So explain this......

[bswiv]

Louann and I spent part of Sunday in the woods picking blackberries & blueberries, just looking about at the animals......and FEEDING THE YELLOW FLIES AND MOSQUITOS!

So at one point we see these 2 does feeding along the built up road, maybe 100 yards away. Sense we are in the truck they pay us little mind once we stop and sit for a moment. We get out the binoculars so we have a real good look, hoping to see little guys!

Never see fawns but did note that the deer were feeding intently in one small area, maybe a 20X20 sq ft spot.

After watching them a while we continued on down in their direction and they ran off. The reason we were on this road is because of the large number of blackberries and as we get to where the deer were......well, you can see what was there.

So we get out and start picking......mostly hand to mouth as Louann left breakfast sitting on the counter back at the house. And yes it was somehow my fault.

Anyway, as we're picking I get to looking for the clipped tips or the pulled off berry stems where the deer were feeding. I can't find any?? I look harder, find their tracks but just can not see where they have been browsing the blackberries.

And mind you this is in the exact spot where we watched them for some time feeding intently.

Finally I notice what is in the other picture......and there was a fair amount of it......and there were quite a few more of them that had been just clipped.

Don't know what it is, but as it was mixed in with the blackberries and as the deer were eating it INSTEAD of any part of the blackberries I'd guess they prefer it.

But then I thought blackberries were a "preferred" deer food??

Ideas?

 

[Art Eatman]

Well, roughage, I guess. A deer can't buy Metamusil.

Damfino about deer. I brought a small hickory tree back to Texas and planted it in the yard. Murgatroyd, our pet deer, promptly ate all the leaves. He also cleaned off all the blossoms from the honeysuckle vines.

 

[Gunplummer]

Art, that made me laugh. I was sitting (Barely) on a side hill in West Virginia deer hunting one afternoon. I could see a small flat below me, and every now and then a couple deer moved through. This one old doe squatted like a dog and was literally shaking trying to take a dump. I never saw anything like it in my life. I told my buddy back at camp and he said "She must have been eating walnuts instead of acorns".

 

[Wild Bill Bucks]

Don't know what that is they are eating, but they will eat almost anything. They have killed my apple trees in the back yard by eating the bark off of them, as well as my roses around the house.

One of the best ways to get rid of briar thickets is to find the base of the thicket and pour a can of corn at the base. They will eat every branch of the briar thicket getting to the corn. I don't know how they can stand to chew the thorns, but they do.

 

[markj]

Oak tree shoots.

I once was stalking a deer, saw a doe come up the hill wit ha large buck on her heels. He had his nose to the ground and he stopped and lapped up where she pee'd. She stopped and let him get up on her, I raised up and shot him dead, he fell off and she looked back at him like hey dont leave me hanging....

Deer are silly at times...

 

[ChasingWhitetail91]

They eat alot of fresh branch tips up here. They eat all the spruce tips in my yard but never touch the rasberries and blueberries for some reason. I think they like the rush from all the vitamin c.

 

[Geezerbiker]

This is a bit off topic but I've heard that if you spray hot sauce on your plants the deer will take one bit and take off. I've sprayed habanero pepper sauce on my plants to with the hopes of getting them to leave my plants alone. I sure hope it works...

Tony