What Do Deer Eat?

White-tailed deer are herbivores, eating plant material that becomes available seasonally. Deer also have varying nutritional requirements throughout the year as they move through the cycle of reproduction, lactation (for does), antler growth (for bucks), and preparing to put on fat stores for the winter. Deer diets shift along an annual pattern of physiological needs based on what food matter is available in their environment.

Deer Anatomy Drives Diet

Unlike larger ruminants like cattle, deer are classified as “browsers” instead of “grazers”. Cattle can consume large volumes of grasses, which are a low-energy food, and spend time digesting to extract all the available energy they can. Deer, on the other hand, need quick bursts of energy to escape predators. They can’t be weighed down by big vats of digesting grass in their digestive system. So, deer keep their digestive efficiency high by consuming foods that are high in energy. This behavior classifies them as browsers: selecting high-energy food sources.

Besides their smaller, more efficient guts, deer senses play a major role in their feeding behavior. A finely tuned sense of smell allows deer to choose browse that is more palatable based off of scent alone. Enzymes in deer saliva are adapted to break down sour tannins in foods such as acorns to make these foods more palatable.

What do Deer Eat?

Both deer and the plants they eat go through cyclical changes throughout the year. When referring to deer food, plant parts are classified as browse, mast, grasses, and forbs. Browse makes up the majority of a deer’s diet and consists of components like leaves, buds, and parts of woody plants. When browsing, deer select for the highest-energy parts of plants. This efficiency ensures that the deer are getting the highest return on foraging investment.

Foraging is inherently a risky behavior that puts deer out in the open and moving around where they can be easily spotted by predators. Their food needs to be high energy to reduce time spent foraging. Browse is consumed year-round, but during the winter it is often one of the only types of food available to deer. Deer will eat buds on white cedar, white pine, and maples during the winter.

In addition to woody browse (young buds and leaves), deer also consume forbs, which is non-woody browse. Some agricultural crops like alfalfa are considered forbs, as well as other herbaceous growth on the landscape. Clover, oats, soybean leaves, Korean lespedeza, and Virginia creeper are all favorable herbaceous foods in a deer’s diet. Forbs are most available in the late spring and summer, and deer can consume a diverse diet during that time.

Mast, when available, can be a major component of deer diets. Mast is high in carbohydrates and fat, and can be highly palatable to deer. However, mast production is not always reliable and varies significantly year-to-year. Good mast years can have incredible cascading effects on wildlife. Mast is the term for fruiting bodies of plants, such as berries and acorns.

White oak acorns are the major mast item that comes to mind: where there are white oak acorns, you will find deer. Persimmons, sumac, blackberry, pumpkin and squash are other preferred deer foods in the mast category. Deer need to be consuming plenty of carbohydrates in the fall to put on fat reserves for the winter, and can get some of that through mast and agricultural grains such as corn.

Grasses make up a component of deer diets, as well, but primarily only the new growth high in nutrients. If mature grass is the only food item available to deer, their health will decline quickly because it lacks all the nutrients they need. Deer also opportunistically consume less reliable foods on the landscape such as mushrooms. Researchers in North Dakota even documented that deer will raid nests and eat eggs and even live baby birds for a protein hit.

Managing for Deer Diet Diversity

There are many excellent resources out there about how to manage a property to benefit deer. Disturbance, such as disking, timber cutting, and burning are all excellent management actions to take to increase new growth and plant diversity. Revitalizing old, stagnant fields and forests to produce young growth adds plenty of nutrition into the environment that will attract deer. Making sure a property has a patchwork of diverse cover types and plant types will provide deer with a variety of different food sources year-round. And of course, planting food plots as a supplement to the natural food sources on the landscape is an excellent way to provide high-quality forage for deer.

Do some research about which specific plants are found in your area and start to observe. This is the best way to inform your decisions about managing for deer and choosing areas to hunt.

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