CHAPTER 4: PAGE 3 - DAILY NEEDS
How Do Deer Spend Their Day?
If you spend enough time around deer hunters or watch enough hunting content you’ll probably hear the phrase “deer are slaves to their stomachs”. What this simply means is that food is the primary motivator for deer movement, that is, until the rut. Identifying deer movement patterns plays a significant role in being a consistently successful hunter and we will cover that in great detail throughout this course. But for now, let’s talk about how deer spends a typical day.
First, it helps to understand that deer are ruminants. Their digestive system consists of a specialized four-chambered stomach. The first chamber, called the rumen, is for storage. The rumen allows for the deer to consume a lot of food quickly and then digest it later. Deer are most at risk when they’re moving or browsing and most safe when they are bedded in security cover. Once they fill their rumen, deer can return to the safety of bedding cover and then bring the food back up into their mouth and chew it again - this is referred to as rumination or “chewing cud”. A deer will replenish its rumen every 4 hours or so, meaning they may feed up 4-5 times per day. Hence the phrase “slaves to their stomachs”.
A doe browsing on grape vine.
One of the best experiences we’ve had with a bedded buck was on a hunt Greg had in South Dakota. He got to watch the buck from only 50 yards away for over 7 hours. During that time the buck spent 4 hours in its first bed and then got up midday and moved 30 feet and bedded back down, where he spent the next 3 hours. At one point the buck was getting noticeably tired and eventually laid his head flat on the ground and slept for several minutes. Unfortunately for Greg, when the buck got up from his second bed he walked directly away, never giving him a shot! Regardless, it was a fascinating experience to watch a buck bedded for that long.
During the day a deer may periodically get up from its bed to stretch, urinate and deficate, and browse. Most of their time is spent in a small area where they feel secure. As dusk approaches deer become more active within their bedding area. They continue to browse as they begin working towards their evening destination, which is usually associated with agricultural fields, clear cuts, and other open areas. Deer will often stop along the way to drink water if it’s available and browse on grasses, forbs, nuts, fruits, or other vegetation. Outside of hunting season, or in areas of low hunting pressure, deer often make it to open fields an hour or so before dark, with does and fawns and young bucks showing up first, and older age class bucks typically showing up last.
As darkness falls deer feed heavily, and once they are full, bed down again to rest and chew their cud. During the night deer often bed in the fields or adjacent open areas. When you find deer beds in and around open areas and field edges you can bet that they are night beds. During the middle of the night deer will continue to feed every few hours, rest, and ruminate. As daylight approaches, deer will feed again as they begin to work their way back towards their daytime bedding areas. The order of deer leaving fields and open areas is usually the reverse of the evening movement as mature bucks often seek security cover before daylight.
Deer often bed in open areas after dark.
As we continue to discuss hunting tactics and how mature buck behavior is different from other deer, you’ll notice a lot of our strategy revolves around identifying buck bedding areas and hunting as close to them as we possibly can. This is simply because they spend so much time in and around these secure locations. In high hunting pressure areas they may not move more than 50-100 yards from their bed before the end of legal shooting time. When they do move in high pressure situations, a mature buck will more likely move in thick cover than in open areas.
What Do Deer Eat?
White-tailed deer are classified as browsers and have been documented to eat hundreds of different types of plants. Diversity is important in a deer's diet. It includes a variety of food types such as such as agricultural crops, natural browse, forbs (herbaceous broad-leaf plants), grasses, hard mast (i.e - acorns, chestnuts) and soft mast (i.e - persimmon, apples, plums), as well as mushrooms. Deer have even been known to opportunistically eat insects, fish, and even baby birds. Surprised? Although rare, biologists conducting nest camera studies have documented deer eating newly hatched birds right out of the nest!
Being able to identify what deer are currently feeding on is another important element of woodsmanship. While it is commonly known that deer love corn, soybeans, and acorns - many hunters overlook other less obvious food sources. For example, weedy fields in clearcuts, duck potato (arrowhead plant) in low wet areas, freshly fallen hedge leaves and locust pods, just to name a few, can be highly attractive under certain environmental conditions and at specific times of the year.
Locust pods are an attractive food source, especially late season.
An inquisitive mind is an asset for a deer hunter. While you’re in the woods, always be looking for signs of deer browsing - look for nipped off branches, stems, and weeds. It’s important to consistently scout food sources to find what deer are feeding on at that moment…remember it can change from day to day!
How Much Water Do Deer Need?
Deer get water from a number of different sources, including surface water, dew, and from the vegetation they eat. Most green vegetation deer consume are composed of 50-80% water, so they get a lot of their daily intake from the food they eat. Whitetails don’t seem to be very picky when it comes to where they consume surface water either. They will drink from lakes, rivers, creeks, ponds, stock tanks, and even temporary mud puddles from recent rain. During the winter they will consume snow to get water as well. Greg once filmed several deer come to a frozen pond that spent several minutes pawing through the snow to get to the slushy snow/water mix beneath it.
It was nearly a perfect situation and for about 5 years it was the very best stand they hunted. Collectively, they harvested at least 7 bucks from that spot and Greg’s brother, Matt, shot his biggest buck with a bow from the pond stand. Unfortunately, it eventually attracted a lot of other hunting pressure and then massive flooding wiped out the entire area, but for several years that water source close to bedding provided consistently great hunting action. When you’re scouting, whether it be map scouting or boots on the ground, always be on the lookout for water sources close to undisturbed pockets of cover. Secluded ponds and potholes can be pure gold for deer hunters!
How Do Deer Bed? Bucks vs. Does
Generally speaking, the way deer use the landscape is that family groups of does and fawns bed closest to major food sources (agricultural fields or clearcuts), usually within 100-300 yards. Young bucks and mature bucks bed in a layered fashion deeper into cover beyond doe family groups, usually in thicker, more secluded spots. Family group bedding is easily identified by beds of various sizes where does and fawns are in close proximity to each other. Bedding based on wind direction is less important for family groups as they often face different directions and rely on multiple sets of eyes and ears to detect approaching danger. If you see multiple beds of various sizes in a circle, it’s more than likely doe bedding.
Bucks typically bed in a different manner than family groups as they are often bedding alone. They don’t have the advantage of multiple sets of eyes and ears so they bed in a wind-based fashion. A typical scenario would be where a buck beds on the edge of thick and open cover where they can watch for danger in front and have the wind blowing over their back to smell danger approaching from behind. Often times they bed up against a deadfall, stump, rock, or other object that helps conceal them. A single, large, well-used bed or a few equal-sized beds more spread out is likely to be a buck bedding area. Often times you will find large droppings close by or in the beds themselves. Also, you typically find fresh and/or old rubs in and around the bed as well as signs of a browsing nearby. A mature buck bed will often have several spoke-like exit trails from it as well.
There’s a lot to learn when it comes to understanding deer bedding behavior, especially that of mature bucks. Most of what we’ve learned has come from Dan Infalt and his crew at The Hunting Beast. Dan has decades of experience when it comes to finding and hunting buck bedding areas and we’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time talking with him and recording videos and podcasts. Here are several links to that content that will help you to better understand how to find and hunt buck bedding areas.
Dan Infalt: "The Hunting Beast"
The types of habitat where deer bed will be different by region, of course, and even within its home range deer will utilize different habitat types throughout the year. Oftentimes, we find mature bucks bedded in marshy areas, tall grass, and other high-stem density cover - the kinds of areas with few large trees that typically deters hunters. Other key features we look for are wooded islands or peninsulas in marshes, thick edges in flat agricultural country, and points and secondary ridges in hill country. Remember, a buck needs to feel safe, so areas that see little to no human intrusion are going to be more likely to have a mature buck bedded there. Another thing to keep in mind is that bucks will change where they bed relative to food sources, hunting pressure, the phase of the rut, and environmental conditions (extreme weather). Having the ability to recognize and understand how and where deer are bedding is an important tool in a whitetail hunter’s arsenal.
