed and stunted, and the native habitat has largely been stripped of nutritious browse.

Even reducing deer numbers alone won't solve every nutrition problem. In extreme cases, primary browse species have been so severely reduced through long-term browsing that they're no longer significant nutritional factors. Non-palatable species typically fill their vacated niches.

Even in a best-case scenario, it's a long, slow process for the preferred browse plants to recover enough to meaningfully contribute to the nutritional plane. In fact, for preferred native browse to return to the level of its pre-overcrowded days takes a massive reduction in deer numbers; what's more, the population then must be maintained at that low level for several years. And as every game agency knows, such a massive reduction in deer numbers wouldn't be politically acceptable.

So, we're left with this reality: In much of whitetail country, it will take aggressive management to put good food back in front of deer and good deer back in front of you.

What are your options for making this happen? Well, you can try to improve the natural habitat, through such practices as prescribed burning, thinning timber, creating openings, fertilizing native forage plants and, of course, reducing deer numbers. But all of this takes time to bring results, and success can be somewhat limited both in terms of improvement in deer size and the number of deer the habitat can support in good condition. Gains through natural habitat improvement tend to be gradual and incremental. And not all landowners welcome some of the most intrusive and effective habitat-improvement practices, such as prescribed burning and thinning timber.

Then there's supplemental feeding: directly providing protein pellets, corn, soybeans, grains, cottonseed and the like. The right supplemental feed can definitely improve the nutritional plane, and thus deer quality and health, and feed can be a good strategy where legal. This is especially so if the options to manage the native habitat are limited and/or food plots are not possible, either because of the lack of tillable land or the inability to clear land for planting.

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In overcrowded herds and degraded habitat where decent browse is limited, deer will respond particularly well to supplemental feeding, because the lack of quality browse forces them to eat supplemental feed. That's why big, healthy bucks can be grown on a straight diet of high-protein pellets and the like in pens and on densely stocked game farms. But as long as reasonably good native browse is available, deer tend to hold their intake of supplemental feed to something less than 25 percent of their daily diet, thus limiting its impact on deer size and numbers.

The fact is, in wild populations with access to good browse, supplemental feed is just that: supplemental. Deer are browsers, and as long as browse is available, they will browse. It's unnatural for them to stand in one spot and eat artificial feed, but if forced to do so, they will.

Direct feeding does have the advantage of being relatively easy and can be employed on almost any property. However, it's expensive (if fed in amounts sufficient to make a difference), might not be legal to hunt over and can promote the spread of disease and parasites. With the emergence of chronic wasting disease, some states are discouraging, even legally banning, supplemental feeding because it tends to concentrate deer at feeding stations and perhaps increases the chances of spreading disease.

That leaves us with food plots. Nothing has the potential to improve the nutritional plane like serious food plots. Deer view food plot plants as browse, and a food plot is simply a browse mecca to deer. They will readily shift their feeding from native browse to high-quality food plots. Under serious food-plot programs that provide abundant year-round nutrition, we've seen food-plot forage make up as much as 70 percent of the deer's diet . . . on good native habitat! When you substitute relatively low-quality native browse with loads of high-nutrition food-plot plants, the results on deer numbers and size can be nothing short of amazing . . . without damaging the native habitat! We're talking about quantum improvements in deer size and numbers! And food plots can be legally hunted, tend to hold deer on the property and are great for game viewing. But they are expensive, subject to crop failure and can't be planted on some tracts because the land is not tillable and/or land-use conflicts exist. Still, there is magic in food plots.

Just think about it. Have you ever wondered why the biggest bucks tend to live in our most productive agricultural regions, including the Midwest, central Canada and the wonderfully productive irrigated alfalfa country of the Great Plains and the West? There are huge bucks in these areas. Why?

The answer is simple: plenty of high-quality food. Many of these places have agricultural regimes featuring soybeans and/or alfalfa in the warm season and corn and/or small grains in the cool season. As a result, by sheer happenstance they have a wonderful year-round "food plot strategy," resulting in great nutrition and big bucks.

While many of us might not be able to hunt these hot agricultural areas, we can bring the same high-quality nutrition found there back home with us to where we hunt through food plots! With food plots, we can remove the random ups and downs of catch-as-catch-can agricultural programs with a planned, consistent, year-round food plot program that will guarantee the right food at the right time. In essence, you will have then brought the best of the Midwest -- great nutrition -- to your own property . . . and with it, better bucks!

Food plots are wonderfully versatile. Everyone knows they can attract deer, but more and more hunters are also realizing the great benefits of food-plot nutrition and using this knowledge to grow more and bigger deer than they ever thought possible.

A little math can tell us why food plots can have such an impact. Biologists tell us a deer needs about 16 percent protein in the diet to reach its genetic size potential. Consider this: The average natural habitat can provide about 100 pounds of deer browse each year without suffering damage. Good native browse averages only about 10 percent protein.

Compare that to food plots. Instead of 100 pounds per acre averaging 10 percent protein, a quality food plot can yield more than 10,000 pounds of forage per acre averaging over 20 percent protein! (And that's just for warm-season plots. Total annual production of both warm- and cool-season plots on a given acre can top 15,000 pounds.) Thus, one acre of food plot can grow more deer feed than 100 acres of natural habitat, and that food-plot forage is far more nutritious. And some really high-nutrition plantings (primarily well-selected legumes) have protein levels topping 30 percent! No wonder there's magic in food plots.

How much magic? Honestly, you'd have a hard time believing me if I told you what's really possible. Deer numbers can be at least doubled and body and antler size increased by as much as 20 to 25 percent under serious food-plot programs. That's the difference between a 165-pound buck and a 200-pounder, between one scoring 125 B&C points and one scoring 150! To us hunters, that's all the difference in the world.

This isn't theory. I'm actually doing it on my land . . . and so are countless other people across North America. You can do it, too.

Now, I know many are thinking, Yeah, that's on big tracts and those with super-intensive management. I can't really make a difference on my little place.

Not so. The beauty of the food-source strategy we've long pushed at North American WHITETAIL is that no matter what size place you have or how intensively you operate, you can pick something from the wide menu of management options that will improve your hunting. And on the right small tracts -- especially those with good neighbors who don't shoot deer excessively or indiscriminately -- the results can be simply amazing.