Importance of Hard and Soft Mast to the Deer Herd

One of the main areas of interest in whitetail management continues to be herd nutrition. More specifically, people remain highly focused on how to increase protein.

But is this warranted? The truth is that whitetails are marvelously adapted to making do with a lot less protein than some would have you believe. For that reason, much of our recent habitat-management research has been on ways to increase digestible energy, including through the use of food plots.

We’ve found that one trait making some plant varieties quite attractive and useful to deer is the amount of digestible energy they provide. For example, we discovered (somewhat by accident) that the reason deer...

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