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Supplemental Deer Feeding | What You Need To Know

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Here Are the Rules with Supplemental Deer Feeding

Depending on where you live and what you are used to, supplemental deer feeding might be common practice or an illegal offense. Many states are starting to enforce stricter limits on what can and cannot be fed to wild whitetails, primarily out of concern for spreading diseases like chronic wasting disease (CWD). But where it is legal and in the right conditions, supplemental deer feeding can be helpful. Here are some good ground rules to follow if you are considering this approach.

Nutritional Needs throughout the Year

During the course of a typical year, most whitetails change their diets pretty significantly. They do this to get the most nutrition they can during a given season. This is especially true in northern areas with harsh winters, as whitetails need to drastically switch their food sources to survive. So what do deer eat throughout the year? Here is a seasonal breakdown to show you.

Winter

As mentioned above, winter can be an especially cruel time for whitetails in northern areas, which is why supplemental deer feeding efforts are brought up so much this time of year. What do deer eat in the winter? Snow often covers all herbaceous vegetation, leaving only woody browse for them to eat. Branches are not very digestible (they are very high in fiber) and have little nutrition. But deer are adapted for this scenario, and their four-chambered stomach allows them to survive on it. In agricultural areas, they will also devour standing soybeans or corn for their high fat and carbohydrate content.

Many bucks enter winter at a deficit and will spend most of their time eating to catch up. Does and fawns are also in survival mode during this time of the year. This is why many people assume that winter deer feeding is helpful, although there is more to it than that, as you will see below.

Spring

Spring is full of fresh new growth after a long and stressful winter. Deer shift their diets to key in on tender green growth (e.g., grasses, forbs, leaves, etc.), which are generally higher in protein and minerals than older vegetation. This growth is also very palatable and digestible for deer. In areas with high habitat quality, supplemental deer feeding will not likely offer any benefit in the spring simply because the natural vegetation is so nutritious. Some good examples include clover or alfalfa fields, forbs and grasses in natural meadows, regrowth after a prescribed fire, or the tender tips of new branches. Why do deer seek this out in the spring?

Bucks are almost certainly at a significant loss from their fall weight, and need to eat a lot of very nutritious food to replenish their muscle mass and fat reserves before their bodies will invest much in antler growth. Likewise, many does are either pregnant or lactating to feed their new fawns. They too need a lot of nutrient-dense foods to fuel this cycle. Finally, last year’s fawns are also playing catch-up with body mass, and will consume a lot of food to do so.

Summer

The summer period is a time of routines for whitetails. They will seek out reliable food sources, such as agricultural crops (e.g., soybeans, corn, etc.) or young clear-cuts to feast on foods high in protein and carbohydrates. They usually do not bed too far from food, and spend each day on a simple rotation of feeding and bedding.

Again, this is a rebuilding phase for deer. Bucks are hopefully back up to their original muscle mass after a stressful winter, and they are also using nutrients and minerals to fuel antler growth. Many supplemental deer feeding efforts during the summer focus on providing high-nutrient/high-mineral content deer feed to help bucks build their antlers fast. Does are still nursing fawns and trying to maintain their own bodies during the summer. Fawns are weaning themselves and eating a lot of vegetation too.

Autumn

Fall is usually the fourth quarter for deer (and many other animals). They need to make the final push to put on as much weight as possible before winter arrives. As such, they switch from high-protein diets to food high in fat and carbohydrates, which puts as much fat on their bodies as possible. Some good fall food sources include hard mast (e.g., oak acorns, beech nuts, chestnuts, hickory nuts, etc.), soft mast (e.g., apples, pears, persimmons, etc.), and agricultural crops (corn, soybeans, brassicas, cereal grains, etc.).

While bucks will definitely eat a lot in the early part of the fall, they tend to switch out of this pattern as the rut approaches. When the rut occurs, most bucks focus their time on chasing and breeding does or fighting rival bucks. During this time, they can lose a substantial amount of their body weight. Does and fawns, on the other hand, will eat as much as possible during the fall. As long as they are not being chased or harassed by bucks, you will find them feeding throughout the day and night in many areas.

What to Feed Deer

So now it is time for the ultimate question: what is the best thing to feed deer? Sure, it sounds like they get a lot of their food naturally, but what if your area is lacking in habitat quality or good food sources? This is where well-intentioned (but misinformed) people can go wrong. Assuming supplemental deer feeding is indeed legal where you live, here are a few tips on what to feed and what not to feed deer.

First, the best deer feed will always be the same as or reminiscent of their natural food sources for a given season, plain and simple. They are naturally adapted for certain foods at specific times of the year, so why mess with what works? Like the name itself, it should be a supplement to what is already available to them. For example, it is tough to beat corn piles over the summer or in the fall for supplemental deer feeding. Many deer are already consuming a lot of corn in agricultural fields anyway and it has a high level of carbohydrates that they are seeking.

However, if you were to suddenly introduce a lot of corn to deer that are not used to eating it in the winter, you could cause acidosis. Basically, their bodies cannot process that sudden infusion of the new food and they can die as a result. So as far as what to feed deer in winter or what to feed deer instead of corn, stick to more natural sources like cutting a small patch of forest down to bring browse to deer level. This is a very inexpensive way to feed deer – all you need is a chainsaw and a couple hours of your time. And as this patch grows into young forest, it will provide more browse for deer over the winter.

If deer are already used to eating corn throughout the winter in your area, you can start feeding corn to deer slowly and see how they take it, but you will likely have no problem feeding deer corn year round in these areas. Ultimately, the best supplemental deer feed is one that the deer in your area will be attracted to that actually helps them gain body mass.

Now when it comes to feeding deer in summer or spring, you have many more options. Many people will buy high protein deer feed for their supplemental deer feeding program. This helps them bounce back and recover muscle mass faster, and for bucks, it can help with antler growth too. You could combine the deer protein pellets with our GYT90 deer attractant (4 gallon case) to make your own custom deer antler feed. The high fat crude soybean oil serves as an attractant, helps them gain weight, and provides many essential minerals for antler growth, including calcium and phosphorous. Just mix it into your feed or pour it over piles of food.

Where and How to Feed Deer

As for where and how you should go about your supplemental deer feeding, you have a few options. You should find something that works for your own situation, because a consistent feeding program is more important and useful than a haphazard one.

Food Piles

The easiest route is to simply go out and dump the deer feed into a pile somewhere. You can quickly do this along access roads and trails, which also makes for easy checking of trail cameras. But the downside to this kind of supplemental deer feeding is that the exposed food can be eaten by other animals, including crows, blue jays, squirrels, raccoons, hogs, bears, etc. Being exposed to the elements on the ground, it can also rot faster. Deer food pellets in particular tend to turn into mush when they sit on wet ground or it rains.

Feeders

A better option for most situations is to use a deer feeder. Gravity-fed or battery-powered feeders protect the deer feed ingredients from spoiling and regulate it better. Deer cannot come in and gulp it all down – they have to eat only a little at a time. Feeders are easiest to refill if they are located alongside trails too. The best time to feed deer with a feeder is usually during the day, which can train them to come during shooting hours. If you can’t hunt deer over or near feeders, the timing really doesn’t matter as much.

Other Locations

Of course, other places are good to feed deer too.

  • Small openings just off large agricultural fields can be great spots because they are often staging areas for deer before venturing out into fields at night anyway. 
  • Small patch cuts in an otherwise mature forest will attract deer as is. When you add supplemental deer feeding or mineral sites, you can bet it will be a popular spot. 
  • If you find a series of deer trails that converge between feeding and bedding areas, it could be a great area for a deer feeder. It already gets a lot of deer traffic, and you should be able to get great trail camera pictures there too. Just try to use a larger feeder in these spots so you don’t have to refill too often.

Is Supplemental Deer Feeding Right for You?

If your property lacks abundant natural food sources throughout the entire year, there may be an opportunity for you to use supplemental feed to help the deer herd. And if it is not legal or relevant where you hunt, try managing the natural food sources the best you can. It will definitely make a difference.

Winter Deer Feeding

Late Season Deer Food Sources | Strategic Hunting Plans

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Which Late Season Deer Food Sources to Target

In many states, there’s still time for some late season deer hunting opportunities. Whether you can hunt with a firearm or bow, the late season can actually be a great time to fill your tag if you know how to go about it. Sure, there are challenges with hunting late season whitetails, including cold weather, pressured animals, and generally tougher conditions. But if you can find some good late season deer food sources, you might be able to stack the odds back in your favor and use a buck’s stomach against him. So if you’re wondering what deer eat, here are a few great natural and planted/provided food source options for late season deer, and some ways you can capitalize on them.

Late Season Deer Food Sources

First, realize that deer can get along just fine in some areas with their own natural habitat and nothing more. But they still probably won’t be living to the fullest potential. And on the flip side of the coin, there are many areas where the deer herd is too large or the habitat has been altered so much that planted food sources are the deciding factor for survival. In the late season, especially, deer are looking to pack on some weight fast to help them get through the winter. Even more so than does, bucks need a lot of calories fast to spring back from the rigors of the rut. So even the pressured and educated deer that make it to the late season may make exceptions for good late season deer food sources. Here are several great places to start your search for the late deer season.

Natural Food Sources 

In high quality deer habitat, native food sources are abundant. Though the bumper crops of soft mast (e.g., apples, persimmons, berries, etc.) and hard mast (e.g., oak acorns, etc.) from fall have all but disappeared, good habitat should have a lot of another important deer food: woody browse. Deer are highly adapted to survive winter by eating the tender twigs and buds of shrubs and trees, and even bark in bad conditions. Browse is a critical winter deer food for a good chunk of the country. If your region consists of mostly forest, there’s a good chance your local deer depend on it too. So how do you find late season deer food sources in thousands of acres of forest?

Try looking for recent clear-cuts, or areas that have been harvested or thinned in the last 5 years. These areas usually have an abundance of regrowth from the summer following the harvest, and in many cases, will be so thick that you can barely move through it. These tender young sprouts are usually full of protein and minerals and are extremely digestible for deer, which makes them highly attractive. If you can find an area like this, you can bet that deer will be spending a good chunk of their time there.

Agricultural Fields 

If you live in more of an agricultural area where row crops dominate the landscape, deer will really depend on these crops in the late season. Vast swaths of standing corn and soybeans are very inviting for deer and almost everyone can agree they are some of the best late season deer food sources where available. Whitetails can bed and feed in the corn, or hop over to the next field to munch on some soybeans. Corn and soybeans have a ton of carbohydrates to pack on the fat for the winter, while soybeans also offer a high fat content to bump up the calorie count.

 

But there’s a catch. Farmers are also trying to harvest their crops before the winter weather sets in and before the deer can completely consume it. Once it is harvested, some waste grain remains in the field, but even this can disappear fast if winter snow starts accumulating. When the fields are totally harvested, deer might travel long distances to wintering areas where they can survive better, which means your time to hunt them may be limited and dependent on the harvest schedule. This brings us to the next topic…

Food Plots 

If you have the land and the means, planting several acres of corn or soybeans and leaving them standing throughout the winter as a food plot provides a major draw for deer. If you have the only field left standing in a desert of plowed fields for miles around you, you can bet you will attract and hold deer for as long as the food remains. It’s a dream scenario for most hunters: having one of the best late season deer food sources around. But it doesn’t have to be just corn or beans. Other good late season food plots include grains (e.g., wheat, oats, rye, etc.), turnips, radishes, and winter peas.

  • Grains are often planted as a cover crop, so they can be dual-purpose for farming and hunting. They are most nutritious, palatable, and attractive to deer when they are very young and tender, so this obviously has limitations for truly late season hunting, unless you are located further south. However, winter rye for deer has good frost tolerance for late season opportunities in northern areas. 
  • Turnips and radishes can be attractive to deer earlier in the season, but they really become attractive after a frost. The starches are converted into sugar, which makes them much sweeter tasting. It’s common to hear “crunch, crunch, crunch” all day when hunting over brassica food plots that include turnips or radishes in the mix.  
  • Austrian winter peas are extremely attractive for deer, but you need a very large food plot or low deer density or else they will just be overgrazed before they can reach full production. Nonetheless, make sure some of your food plots include winter peas for deer if you want great late season attraction.

Supplemental Feeding/Baiting 

If none of the prior categories are all that great in your neighborhood, or you simply want to provide a boost to the local deer herd, you could also consider supplemental feeding for whitetails. If you will also be hunting over these areas in the late season, this is called baiting. Many states do not allow baiting or feeding deer in any fashion, so make sure you know the regulations before you pursue this option.

Undoubtedly, the best bait for the late season is a pile of corn with some GYT90 deer attractant poured over the top. Corn packs the nutrition deer are craving, and our deer attractant is full of minerals and crude soybean oil to provide a boost of calories (and some major attraction). You could also use deer food pellets in feeders for this purpose, but corn seems to hold up better. Either way, this is a great way to attract deer to a very specific area for an archery shot, for example.

If you have access to hunting over or near these late season deer food sources, you stand a really good chance of encountering a mature buck during daylight yet this season. It’s not too late!

Winter Deer Feeding

Winter Deer Feeding | Guidelines and Tips for Healthy Deer

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Everything You Need to Know About Winter Deer Feeding

Winter deer feeding is a hot topic for many people. If you are a deer hunter, you’re probably always looking for ways to improve the health of the deer you hunt. So it’s a natural next step for many people to want to take care of them throughout the year. As you’re probably aware, winter is one of the toughest times of the year for many animals – whitetails included. This is especially true in the northern half of the country, where winters can be especially cruel. Cold temperatures, body warmth-stealing winds, and lack of quality food can all work against them and weed out the weaker individuals. So it makes sense that feeding deer in the winter would help them out, right? Maybe yes, maybe no. It really just depends on the situation and how the feeding is done. If it’s done the wrong way, you might actually be hurting the deer herd instead of helping them. Now we know what you’re saying. Your neighbor is feeding deer corn year round, and it doesn’t hurt them. Here are some winter deer feeding rules to help you decide whether you should or should not do it, and tips to do it the right way.

Nutritional Requirements for Deer

The first thing we need to cover is what deer actually need to survive the harsh conditions that winter throws at them. Throughout the summer and fall, deer are hopefully able to gain enough body fat that they can make it through the low calories and cold conditions of winter. They do that by eating as much high quality food as they can in the time it is available, and their fall diets focus on the best food available. But they don’t always put as much fat on as they should. And bucks, in particular, are at risk when entering the winter.

Obviously, bucks focus on breeding during the rut, which means they avoid a lot of the last-minute fall feeding opportunities, so they typically enter the winter with already-depleted bodies. Without good food sources throughout the winter, a buck’s body will start to cannibalize itself by converting their muscle tissue into energy. That puts them at risk for starvation, and if they do survive, they will start the spring at a severe deficit. At that point, all of the calories ingested would have to build muscle mass back before allowing them to use minerals for antler growth, which means they certainly wouldn’t grow to their full potential. If one of the goals on your property is to also shoot larger bucks, this is a problem you need to address.

In an ideal world, deer need high-carbohydrate and high-fat food sources in the winter (with some major caveats below), whether through natural food sources or winter deer feeding. This would help them burn enough calories to stay warm over the winter and maybe even replenish some of the fat stores lost before their bodies have to resort to using muscle. Essentially, deer in northern areas just need to survive until spring, when abundant and nutritious green food sources return. Deer in southern areas may just need the additional nutrition to produce healthier fawns next year or bounce back from the rut quicker.

What Deer Eat in Winter

So exactly what do deer eat in the winter to get that high-carbohydrate and high-fat nutrition? Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of natural food sources available in the winter that can provide that. Fortunately, deer are already highly adapted for this exact scenario.

Woody Browse

Whitetails in highly forested areas consume woody tree browse to survive the bleakest time of the year. Their digestive system, which consists of a four-part stomach, is biologically designed to break down the high fiber content present in browse and provide the most nutrition possible from it. But not all browse is created equal. Mature forests – think park-like settings – often have very little browse available at deer level, which is why deer often disappear from these areas as winter arrives. However, young forests are full of tender and nutritious browse. Think about a clear-cut area – within the next growing season, it is so dense with tender young tree branches and shrubs that you can barely walk through it, and it is all conveniently located within browsing reach for deer. Over the winter, a few acres of this habitat can support more deer than 40 or more acres of mature forest.

Agricultural Crops

In agricultural areas, there are often various agricultural crops available for deer to eat over the winter. Some farmers or hunters leave standing rows of corn, soybeans, etc. for winter deer feeding purposes. Even in harvested fields, there is often waste grain left behind for them to forage on, as long as the fields aren’t plowed under in the fall. Depending on how much snow accumulates, the ability of deer to forage for food sources on the ground may be affected. In these areas, corn, soybeans, grains, and brassicas can all be highly sought after and extremely nutritious. Corn and grains are full of carbohydrates, while soybeans provide a lot of carbohydrates and fat. These are both great for the unique nutritional needs for deer in the winter. But if these are not common food sources in the area in a given time period, they can be dangerous.

Dangers of Winter Deer Feeding

Getting back to the beginning of the post, it seems like winter deer feeding would be beneficial for them, given the lack of good food sources on some properties. But that’s not always the case. For a deer’s stomach to be able to digest wood fibers in the winter, it builds a community of gut flora (e.g., microbes and bacteria) that help digest it. When a really digestible, low-fiber food source (e.g., corn, wheat, apples, etc.) is eaten, bacteria in the deer’s rumen that can digest high-carbohydrate food rapidly multiply and produce a large amount of lactic acid. This rise in acidity kills many of the other good bacteria/microbes and essentially stops digestion. The acid in the stomach can even acidify the blood, which can kill the deer within 24 hours in severe cases. This is called acidosis, corn toxicity, or grain overload. To identify a deer killed by acidosis, you’ll generally find them in good body health and with a rumen full of corn, grain, etc. While severe for individual deer, this generally only occurs when deer suddenly get access to a large amount of high-carbohydrate food after they have adjusted to winter browse. If it doesn’t kill them, it can also cause permanent damage to their rumen stomach lining, which may affect their ability to digest in the future.

The other dangerous part about feeding deer in general is the risk of disease transmission. In many parts of the country, diseases like Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) are wreaking havoc on the population. When deer browse, they are generally dispersed and only nibble on the end of branches. But with supplemental feeders and bait piles, deer are attracted to and gather around the feed in very close proximity, so it crams more deer into a smaller area. Inevitably, there is more nose-to-nose contact or exchange of saliva, which can spread the disease further. As a result, many state wildlife agencies have put feeding bans into effect to limit the spread of such diseases. A good way to avoid that risk is to limit the amount of food offered and scatter it across a large area.

Guidelines for Winter Deer Feeding

It should be pointed out that winter deer feeding is different than baiting deer during the hunting season. When you’re feeding deer during the winter, it is solely to help them survive until spring, whereas baiting during the season is often to attract them to a spot specifically to hunt them. Depending on how severe the winter is and how good the habitat is, deer may not even require supplemental deer feeding. But if the winter gets particularly harsh, the deer herd is larger than the habitat can support, or there is just no winter browse available, winter deer feeding could actually be beneficial. As long as you do it right. Here is what to feed deer in winter and a couple deer feeding rules you can use on your property.

First, it’s no use trying to provide deer supplemental feed if they can’t find it. When you’re starting in a new area and want to make sure the deer find the food source, try applying GYT90. Our deer attractant is a great blend of over 90 minerals and crude soybean oil, and it is super attractive to deer. The calories from fat provide a boost of nutrition, and the aroma helps draw them in to the food source. You can get a 4 gallon case of GYT90 deer attractant and mix it with your deer feed/deer corn, or apply it to a decaying log nearby to get their attention. Periodically refresh it for the most attraction and benefit.

From the feeding standpoint, the most important thing you should do if you want to feed corn to deer is to start very slowly. Start applying only a small amount (i.e., sprinkling a gallon bucket over a large area) at a time to allow deer to find and get used to it. Whether you manually feed them or use an automatic feeder, replenish the feed every couple days initially. Continue this pattern of providing a few pounds of food every few days for 2 to 3 weeks, which will allow them (and their digestive systems) time to get used to it. So corn is not exactly a “what not to feed deer” item – you just need to do it the right way. As long as it is not a large amount of corn that suddenly makes up the majority of a feeding, acidosis should not occur. In other words, don’t go out in mid-winter and dump an entire sack of corn into a field, or you run the risk of killing a deer or two. But to err on the side of caution, you can just mix corn into a homemade deer feed mix, with corn only occupying about 25% of the mixture. Providing a variety of different food sources within your deer feed mix is a good way to reduce the chance of acidosis.

If you’re looking for something else in the mix or what to feed deer instead of corn, a better and safer option for winter deer feeding is to use deer food pellets or other high fiber deer feed. This is nutritionally more in line with what they naturally eat anyway. It just provides good nutrition in one area rather than a deer having to browse over a large area. With feed mixes, make sure to look at the deer feed ingredients to make sure it is high in fiber, and has low carbohydrates. Some people use alfalfa pellets for deer, which offer about 16% protein and a lot of fiber, but some deer can suffer from bloat when eating hay as they are designed to be a browsing animal rather than a grazing one. Pellets don’t usually have the same effect as hay, but again, mixing pellets with another food source can eliminate problems. As for the advantages of deer pellets vs corn, pellets are definitely safer than straight corn, but will probably cost more than a sack of corn.

The safest option of all is to have high quality, early successional habitat on your property. If you don’t already have the young, dense, and nutritious re-growth that deer need to browse on, the most inexpensive way to feed deer is to do some emergency timber harvests. Simply cut down some deciduous trees (e.g., maples, birch, aspen, basswood, etc.) and brush (e.g., dogwoods, willows, etc.) to ground level in a small patch, so that deer can eat what nature intended them to eat without any consequences. Gather the brush piles loosely so that deer can still get to them. In the future, these areas will likely respond with a flush of raspberry, blackberry, and young trees to provide additional browse, which is the best deer feed for winter.

Will You Try Winter Deer Feeding?

In many areas, winter deer feeding is not necessary or won’t make much of a measurable difference for the local deer herd. If a winter is severe enough, it’s inevitable that some deer are going to die. But in some cases, feeding deer using the right techniques can help them.

What Do Deer Eat?