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What Do Deer Eat During the Late Season?

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How to: What Do Deer Eat During the Late Season?

 

This video dives straight into finding out the answer to the question: What do deer eat during the late season? While this is a very basic question, the more advanced tactic of looking at a deer’s stomach answers the question. This process offers very valuable intel when it comes to hunting. Figuring out what a deer’s diet consists of regarding the late season food sources on your property, can help you determine where bucks might be patterned. Looking into a deer’s stomach contents can show you not only where to find deer at, but where to hunt, where to hang your trail cameras, and where to concentrate your late season efforts on.

What Do Deer Eat in the Late Season? | Trail Cameras Weekly “Week 10”

By opening up the stomach of a deer that is killed on your property, or by a neighbor nearby, you can quickly determine what late season food sources your deer are concentrating on your property. This video shows you two stomachs, one from a doe in Indiana, and another of a buck Steve Smolenski killed in Pennsylvania.  It is important to remember, the property’s habitat and available food sources greatly diversify the results from analyzing the stomach contents. Every property is different, this is why it is a very successful tactic!

A Deer’s Stomach

There is more to this than simply slicing the stomach to find the answer to, “what do deer eat”. Deer are ruminants and have a four-chambered stomach.

what-do-deer-eat-late-season_pic1The Rumen where deer store their food as they eat serves as a mechanism to allow deer to quickly eat large quantities of food without much chewing. This is a trait that helps limit the time they are exposed to predators. When they get back to a safe bedding area they proceed to re-chew this food or chew their fermented slightly digested “cud” going into the second chamber of the stomach the Reticulum, where the majority of microorganisms of a deer stomach really start to work. From there it moves to the Omasum the third chamber where water is absorbed, then proceeds to the final chamber the Abomasum where the food is further digested…Now why is this important? For the most part you will be able to easily identify what food sources they ate in the first chamber the rumen, and for the most part the second chamber. After you move on towards the final chamber it gets obviously harder.

Timeline?

By opening up stomach we can actually identify what the deer has eaten. Now you may be wondering how big of a timeline does it give us?

The answer assures us that this process is very high quality and accurate intel. From the time a deer eats to the time it passes through and comes out the other end, most of the material (about 80 %) takes only 48 hours to go through. This means during anytime regardless of harvest the gut pile and stomach contents will actually at least the last day or so of feeding. There is much to take into consideration after this as some food sources digest much faster than others.

While you can certainly see what the deer has eaten in the past 12 hours, you cannot determine when they ate food sources due to the vast range of different digestibility. AKA winter rye and species like clover digest easily compared to woody browse and mast such as white oak acorns. This is why It is important to understand what you are looking at before making any assumptions or conclusions.

So What are They Eating?

After the point when you identify the rumen and least digested contents of the stomach, you can pick apart the contents and try and apply percentages, or a conclusion to where the deer on this property are spending their time feeding.

 The Buck:

what-do-deer-eat-late-season_pic2

The buck’s stomach contents revealed most visibly corn, but you have to realize this is probably only 20-30% of the contents. It just happens to be the most visible and easily identified. 60-70% or the majority of the stomach contents were grasses and forbs, with about half being winter wheat in the surrounding cover cropped ag fields. They also witnessed a basic estimate of 10% woody browse. There were no food plot species or acorns in the stomach. This directly reflected what food sources were available and not available on the property this year as Steve’s property does not hold food plots or a vast amount of oaks.

The Doe:

what-do-deer-eat-late-season_pic3doe

Now this doe is a different story. The property has popcorn (which shatters more easily once eaten and is far less desirable than regular corn) many oaks and acorns, several areas of early successional growth ( woody browse) and of course the large winter rye cover cropped AG fields that were discussed last week on Trail Cameras Weekly. The percentages come out to be roughly 20-30% corn and acorns, 60-70% Winter rye/grasses and forbs, and an estimated 10 % of woody browse.

It is important to remember these are roughly estimated numbers but they do closely resemble what a deer’s diet and nutritional needs are this time of year. The graph below is taken from Nutritional Requirements of White-tailed Deer in Missouri produced by the Extension Department of the University of Missouri.

what-do-deer-eat-late-season_pic4

As you can see the average percentages between fall and winter roughly fall in line with the percentages the hunters witnessed in the stomach contents of the two deer killed in December.

Conclusion

Over the course of the next week or so, if the hunting is slow, take a doe for the freezer or for management purposes, or just try and examine the stomach contents of a deer killed on or near your property. Do not waste the gut pile! Often times this is a far more accurate representation of what your late season food sources are, how much time your deer are spending in the food sources, and where you might want to think about hunting as the temperature starts to fall! If you are asking “what do deer eat in the late season” take it into your own hand to find the answer!

 

what-do-deer-eat-late-season_promo

Prep for Late Season
rut hunting strategies tips tactics | Muddy Outdoors

Rut Hunting 101 | Strategies, Tips, Tactics, and Videos

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Rut Hunting Strategy, Tactic, Tips, and Videos

The weeks of November…the weeks you have been waiting on for months, are finally here! The next 3 weeks will be the best action in the whitetail woods. You hit-list buck’s guard is down, his hormones have him up on his feet, and he now stands a very good chance of making a mistake within range of your tree stand. Yes the rut is upon us and your chances look good, but it doesn’t automatically mean success. These rut hunting strategies, tips, tactics, and videos will dive into exactly what you should focus on during this time.

Pre-Rut to Rut Transition

The transition from the October lull, to the pre-rut, and now soon to be the rut is fast paced. The rapid changes are hard for hunters to stay on top of and adjust. What was once slow, variable movement, depending mostly on weather fronts has now given way into what can be perceived as even more variable action. The last week of October was expected to bring out more opportunities but instead, your high anticipation might have been met with little to no movement. As the pre-rut approaches the transition to the rut, it is important for you to understand what exactly is going on.

Hunting The Pre-Rut
(video) November is finally upon us. In this episode, the Trophy Pursuit team is hunting the pre-rut, and the action is definitely heating up!

 

This week on Muddy TV, Trophy Pursuit encountered classic pre-rut deer activity. Both Tayler Riggen and Alexandria Dunkin had bucks showing common behavior. The bucks in this episode relied heavily on scrape use, but also showed they were scent checking and actively searching for does, but seemed to have a reserve to them. During that time bucks scent checked areas and scrapes for signs of the first does to come in. Why they were not actively dogging does and running through the timber, they did show signs that the phase was actively approaching. During the pre-rut phase, hunters relied heavily on their trail cameras to reveal which bucks arrived with an increased home range, which bucks left, and which bucks were susceptible for an encounter with daylight activity. Our mock scrapes were hot, and deer sign like rubs and small scrapes seemed to be visible everywhere in the woods.

With the last week of October now behind us, and the first week of November at our doorstep, we can’t help but wonder what strategy should we change, and where we should be our November hunts on.

Rut hunting Strategies

Before diving into strategies, hunting tips, and tactics, it might be important to discern what we are actually talking about with the term “rut”. The “rut” or actual breeding peak is not what hunters associate with the term. Instead to hunters the term “rut” means endless buck activity, chasing, dogging, fighting, and everything we associate with being the best days in the woods. For the cases of this article “the rut” will encompass the intense action, what hunters might call the “lockdown”, and even the action of the “post-rut”. Why? To think there are actually “stages” to base your hunting off of during November is favorable thinking at best. It’s a hope that you can actually be spot on in predicting what you will see, when in fact, breeding, activity, and behavior will be regional, and very often property specific. With this said, the first 3 weeks of November are the best times to be on the stand, regardless of which “stage” or time period we are determined to be in.
For hunting the “rut” or better said, first three weeks of November, you need a strategy that puts you where the action is! Many hunters hold the belief that just about anywhere, or their tree stand location they call “old reliable” will get the job done. While this might just work with the amount of action and activity we are approaching, a better strategy would be to base your tree stand sites around what actually draws in bucks…does!

Early Rut Hunting Strategies
(Video) Bill Winke covers early rut hunting strategies and exactly where to concentrate hunting efforts on during the morning and the afternoons of early November.

 

Where should you hunt during the rut? Bill Winke breaks it down into morning and afternoon.

The Morning:

  • Bucks will seek out does around bedding areas
  • Focus on where does will be bedding after they return from feeding
  • Pick a stand location on the downwind side of the bedding area
  • Access the stand from the opposite side of the food source

The Evening:

  • Does are still feeding in open area, for the most part, bringing the bucks with them
  • Both the morning and the evening is based on does and where they are feeding or where they go after they feed.
  • Hunt a funnel or an edge of a feeding source
  • Do not walk on, or across the main run or section deer will access the area with, keep your scent away from the trail

Trail Camera Tips for the Rut

During November the best trail camera tip can be to not completely rely on your trail camera information. Activity is at an all time high, bucks can suddenly appear or disappear on a property without warning, or being caught on your trail cameras. Even if you have a camera per 10 acres, your chances are still slim to catching ALL deer movement. This means that your trail cameras are not always correct or reliable for making decisions on. The fact is that you should hunt in the locations above, regardless of what your cameras tell you!

However, you should still optimize every trail camera location and site to capture as much activity as they can. The information will guide hunting this year but more importantly will reveal how the intense deer movement worked across your property for next year’s hunting. The cameras might also catch information pertaining to which bucks leave the property, stick around, or are extremely daylight active, giving you insights on who to target next year.

Trail Camera Tips For November and the Rut
(Video)- This week go with solid tactics and trail camera tips, which are placing trail cameras on food sources, by bedding areas being reasonable with human pressure, and of course on funnels!

 

Remember these settings and tips when you are setting up trail cameras for the rut!

rut hunting strategies tips tactics | Muddy Outdoors

  • Location: where the does will be (food sources, doe bedding areas, transition areas between food and bedding)
  • Setup: At a 45-degree angle from the run, trail, or funnel. High to avoid spooking bucks.
  • Settings: long video ( 1 minute +) or series of multiple photo bursts (6-8 ) with a short delay ( < 10 seconds)

Trail cameras with settings such as 4 + photo bursts or longer than a 1-minute video are not common. The Muddy trail cameras feature these settings and more, and it might be well worth having the extra capabilities during the peak of deer activity!

Insert Pro Cam 12 PNG on left with info on the right – https://www.gomuddy.com/muddy-outdoors-trail-cameras/

rut hunting strategies tips tactics | Muddy OutdoorsPRODUCT DESCRIPTION

  • 12 Megapixel
  • 2 – 8 Photo Bursts
  • 1280 x 720 HD With Sound or VGA (32 FPS) with Sound Video
  • 2-minute video capability
  • 6 Second Trigger Speed
  • Invisible Flash with 36 HE LEDs
  • Simple to Program
  • Backlit LCD Screen to easily navigate through settings any time of day

Make the most out of November and the rut with these rut hunting strategies, tips, and tactics. If you liked the information and series of deer hunting videos and web shows used in this blog, visit Muddy TV  each week. Shows like Trail Cameras Weekly, Whitetail 101, Trophy Pursuit, and Hallowed Ground relay the latest information from their hunts, trail cameras, and observations to support their content and predictions so you are up to date.

This week take the advice and do yourself a favor. Setup trail cameras, tree stands, and hunting sites based on where the does will be. Just as the videos have shown you, get out and hunt, these upcoming weeks will be filled with some of the best action you will see!