The Need To Feed

On opening day, most deer are running for their lives, and finding them is often a matter of setting up in the right travel corridors. As the weeks progress, however, and the relative calm of the late season sets in, deer begin once again to structure their lives around finding food.

But the pressure of hunting season is still ever-present, and most hunters know it has a predictable effect on deer patterns. Bucks quickly become ghosts. Many times all you'll see are their tracks. You know they're around, but you never see them. Rarely will they venture out of their security cover during the daylight. It only takes a few encounters with hunters before a buck seemingly goes underground, and this often happens shortly after opening morning.

There is only one thing that will occasionally bring a big buck (or any deer) out before darkness--the need to feed. The good news for hunters is that with winter closing in, that need grows more urgent every day.

Our bodies have an internal thermostat that requires us to burn more calories when it's cold in order to maintain a core temperature of 98.6 degrees. This raises our metabolic rate and, in turn, our appetite. A deer's metabolism on the other hand decreases as winter takes a firm grip, and it actually eats less. However, there's a period of adjustment during which the animal's endocrine system gradually slows its metabolism.

The first cold snap of winter generally coincides with the late season in most parts of the United States, and this starts deer's physiological slow-down, but the process takes many days, even weeks, to complete. During this transition period, cold temperatures force deer to feed heavily in an effort to fuel their still-high metabolic rates. This additional activity often forces deer to compromise their security by feeding before nightfall.

We'd all love to hunt a buck that's relaxed and approaching his feeding area during daylight hours, but in some cases you may wait all season for that to happen--especially if the hunting pressure doesn't drop off or if it never gets really frigid. In any case, your hunting strategy should be dictated by the animal's behavior.

The first step in deciphering this behavior is to understand that food is king. Where you find the food, you find the deer. It's usually that simple. Whitetail food falls into three categories: browse, mast and agricultural crops.

Noted whitetail researcher Dr. Harry Jacobson once said of deer, "It is easier to say what they won't eat than it is to say what they will." Deer can consume all manner of leaves and stems, and nibble their way along as they travel more or less randomly through the forest.

The only place where eating browse becomes an exploitable pattern is when it is the only show in town--when there are no agricultural fields or mast nearby. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense in most areas. Random deer movement and hunting success don't go together.

It's often much better to concentrate on mast. Starting in the month of June, mast (soft and hard) becomes a growing portion of a deer's diet. As a percentage, mast utilization peaks in November and then begins dropping off again in December. When given a choice of food sources, deer will select mast over almost every other food source available. Where I live in the Midwest, deer swarm to acorns as soon as they begin falling.

Though deer prefer white oak acorns, they will eat acorns from all of the oak subspecies. You should study the ground in thick oak groves to see how many acorns remain of oak subspecies that dropped in early fall. Deer will continue to come to these areas to feed until the supply is depleted.