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Favorite seldom discussed deer food

BTaylor

BTaylor

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Oct 23, 2019
Messages
6,630
Location
Central Arkansas
To sorta piggy back off of @elk yinzer 's thread about overrated food, what are some of your favorite non-traditional or seldom discussed deer food sources to hunt?

Hands down #1 for me would be dewberrry. And if you can catch the leaf drop timing right maple and mulberry can both be pretty durned good around here.
 
BTaylor said:
To sorta piggy back off of @elk yinzer 's thread about overrated food, what are some of your favorite non-traditional or seldom discussed deer food sources to hunt?

Hands down #1 for me would be dewberrry. And if you can catch the leaf drop timing right maple and mulberry can both be pretty durned good around here.
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Our favorite or the deer’s that seldom gets discussed? It probably doesn’t get discussed much because both suck but greenbriar and privet get hammered where I hunt. If it’s readily available I could see someone calling it a deer favorite. I personally hate the stuff but have become tolerant of it because that’s where the deers be. It’s prevalent everywhere and often times they don’t need to leave their bedding to find it because their bedding is also both of those things. It being prevalent also makes it hard to hunt since they browse a lot and can eat or bed anywhere.
 
I was largely contrasting white oaks vs. other oaks. Chestnut oak and red oaks are probably more important in the areas I hunt than whites for the majority of hunting season.

Greenbrier for sure.

Pokeweed and blackberry canes are a reliable draw in disturbed areas.

Not during hunting season, but deer will really dig up ferns in winter. It'll look like hogs rooting the way they get at them.

Honestly very little of my hunting targets specific food patterns.
 
BTaylor said:
To sorta piggy back off of @elk yinzer 's thread about overrated food, what are some of your favorite non-traditional or seldom discussed deer food sources to hunt?

Hands down #1 for me would be dewberrry. And if you can catch the leaf drop timing right maple and mulberry can both be pretty durned good around here.
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they are eating the freshly fallen maple leaves?

I’ve seen them eat tulip poplar leaves off the ground many times

seems in part because they fall with a lot of moisture left in them
 
gcr0003 said:
Our favorite or the deer’s that seldom gets discussed? It probably doesn’t get discussed much because both suck but greenbriar and privet get hammered where I hunt. If it’s readily available I could see someone calling it a deer favorite. I personally hate the stuff but have become tolerant of it because that’s where the deers be. It’s prevalent everywhere and often times they don’t need to leave their bedding to find it because their bedding is also both of those things. It being prevalent also makes it hard to hunt since they browse a lot and can eat or bed anywhere.
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Yeah Greenbriar here too. BTW have you ever tried the young new shoots of the greenbriar they are delicious. The deer here also like blackberry leaves.
 
Loopwing said:
I like the seldom found, pile of corn. Works every time! Besides that..... Crab apples! I may or may not have planted a few over the years on public land.
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My nephew and I were hunting behind his house. One night my nephew told me he filled his pockets in the morning with crab apples and that evening the apples were gone the deer loved them. So I figured I would do the same. I got up in the tree and threw out all the apples, a little while later a grey squirrel came along and I watched it bury every one of those apples. LOL
 
Blackberry for sure. In terms of mast around me, hickory nuts, beech nuts, acorns different varieties besides white oak like overcup and black oak and in the late season they tear up the red oaks. Near swamps, red brush and alder gets hammered later as browse becomes more important in their diet. I’ve noticed a lot of bedding in upland draws lined with Washington Hawthorne. Any areas where native and wild grasses stay green and grow can also be especially attractive like near spring seeps or in south facing slopes where clear cutting has occurred allowing more sunlight to hit the forest floor.
 
Russian Olives. Nasty non native trees w/ thorns 2" long. The deer love the olives though. Never knew they liked them till I moved into my current house.
 
Hedge apple leaves.

The leaves are usually totally smoked while on the tree below the browse line but when they start falling in late October it's a draw and often near cover/ bedding. Deer will smoke other fallen leaves like sugar maple, but hedge apple tends to be much more concentrated.
 
Palmetto berries, gall berries, beauty berry, Virginia creeper are some I can think of that I see deer eat a lot but not really talked about but I think they kinda region specific.

There is food all over the place around here and, at least in my experience, find it really difficult to target "food source"....and never had any luck trying.

Mulberry fruits little too early to hunt, same with paw paw....and I know for a fact they like shoots off the orange trees but real rare to find on public in my area up northeast. I've sat on ripe persimmon trees and never seen anything.

Our woods are pretty thick so it's not common to just see deer unless it's some open field or salt Marsh....whenever I see deers out in the open they seem to always be in a spot of grass that's a little different color than the majority of the surrounding grass...so there's that I guess...patches of different color grass on the shady side of the field
 
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In my early days of hunting the hills of wva the pawpaw was a draw for both the deer and for me
 
I have nothing against baiting, but I've encountered more bad issues than good ones. :rolleyes: Most of all, it attracts a hoard of unwanted varmints.
I would rather hunt a natural food source, funneled travel routes and water sources. :cool: I've had better success and ran into less varmint issues.
 
Not during season but it surprised me how much deer hammer jewel weed when I started paying attention to it.
 
Multi flora rose.
The deer here love it. I've watched them stand in prime clover and eat the mfr. It's one of the miserable invasives that I can tolerate.

Deer also eat a lot of freshly fallen leaves...poplar and maples are a favorite.

Common ragweed. I had a bean plot that was protected with an E fence while the beans got established but the ragweed flourished in that plot, too. When I removed the fence to allow the deer to feed, they didn't touch the beans until after they at all the ragweed.

Black cherries. Highly dependable and consistent mast crop and deer love it. Haha I've had deer under my tree in pitch black dark and the only way that I knew there were deer under me was that I could hear the sound of them crunching the cherry pits.

Pokeweed, spicebush leaves, oriental bittersweet, Virginia creeper all get hit pretty hard.
And there are times that I can see absolutely nothing on the ground to eat, yet I watch deer working on some little forb or something. I can never figure out what it is they are eating.
One more...any landscape plant that I put in the yard! Doesn't matter if it's on the list of "deer resistant" plants or not. If I try to grow it, the deer will surely destroy it.
 
The 2 biggest for me are green briar and Jewel weed. Every time I walk past a large green briar patch, no matter time of year. It's always eaten on.

I have a love for hunting swamps and drainage ditches. Usually most of these areas are loaded with a water weed that I believe is called Jewel weed. It gets hammered in late September/ Early October. I target these spots. And often can tell a buck is using it. He will rip it out by the root with his rack when they are shedding there velvet.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
 
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