Know what whitetail prefer to eat
Study natural food sources in your region for better success

I don’t think you can truly classify your self as a whitetail hunting “Maniac” until you’ve gone so far as to fertilize naturally occurring whitetail food sources. It is one thing to develop and maintain food plots or automatic feeders, but fertilize natural vegetation? 

Some would say, “that's nuts”. Nuts? It's ironic that those other more subordinate hunters would use that word. Trees that produce nuts are one of the many things I look for when I’m engaged in my off-season scouting trips. I scout for nut-bearing trees in the off-season because these trees produce a food source that is relished by whitetail deer in the fall and winter months where I live. 

I spend most of my time in North Florida. In this area of the country we are blessed with an abundance of both hard and soft mast-producing tress. 

You don’t hear much about Florida in many of the popular hunting publications. Generally, the state does not produce an abundance of monster-sized bucks with headgear that dreams are made of. Much of the reason for this is due to current public land management philosophies, and to a lesser extent, the soil types here are rather poor in quality. 

Historically, Quality Deer Management (QDM) philosophies have not been popular here. If you can look past some of the bad, you’ll find several good things about hunting this part of the country. 

“Opportunity” is a word that probably best describes this area. Florida has one of the country’s longest deer hunting season and most liberal bag limits. You would think this would equal low deer populations; surprisingly this is not the case. During archery season a hunter can take two deer of either sex per day on private land and on many public wildlife management areas. If you are a meat hunter, this is great news for you. 

Although true for many other places in the country, in the extreme Southeast, natural food is your key to success. You’ve probably seen the words ”food sources” and “preferred food sources” in many of the popular hunting publications out there. In the extreme Southeast there are so many natural food sources that many hunters who are new to the area have trouble with knowing where to start. 

Agriculture is not prominent in North Florida, so keying in on a funnel that leads to a corn or soybean field is out the window. The extreme Southeast exhibits a semi-tropical climate and although the soils here may be poor, the growing season is very long. Vegetation here is lush and bountiful. Deer practically live in one big salad bar. 

The question is: What foods do deer like best? More precisely, the question is: What foods do deer like best during the hunting season? 

A few years ago, this knowledge came to me from the writings of a deer hunting professor of sorts, Dr. Ray McIntyre. Dr. Ray McIntyre, president of Warren and Sweat Tree Stands, has hunted the Southeast for over 30 years and is the forefather of the strategy of hunting preferred food sources. 

A few years back, Dr. Mac authored a book that details the strategy of hunting preferred food sources. The book is titled “110% Success Bowhunting Whitetails”. Dr. Mac wrote the book after receiving pressure from his colleagues who were intrigued with the consistency of his bowhunting success. The book is quaint and not at all designed to generate revenue for his company. 

The fact that the book cannot be found in wide circulation is testament to this. The book is sold through the company’s web site and because only a very limited number of copies are printed each year, prospective buyers must be placed on a waiting list until the next round of printing is completed. 

In his book, Dr. Mac lists the species of trees that produce hard mast and those that produce soft mast as well. He describes specific species of trees that produce mast and why they are preferred by whitetails over other types of food. 

His writings are to the point and leave little open to interpretation. Dr. Mac’s writings are the foundation of my deer hunting success as well as many of my colleagues that I collaborate with. 

Think to yourself for just a moment. How many different species of acorn producing oak trees can you readily identify? 

Hunters often talk about red oaks, white oaks and black oaks as though they are three different species. In the Southeast there are about four or five species of white oaks that occur there and even a couple of subspecies that are rarely ever mentioned in deer hunting’s mainstream. 

Many deer hunters can recognize the fruit of the persimmon tree when ripened fruit is on the ground. can you identify a persimmon tree in the absence of fruit? How about a crab apple tree or a honey locust tree? 

If you are like I once was, and can only identify a small number of individual species of mast-producing trees, then you must obtain a copy of Dr. Mac’s book. The book meticulously outlines several species of acorn producing oak trees, their degree of preference as a whitetail food source, and why they are preferred.

Once you have mastered your botanical taxonomy skills and can identify, at the very least, several species of white oaks and red oaks, then you will be way ahead of the average deer hunter in your region. 

The next step is to scout. Unfortunately, this does take time. There is no substitute, no alternative to locating preferred food sources. You must scout and you must do it as often as your life style or wife, or husband, will allow. 

The good news is, if you primarily hunt one specific area, the bulk of your scouting can be done in the first year or two. You must conduct your scouting missions with the aid of a hand held GPS. This is a must and I cannot stress this enough. If you are like me, you will not be able to remember specific preferred food source locations of any great numbers without recording their locations either on paper or in a sophisticated device like a GPS. The use of a GPS has increased my hunting success in recent years. 

The average hunter has only a small handful of hunting locations in memory from past years. Once you have recorded as many as three or four dozen preferred food source locations in your favorite hunting area, you will be that much closer to having consistent success. Obtaining a “bank” of many preferred food source locations may seem a bit daunting, but I assure you, it is quite achievable once and only once you have learned to identify naturally occurring preferred food sources; the larger the bank the better. 

Once your tree identifying skills are honed, you will simply stroll through your woods in the off-season and record the locations of preferred food source bearing trees. 

Certain mast producing trees do not produce every year. There are off years for certain species of trees, where at times complete failure in fruit production occurs. Case in point; here in North Florida and in parts of the Southeast, we have a tree commonly called the Southern Live Oak, also known as Quercus virginiana in botanical terms. 

This is the tree that graces the Mossy Oak Camouflage company’s logo. It can reach rather large and burly proportions. It is technically categorized as a red oak, but it behaves much like a white oak in that it often produces an annual crop. 

The acorn produced by this tree contains a low tannic acid content and is quite sweet to the taste, like its white oak cousins. When these trees produce, one merely needs to find a tree with good deer sign under it and hang a stand to be successful. 

These trees tend to grow in lowland heads or along wetland ridge-lines. Typically, you will not often find stands of these trees that consist of several acres unlike laurel oaks and water oaks. I have about twenty or thirty individuals or groups of trees located in my area and recorded in my GPS. That may seem like allot of GPS locations, but surprisingly I can scout all of them in almost one full day. Although I have some locations that are deep in the largest block of woods, most are in short walking distance from the truck. 

Deer will be where the preferred food is, especially early in the archery season when hunting pressure is low. I have a few trees that are so close to major dirt roads in my public management area where I hunt; all day long I can hear other hunters drive right by me and often the deer will feed and pay them no attention. Deer are so keyed in on the food source, the vehicular noise does not seem to bother them. 

Live oaks generally produce in late September and October when the archery season opens. About a week or two before the season, I will scout all of these trees and have a solid five or six of them identified that are producing well and possess an abundance of deer sign under them, in the form of droppings and cracked acorn hulls. 

Deer will skillfully crack this acorn, spit out the hulls and then swallow the nutritious meet. The ground around a tree or stand of trees that is being visited regularly by deer will exhibit droppings of various ages and a plethora of cracked and discarded acorn hulls. I’ll hunt these feeding locations with the best wind direction for my entry and stand location and success often comes knocking. 

In the 2002-2003 season, the live oaks in the management area I hunt, experienced a complete failure in their mast production. Because I maintain a simple graph for each preferred food source that occurs in this area, I can look back over past years and predict to within a week or two when specific species of mast-producing trees will drop their fruit. 

Last year when the live oaks failed to produce, I was forced to look at other preferred food sources that I had banked and recorded in my GPS. Fortunately, the white oaks, Quercus alba to be exact, started dropping acorns about four weeks earlier than they had in previous years. Because the management area that I hunt contains very few stands of this white oak species, coupled with the fact that the live oaks were not producing, these white oaks were a virtual gold mine for consistent success. 

Once you have familiarized yourself with the preferred food sources in your hunting local, you should record the specific weeks of each month when each food source produces. As I mentioned before, I maintain a simple bar graph for each preferred food source for each month of the season. 

The graph breaks each month down to weeks. By maintaining a simple graph from year to year, you will be able to accurately predict within a few weeks when each preferred food source comes in and goes out; when preferred food sources over lap and how often production failures occur. 

This wonderful obsession we call deer hunting will become more of a predictable science to you rather than one big guessing game. Keep notes of every year. I assure you, specific “honey hole” preferred food source locations will start to become apparent. 

These locations will yield almost consistent success year after year and you will likely want to guard their locations with your life. 

When you are engaged in your many scouting missions you will invariably encounter areas that a bulldozer couldn’t penetrate. These thickets are utilized by whitetails as bedding areas. 

Find a preferred food source that produces well in close proximity to these thick bedding areas and you are on to something. Whitetails will visit a preferred food source much more frequently when it is in close proximity to a bed area. 

Swamp Chestnut Oaks or Quercus michauxii, in botanical terms, is another white oak species that occurs here in North Florida. This tree is the southern variety of the Chestnut Oak or Quercus prinus, which occurs in the northeastern states. 

The swamp chestnut oak is also commonly named the “basket oak." Basket weavers prize the wood from these oaks. 

These trees produce an acorn the size of a golf ball and have the highest sugar content of any of the oak species in this region. Deer in the Southeast positively relish them. 

I occasionally hunt a small stand of swamp chestnut oaks in the middle of a thick bed area along a small creek bottom. On the perfect wind direction I enter my honey hole via the creek. I literally walk the ankle deep water in silence and leave no scent in the process. The tree that I hang my tree stand in is five feet from the creek bank. Five of the swamp chestnut oak trees are within twenty yards from my stand position. Because this white oak stand is literally in the middle of a major bedroom, the deer visit the food source all hours of the day, bucks included. 

Hunting natural preferred food source locations is perhaps the most consistent way to harvest whitetail deer, including big bucks, throughout the entire deer season. 

Sure, the two-week period of the rut may cause you to change tactics a bit, but remember this: bucks are where the does are during the rut and the does are going to always be on the preferred food sources, all season. 

To quote an excerpt from Dr. Mac’s book, “Deer do many things, but there are three things they must do each and every day. They must sleep, eat, and walk. Everything else is extra and is done only in 'spare time' so to speak. We care only passively where they sleep, so we can set our stands where they don’t smell us when they walk to food. But we care vitally where and what they eat. For it is here, in the restaurant, they are the most vulnerable to hunting. It is here, and only here, where you can achieve 110 percent success.”

As I said earlier, you will achieve whitetail hunting “maniac” status when you start to fertilize your preferred food source locations in the early spring each year. Broadcasting high nitrogen content fertilizer at the drip-line base of preferred food source trees, yearly in the early spring, will result in more mast production from the trees and it will yield a sweeter and more nutritious crop. 

This further intensifies the desire for deer to feed at these locations. I fertilize several preferred food source trees of each species, each spring. I do this so when each food source comes in and goes out, I have a fertilized food source to hunt over. 

Some deer hunters would say to me that this is too much effort. But, when I ask some of them how often they fill their corn feeders every year, or how much time it takes to maintain food plots, I get a different response. Some would also say, “isn’t that a little expensive”. My response to that question is, “Is it cheap to maintain food plots?” 

You can get inexpensive bags of fertilizer from you local home and garden store. Invariably, they will sell torn bags of fertilizer for next to nothing. I often get my fertilizer for free. How could fertilizer be free, you ask? Well, I obtain all the free fertilizer I need from my local landfill or garbage dump as some refer to it as. 

Many municipal and/or county landfills have a “Household Hazardous Waste Drop-Off” facility. This facility will receive hazardous household chemicals such as unused pesticides, bleach, paint, pool chemicals and that’s right, fertilizer. 

Often homeowners will purchase fertilizer and mistakenly leave the bags outdoors. Because it rains quite often here in Florida, the bags and their contents get a bit wet. Because the fertilizer is damp, it tends to clump and the homeowner’s lawn spreader gets clogged and performs poorly. Many an aggravated homeowner recalls the last time they put wet fertilizer in their lawn spreader and decide instead to dispose of it at the landfill’s hazardous waste drop-off facility, rather than disposing of it in the regular trash. After all, many people are environmentally conscious these days and the landfill does not charge residence for dropping off hazardous materials.

 Because the fertilizer is still a useable product even though it may be damp, the landfill will give it away on a first come first serve basis. Old Bill who runs the landfill in my area knows me by name. 

Good hunting.

ED NOTE: Dr. Ray McIntyre's book “110% Success Bowhunting Whitetails” can be ordered by calling him direct at (352) 357-0744.