"Does corn pile supplement feeding pose a risk to your deer herd?"
It's that time of year again. Deer seasons are closed, guns are cleaned, and your hunting gear is neatly packed away in preparation for a long stretch of dormancy. The only thing left to do is make sure the young deer you left behind for next year are well fed and properly cared for during the long, cold winter months. So off to the nearest Wallyword you go to pick up a few bags of "deer corn". After all keeping the feeders full of corn throughout the winter will only help the deer survive, thus helping them through in great condition allowing them to reach their maximum potential...right?
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| Typical supplemental deer feeder. |
Though well-intentioned, the supplemental feeding of deer, especially corn, may actually have more negative impacts to deer and other wildlife than positive impacts.
But how could this be? If you are feeding deer when there are not many natural foods available, it makes no sense that this may be harmful. The deer love it!
First off, you need to understand that deer are wild animals, they are not domesticated. In other words, they are not dependent on man for their basic life necessities, including food. But it is not the amount of food here that is the issue, it is the kind of food that many hunters don't realize is the problem.
Deer have evolved to survive without man for tens of thousands of years. During that time, their bodies have adapted to life in the wild. One of those adaptations is for their body to adjust to the changing seasons. This means that their body knows when times will be tough, and their stomach adjusts accordingly. As you can imagine, the physical design of their stomach doesn't change during the onset of winter. What does change, however, is the microbiotic community that exists within their stomach. This is what helps them digest their food. Knowing that their preferred foods, such as forbs and other succulent plants, will not be readily available throughout the winter months their gut switches gears and relies on a complex community of bacteria inside the stomach that is designed to break down woody browse. In other words, their bodies are designed to eat coarser foods in the winter. A good analogy is having your truck fine tuned to run on diesel then suddenly switching over and only using ethanol to fill it up. That's what you're doing to a deer's body if you give it the wrong foods at the wrong time of year.
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| Photo from Northeast - enterotoxemia mortality. |
So along comes man who thinks they're doing the deer a favor by feeding them, when in fact, their bodies are not designed to handle the different foods they are usually offered. In fact, there are numerous cases of deer dying due to supplemental feeding. Especially when the deer rely solely on supplemental foods. When given the wrong foods, a situation called enterotoxemia may develop and kill a deer in a matter of hours. Fortunately, for folks here in Tennessee, this is not often the case since deer are not as restricted in their food choices as deer in the Northern climates; hence, they rarely only consume supplemental feed. In other words, I still wouldn't want to put "only a few gallons" of ethanol in my diesel truck.
This is but ONE reason supplemental feeding of wildlife is frowned upon. Animals are designed to eat the foods the environment provides at the specific times of the year. Changing up what their bodies are use to usually offers little benefit and may actually cause more problems than it solves. So if you truly want to do what best for your deer herd, provide the best habitat your land can offer.
Anyway, I hope I made you think.
I'll offer another big reason, yet often not considered, on why supplemental feeding is bad in Part 2. Until then, here are some great reads:
- http://wildlife.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/PS_BaitingandSupplementalFeeding.pdf
- https://www1.maine.gov/ifw/hunting_trapping/pdfs/deer_winter_feeding.pdf
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