Ep. 648: Foundations - Deciphering A Deer's Most Important (And Secretive) Food Source

a browse pattern? Maybe this is a big maybe if you follow some big woods buck hunters, you'll hear mention a browse, But it's pretty likely to hear anyone credit brows with their buck kills in most places destination food sources and food plots. But the truth is deer have a crazy diverse diet and understanding your local browse options can help you kill more deer, which is what this episode is all about. While I'm not as hyped up to kill turkeys with a shotgun. As I used to be,

I still love it. I think I love the satisfaction of calling a bird in to my decoys and arrowing it at seven yards like a tiny bit more. But there's no denying that a day is spent running and gunning for longbeards is a day well spent. Now, this can be accomplished at any given day in the spring, obviously at least when the season's open. But for me, if I'm going to carry a shotgun and put my back to a tree, there's a timing consideration, and I

always try to get right if I can. You see, many of the states I hunt for turkeys are pretty far north. This means that in the early season, which I guess we could probably call I don't know, all of April, at least up here, just to make things easier during that time, the food sources, they're real predictable. The birds are going to be out scratching in agricultural fields.

They'll root around in the leaf litter for acorns, often red oak acorns where I live, because most of the white oak acorns got eaten up a long time ago. Those birds will also go digging around in the swamps for some kind of early emergent plant that I have yet to really figure out. And actually, honestly, I don't even know if it's a plant. They might be digging

up snails or something for all I know. What I do know is about the first week, when I'm hearing toads and frogs really chirping away in the backyard pond, I know I'm going to go out and watch turkeys work the edges of swamps. In fact, I often see deer do this too, and I doubt they're eating snails. Once April is in the rear view mirror, you know, then I start to get excited about the prospect of running a gun for turkeys. This is because it's usually

warm enough for the plants to start butting out. There's usually some really consistent insect activity at that point, and I'd think after five or six months and no fresh salad and no buggy delicacies, the turkeys, you know, they're gonna split up if they were still flocked up, and

they're going to hit these new food sources hard. And they often go from being super visible in the fields to being far less visible, which simply means that they're in the woods, and for some reason, a reason I can't really explain, I love setting up in the woods to calling gobblers. It's so fun to hear them sound off and to know they are coming, but not be able to see them till they're damn near within shotgun

range already. Then you just catch that glimpse of a fan in the brush or a you know, a redhead bobbing through the woods, and oh so sweet. It's also pretty damn reliable experience. In other words, the transition of food sources. It's gonna happen during turkey season at some point, and when it does, I know that I'm gonna get out and try to shoot one in the face with my twelve gage in the woods. If this sounds like

something I'm making up, do yourself a favor. If you happen to shoot a bird when the woods are really greening up and you're worried about, you know, being carried off by ticks by that point, dissect his crop while the toms don't eat as much as the hens do throughout the spring, which is why I don't know. If you want to shoot a real heavyweight, like a twenty eight pounder, you're going to want to do it in

early spring versus later. They do still eat all season long, They're not going to pass up a quick snack while they're in the midst of their lusty strutting and gobbling, you know, across the landscape looking for a girlfriend, you know. And if you do cut open their crop, you'll probably see some fresh leaves and often some kind of bugs.

Sometimes those insects will still be moving, which you'd think would have to be kind of a weird feeling for the birds, although they're probably used to it and probably like it anyway. I'll bet if you could figure out how to do it, you could shoot deer in at least September and October, and you know, probably much later farther south, and you'd see all kinds of interesting plants in their stomach. I'll bet the diversity of that would

rival any gobbler in the spring. In fact, this with deer has been studied quite a bit to find folks at the Mississippi State University Deer Ecology and Management Lab. They have studied this so of other researchers, and the findings are fascinating. But for starters, it pays to understand not only what white tails eat, but why they do it. They seem to have filled an ecological hole that other ungulates like elk, moose, and even cattle just didn't fill.

For whatever reason, those grass grazers got a far different diet than the white tail deer, highly specialized feeders. You can understand this just by looking at their long, slender snout and their tongue. This allows them to nibble on really small parts of plants, really specific parts of plants, instead of just wholesale mowing down on huge mouthfuls of grass.

And they also have superactive salivary glands which produce enzymes and help them break down and deactivate certain plant compounds like tannins, which are found in food sources like those red oak acorns I mentioned earlier. Their gastro intestinal track further aids them in eating foods other critters can't, allowing them to fulfill their energy requirements from a variety of plants. How big of a variety you might ask, Well, in one study of southeastern white tails, they were shown to

eat over four hundred species of plants. Now keep in mind that's just what they documented during the study and probably undershoots the total amount of plants that deer can eat, maybe by a lot. Of course, just because deer can and do eat hundreds of different kinds of plants throughout

the year doesn't mean they do so equally. In another study, researchers noted that they're subjects eight over one hundred and forty different species of plants, but just one third of those plants made up ninety three percent of the deer's diet. And this brings up an interesting thing about white tails, even if it really doesn't have any bearing on how

you'll hunt them better. They are constantly testing out food sources, likely to figure out, you know, how palatable they are and what kind of nutritional value they offer, and this probably hits a fever pitch for deer from the months of May through I don't know, maybe September or October, when the most brows is available to them. In fact, it has been shown that brows and forbes are the most important forages for deer, providing over eighty percent of

their diet at least until fall. So as summer progresses, their diet starts to move towards soft mass, and then during the fall it ratches up to hard mass. But the brows still a very real part of their diet and a huge component of their ability to stay well fed, healthy, and survive the winter. Okay, so you've gotten a science lesson, a biology lesson, and some super exciting facts to what your appetite. But what does this mean to you as

a hunter. Well, I don't know. Basically, it means that you should probably think about how brows could play into your hunting strategy. Let me give you an easy example of this, forestry or logging. If you're a big woods hunter, or really you hunt anywhere where old growth forests might meet the chainsaws at some point and the sun might get to hit the forest floor in a meaningful way after a couple of decades of being blocked out by

the canopy. You know a couple of things. The first is that fresh clearcuts they look nothing like old growth forests. Aside from the obvious changes, like most of the big trees are gone, the ground cover just explodes. Nature is a quick eraser, and this is never more clear than when you watch a section of forests that has been logged starts as suddenly mature. The variety of plant life

that springs up is always impressive. Often we only pay attention to fresh clearcuts when they start to grow up just a little bit, because they provide excellent security cover for white tails. They are also the best places to find rough grouse a lot of times, if that's your thing. But it's not just the security of a thick, fresh clearcut that draws deer in. There are a couple other factors.

For one, there's almost always an edge created in this scenario, and you know that I know and love to talk about how much deer love edges. But what matters here for this podcast is the brows. A section that has been recently log is going to offer brows that the deer just cannot get in older growth forests. I've spent quite a bit of my time hunting big woods deer, and I'll tell you that nothing gets me to change my plans faster than when I run across a fresh clearcut.

I know that it might play into my plans for ten years or more. To be honest, they're that good and that valuable to the deer. But what if you don't live in the North country, or you know some of the huge pine plantations down south, the big woods swamps down there, brows can still be key. I'll give you another example. When I last drew an Iowa tag, which is about as not big woodsy type of hunting as you can get, I spent my first full day covered in deer on public land. Now, this land offered

the deer more than the private land does. In addition to woods, meadows and river bottoms, it has state planted food plots and is checkerboarded between private farms that are mostly agricultural fields. If you were to draw up a perfect deer scenario type of region, this area would serve

pretty well as inspiration. Now, during my opening morning sit when I eventually hit and lost the biggest buck of my life that I'm going to talk about a lot because it still stings, I watched several bucks and doze leave a private alfalfa field. When they got to my side of the fence, they spent some time looking around. Some of them eventually just headed off to go straight to their bedding, but others hit the edge of the

meadow and they really started browsing. They'd pick and nibble their way along and then dive into the woods for a while, picking and nibbling along their way there, then they'd break back out into the meadow. It was awesome and a really good lesson. The destination food source was definitely a part of their daily routine. It was far

from their only source accountries. And since I could hunt the brows, but I couldn't hunt where they were coming from the destination food source, that browse and that little pattern around the meatow became even that much more important.

you know how much they loved that. I'd bet quite a bit of money that there is some sort of microhabitat situation going on in floodplains that promote certain kinds of plant growth, and that the deer know there's good stuff to nibble on there. In fact, one of the primary plants I find in those situations are nettles, which I don't know suck to walk through, but you know what the deer eat the crap out of them somehow. Maybe it's like when we eat a ghost pepper. I

don't know. Another super annoying plant that deer are prone to chomping on as Multiflora rose. These thorny bitches are an invasive species that is despised by farmers and ranchers and just a healthy population of landowners overall. It's also on the menu for white tails and grows in plenty of different places, which also provides pretty dang good bedding cover in addition to brows. Now, I could list more specific type of plants that deer brows, but it doesn't

matter because you guys live all over the place. And what that means is that you have to learn what is in your region, at least to some extent, and then try to understand what would be valuable to the deer when you're hunting them. This is most easily, although I'll admit it's not really that easy to accomplish two different ways. The first is to scout and look for nipped off plants. I guess that is kind of easy. When the local deer are really keying in on a

specific food source. It's pretty obvious. Now. If you do this now, you'll get a chance to see what the deer eat in the spring, which it might not be of much use to you for your fall hunting. But as the summer progresses and you get out to put up some trail cameras or maybe spend some time on the spotting scope, you have the opportunity to dial in

some browse intel. Again. Oh, maybe you're hiking into a secluded spot like a pond to hang your camera, and wherever you put it, it's going to allow you the chance to look at some greenery for signs of browsing on the way in and out. When you're glassing, you actually have a better chance to figure out what deer like to browse on. Remember when I mentioned watching those deer in Iowa browsing along a meadow, Well, when you spend time glassing summertime, deer in fields see the exact

same behavior. I mean, it's crazy how often you can watch a bachelor group head out into the alfalfa or soybeans or whatever where they're going to definitely feed for a while, but often they'll start to pingpong their way

back into the cover and then out of it. I watched a pile of deer do this back in twenty fifteen at the back end of a beanfield, and when I snuck in there to hang a stand, I found a bunch of wild grapes growing there where many of the bucks seemed to disappear to On the second night of the season, when the wind was right, I slipped into that stand. Two little bucks showed up first, and then they were joined by a much bigger eight pointer.

While I managed to grunt him in. It also just happened to be that the two youngsters prayed it right over to me and started browsing on the field edge. I saw them eating some of those grapes, but I also saw them browsing on something else that was in there. I don't know what it was, but it didn't matter. Eventually that bigger deer followed them in, and when he got to twenty yards he made my whole season awful

short and awful sweet. Of course, this example involves a destination food source and soft mast and some field edge brows, but that's better than focusing on just a single type of food. The more things your stand sites have going for him, the better. Like having a river crossing that is a natural funnel while also being a water source, and hell, maybe it leads up to a fence crossing, and that means that you really have three things working for you instead of one in a given spot. I

like those types of setups a lot. But what if you can't pin down a specific type of brows that should be hot during a specific part of the season. Well, go back two weeks and listen to the episode I put out about where bucks like to travel. In it, I talk a lot about security cover and how they stick to the thick stuff but also gravitate toward edges. If you just want to find brows without getting too specific,

edge cover is probably your ticket. Where two types of habitat meet, you'll often have the chance for very specific types of greenery. This might be an old homestead and a bigger wood lot, It might just be an overgrown fence row, or it might be where a floodplain meets a little bit higher ground. These types of spots exist all over the country, all over where deer live, and it's almost a guarantee that no matter where you hunt, there is an edge pattern to work with, and often

the edge pattern is good because of multiple factors. It might be a type of cover that connects bigger wood lots, or it just might be a little bit thicker than the surrounding area. It might offer ideal sized saplings to rub, or you know, just a good place to lay down some sign, or maybe it just coincides with the best safest travel routes. But no matter what, it's also very very likely to contain some brows. There's one more thing I want to say on this before I wrap it up.

I've been preaching a lot about paying attention. It's just plain old good advice. But there's something else to say on it. Pay attention to what the deer brows on when you're hunting them. Take no to what the does nibble on, and the little bucks observe the deer because what they nibble on is they pass through on their way back to bed in the morning. It's going to tell you an awful lot about what they're interested in eating from year to year to year, and file that

away the old memory bank. What the deer eat during a certain week in the fall this year, they may very well eat the same week next year. What a forky finds delicious tonight One hundred and forty incher might not be able to resist tomorrow. Watch them work through the woods, and pay special attention to deer that seem to concentrate on a specific, tiny little patch of woods, because it's probably some brows right there that they're really on.

Whatever they are all gravitating toward to you, It's pretty important being a hunter. Don't be afraid to either go set up over it, or at least walk over and take a closer look to dig in. What you find might serve you extremely well in the next few days or the next twenty seasons. That's it for this week, my friends. I'm Tony Peterson. It's been the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light.

As always, thank you so much for listening. If you want some more white Till advice, head on over to the meadeater dot com slash why and you can see a ton of hunting articles written by hunting experts on all kinds of things, hunting styles, tactics, strategies, understanding other food sources, all kinds of good stuff. Go check it out.