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What Do Whitetails Eat?

In years with good rainfall and optimal forage conditions, whitetail deer can stay in good condition year round. However, in areas where rainfall is lacking or where habitat has been compromised in other ways, deer can be small, underweight and have fawns which are in poor shape. Research has shown that deer naturally run a deficit nutritionally in winter, losing weight as the season goes by. Because of this, optimal diet in the late summer and fall is necessary for deer survival in winter and for healthy fawns in the spring.

Digestion Determines Food Preferences
- The digestive system of the whitetail deer determines the types of foods the deer eat. For herbivores, they eat surprisingly little grass. This is because mature grasses are difficult for them to chew and digest. The lower teeth of the deer cannot shear off grass like the teeth of the horse or cow. They can only pull it up by grasping it between the lower teeth and the cartilaginous pad they have in the upper front jaw instead of teeth. They will eat the leafy shoots of new grass because it is more tender and young leaves because they are tender and have lower levels of tannin.
  
  The whitetail is a ruminant with a 4-chambered stomach. In the first chamber, the rumen, the food is mixed with bile to produce cud, which is regurgitated and deposited in the second stomach, the reticulum, where the process is repeated. After the second chewing, the cud passes into the omasum, where water is taken out of the cud. It then goes to the abomasum and from there to the small intestine where nutrients are absorbed After this is done, the remaining waste is converted into pellets in the large intestine for elimination.
Spring Browse
- Sumac is one of the favored browses of whitetail deer.
  
  Deer are browsers, which means that they eat many different plants in small amounts throughout the day. The whitetail deer's favored menu in the spring includes leafy young plants such as grass and young oak leaves and other tree shoots which have low levels of tannin. Chickweed, Osage orange, sumac, poison ivy and ragweed are also eaten among a wide variety of other plants.
Summer Foods
- In early summer, food may be fairly abundant for deer. Food supplies may drop off radically in areas subject to summer drought. In good summers, deer will eat three-seeded mercury, wild beans, dove weed and tick clovers, as well as any young green plants.
Fall Browse
- Wheat and rye are part of the deer's diet when available.
  
  Corn, acorns and other nuts comprise the bulk of the fall diet of whitetail deer. They will also eat wheat, rye and sorghum when available. Mushrooms, three-seeded mercury, and winter grasses such as tall fescu and bromes are also eaten.

Animals & Science