Advice For Beginning Whitetail Deer Hunters

By Kaitlin May

The bodily evidence of deer browsing on twigs, agricultural crops, leaves and natural fruits represents an incomparable type of deer sign. It adds one more piece to the puzzle and affirms that an area deserves your closed scrutiny. An area rich in food should also support a herd of deer. If you cannot find evidence of feeding within an area, it may still serve as a travel corridor for deer, but you will possess to find another sign, such as tracks and trails, to confirm this.

To check proof of feeding, you must know what deer devour, which includes more than 6 different plants. As grazing animals, they randomly nip off small leaves, twigs and buds of many trees and shrubs. The important natural foods of the Northern forests are white cedar, maples, dogwood, aspen and blueberry. In the south deer favor greenbriers, black gum, maples, honeysuckle, sumac and kudzu. In general they prefer new growth. In times when they are starving; however, deer will eat pencil-thick stems.

All over the whitetail country, the acorns of oak trees remain a key food source from late summer through the winter. Fifty-four different species of oaks grow in North America, and almost every species produces acorns of value to deer. Botanists separate all oaks into two groups, white oaks and black oaks. Generally, the white oaks produce "sweeter acorns", while black-oak acorns are somewhat bitter. Deer establishes a preference for the very sweetest whites, while the chinquapin, the post and swamps white oak. Then again, black oaks produce acorns more consistently than white oaks, and deer eat black-oak acorns in years when white oaks do not bear fruit.

Squirrels flake off the shell of the acorn. Deer, then again, eat acorns whole so the physical signs of such a meal are subtle. Whenever you look close, you may detect some disturbance in leaf litter affiliated with deer, or you may come across some tracks in exposed dirt underneath oaks. Parallel wind rows of leaves usually suggest feeding activity of wild turkeys. With snow cover, you are able to easily discover where deer have pawed down to find acorns.

Significant agricultural crops that deer utilizes include corn, soybeans, apples and alfalfa. Deer eat these foods in many different stages. In an apple orchard, for example, deer will browse on apple twigs as well as eat the fruit itself. In a cornfield, deer will nip off the tops of the stalk and silk in addition to as the mature ear, given a crack at shelled corn, they will chow down with relish. Frequently, they will also carry a cob of corn with them as they leave a feeder or field.

Deer miss incisor teeth in the front of the upper jaw; therefore they cannot nearly "bite" off stems. Instead, a deer used its lower canine teeth to press a stem or leaf against the upper jaw and then tears away a mouthful. The remaining stem or leaf exhibits a jagged edge. By contrast, neatly-pruned stems low to the ground suggests rabbit activity. Broken branches of apple and cherry trees in general represent the work of a bear. Blame the raccoon when you find broken-down stalks of corn. Deer are dainty eaters by comparison.

About the Author:

Compasses Hunt a different food plot every day, until you learn how the deer move in the area. There's lots of products to help you with that, plus little tricks like baking soda in your hat. Make sure you take care of any cutting, for camo or sightline clearing then as well.