When I was on the faculty at Kansas State University, one of my graduate students studied whitetail deer diets and energy relationships on Fort Riley. The post was in the middle of typical east Kansas farm country, surrounded by farms. The perimeter and the broad "buffer zone" around the artillery impact area were farmed as well by contract farmers. In addition, the officer in charge of the wildlife program on the fort was an avid quail hunter and there were food plots scattered around the fort everywhere-I would guess that there were a dozen or more 2-acre plots per section.
The deer were large and healthy. Does that weighed in excess of 200 lbs live weight were the norm and some approached 300 lbs. Bucks were also very large, both in body mass and antler size. Everyone you asked said that the deer got large and fat on the corn, milo soybeans and wheat that were present in abundance.
We collected ten animals each month for intensive analyses. We did this for two years. Since this was the army, we could make everyone who harvested a deer during the fall hunts bring their deer to our check station, whole. We dressed their deer and took blood, rumen and other samples from each animal. Like everyone else, we expected to find that these animals were living the white-tailed deer equivalent of the "life of Riley".
Briefly, these animals were absolutely the healthiest group of white-tailed deer that I had the opportunity to study. Disease and internal parasites were nonexistent. As winter approached, they had all put on enough body fat that, energetically speaking, they literally did not have to eat another bite until sometime in the last half of April. The surprise came when we looked at the contents of the foodstuffs in the rumen samples.
We rarely encountered any of the domestic crops raised on or around the fort in rumen samples. When we did see them, they were less than one percent of the total--usually much less. Virtually all of their diet was comprised on native plants along with a few introduced things (mostly ornamentals that were growing wild).
Since we were collecting ten animals a month, we usually kept some venison to see if there was any variation in palatability from season to season and there was actually very little. Around the first half of April, when they were burning the last of their winter fat reserves and starting to eat the first things that were greening up, you could say that there was a slight loss of palatability, but I don't think that most hunters would even notice the difference if they weren't looking for it.
Around here, we have mule deer that pretty much live in the corn and alfalfa pivots for nine months out of the year. Since I don't hunt them, I can't say whether they are physiologically different from the ones that live in the nearby mountains and foothills. However, I can say that the little Coues whitetails up in the mountains are much more palatable than mule deer taken in the same habitats. My family as a whole usually ends up with a few of each every year, so we have ample opportunity to make comparisons.
Last edited by mudhen; 02/06/16.
