Thought it would be a good idea to start an educational thread on food identification of the whitetail. I'v been hunting for 35 years and don't know them all.As most of you know, to become a complete and successful trad. hunter you must gain as much knowledge of your quarry as possible.I realize Im starting this in the winter season when plants and trees are hard to identify, but then thats part of the challenge. So if you have any good pics or videos to share please do. This will be a wild foods foremat only. No agricultural foods please.

Deer are browsers and probably eat 90% of what grows around them. At different times of year different plants have different properties that deer need and those are the plants they utilize at the time.

Does't hurt to be able to identify those that they are attracted to the most, especially during hunting seasons. I guess thats what im trying to get at here.Thanks Pat

Around here they love white oak acorns.

I've seen the same thing as Pat B.  Some of the best time in the stand or blind is just watching deer that are around me.  They literally take a bite out of anything they walk past.  I have a personal war going with Burdock on my place, absolutely hate the stuff.  I've even seen deer eat that noxious weed.

If you are hunting a big woods area with no crop or hay fields, keeping up on what they are feeding on will make or break your day.  One thing I read about and then began to see my self is how much they love maple leaves when they turn.  Apparently they get sweet when they turn color and get hit with frost, deer seem to love them.  Makes for tough hunting in a mature hardwood forest though, like it isn't tough already...LOL.

Different areas of the country will vary some, but nuts are usually a big draw. Like 'shortlongbow' said, white acorns.
Good idea. I hope to get some tips from this one.

I like this topic.  I know deer love acorns, but if the acorns haven't dropped yet, what other plants do deer prefer? This is always the challenge in big woods, food plots are not possible, and farms arent either.  Any deer biologists here?

For me, these are the primary food sources I have found or focused on over the years. Hopefully someone will chime in with those I have missed or overlooked. Or perhaps I have made some incorrect assumptions. Anyway, here goes:


White oaks, always a draw. Here are some other foods I focus on when scouting and hunting. Try to target in on what's hot of course since this can change rapidly.

Honeysuckle - year round in many places in the south. I have seen deer feeding on these in February but it is more heavily targeted by whitetails when mast crops are not available.

Muscadines - These fall early in the season here in GA. This season, for me at least, it seemed they fell too early, probably due to dry conditions.

Beechnuts - Early season food. I look for these around the season opener.

Acorns - White Oaks preferred, Red Oaks will be eaten but not if white oaks are dropping. Chestnut oaks (the big WHOPPER acorns) are pretty much ignored. Water oaks are dropped very late, usually after the season or very late in the season. From what I have seen deer will target these but perhaps due to the lack of other foods?

Farm crops - if available deer will feed on pretty much anything farmers plant. I have even seen them eat the tender growth (bud) in the tops of Tobacco plans and those plants taste nasty! Corn, Winter Wheat, Oats, Soybeans and any Garden vegetables are pretty much fair game. When I lived in NC we would plant large plots of peas (blackeye, purple hull sugar etc)and deer absolutely loved them!

Browse  - any tender growth is targeted. The good part about a lot of browse come mid to late deer season is it takes a lot of it to keep deer fed so they move alot and will tend to focus on other foods that are more plentiful if available.

These are all my experiences in the south east. I am sure there are others I forgot or perhaps do not know about but hopefully this helps some.

Regards,

I've seen video of them eating a dried up old maple or oak leaf. I've personally seen them eat mulberry leaves. I think they eat grass but I don't think they prefer it.

Pretty much anything I plant in the yard.  Tulips seem to be a favorite.

Persimmons can be good when they produce. It's like deer candy, not a staple food but a treat they like when available. Same goes for sumac berries.

Easykeeper, good input on the turning maple leaves,thats the kind of thing I'm looking for.I realize deer eat a wide variaty of tree leaves and plants I'v watched them by the hour. The quest here is to single out those foods {if any} that they prefer.White oak acorns of course is number one with reds probably being second. But given a choice are there certain foods they prefer over others. How about honey suckle for instance?Like this year in NY we didn't have an acorn crop at all.I was searching for plants and other food sources the deer were keying in on. crop foods in my area also are almost non exsistaint.With no leaves and not many berries for them  I was looking for and trying to identify plants they may have been targeting, If any.I did find areas where they seemed to favor the brose around them, but couldn' identify those plants. Nothing is cast in stone, deer diet included.

Thanks Gringal and BowhunterGA, now wwhere cooking  

A mixture of ag plants, forb's and shrubbery (sage mostly).  It may only be preferred if that's all they have around these parts.

QuoteOriginally posted by Shortlongbow:
Persimmons can be good when they produce. It's like deer candy, not a staple food but a treat they like when available. Same goes for sumac berries.

Yep, forgot about persimmons. Also made me think of a couple more.

Crabapples - Deer LOVE them, not a staple but if a deer can reach them or if they are falling the deer will eat them.

Also old abandoned fruit orchards will get a lot of attention in season. Apples and pears were commonly planted near farms and houses. When these were abandoned the fruit trees many times keep on producing and in some cases produce new trees. If you find one of these you can bet every deer within a few miles knows about it and will come a calling when the fruit starts ripening.

Deer are like a goat they will eat anything.

And how about pods,crab apples for sure, good one

Deer don't eat the crabapples around here. They fall on the ground and rot. They do however pick rhododendron leaves but only eat the pediole(stem). Deer eat poison ivy, polk salad, privet,honeysuclye and almost all of the hard mast crops. I've seed them eat dried oak, maple and other dried leaves as well as freshly fallen mulberry leaves. I've even seen deer eating on another dead deer.
If you fertilize a weed field it will draw deer. They browse on most of these "weeds" anyway and the fertility makes them more desireable.
I've never had the pleasure of hunting farmland on a regular basis and did most of my hunting  near Athens GA or Coastal SC. In GA we put out food plots. In SC just coastal woods and whatever natural foods they offered.

QuoteOriginally posted by BowHunterGA:

QuoteOriginally posted by Shortlongbow:
[qb] Also old abandoned fruit orchards will get a lot of attention in season. Apples and pears were commonly planted near farms and houses. When these were abandoned the fruit trees many times keep on producing and in some cases produce new trees. If you find one of these you can bet every deer within a few miles knows about it and will come a calling when the fruit starts ripening. [/b]

I agree. In my area anyway there are old abandoned foundations from houses of days gone past in the middle of big wooded areas. You can usually find some remainin apple trees in very close proximity of these foundations. The deer will eat the apples when they drop and then eat the leaves after they fall. A lot of times the trees do need some TLC and some sunlight to get them back into shape.

Onestringer, deer will eat just about anything, thats why I call them Woodsgoats. But if they will eat anything then we should be able to hunt them anywhere there's food.Of coerce thats not the case genaraly speaking. Excluding other factors, what wild foods do they turn to when the obvious ones aren't there?