Winter feeding program

Does anyone implement a winter feeding program once the season has ended? Wondering your thoughts, and results from this? Im talking about supplemental feeding separate from the heard cleaning up whatever is left of your food plots?

Any success or gains in this area?

Thanks

I was thinking about doing this a few years back, but after some research decided not to. Other than the expense, which will be high if done properly and consistently, I found a lot of negative reports on this saying that if you draw deer into a certain area(where the feeder is) it will cause the area to be over browsed and will take years to recover. Concentrated deer will not always feed on the supplemental feed, but will constantly browse the area also. I don’t know how true that is, but it was enough to make me change my mind.

Placing a couple round bails near/and or in a bedding area can have some positive attributes. In heavy snow/ice, they can eat from it. I see where the deer pull it out as bedding. Plus, if its positioned so it can get early morning sun, it warms up faster.

We’ve had a few get loose from us and roll down the hill into the woods. To hard to recover, so we left them. Never noticed “additional” deer coming in on them. seems to be more the residents are using it.

We thought about doing it during those harsh winters of 2-3 years ago, but for many of the reasons Sticker mentions, nixed it.

Also, a big part of our decision was just the sheer logistics of doing it because if you’re going to do more good than harm, you have to start feeding and then keep feeding. Our property is not easy to access in the winter as we don’t plow the long driveway in and even if we did, keeping it open would be a struggle right off the bat.

So add to that the need to have the food put out in regular intervals, then the question of who hauls the food, how/where to store it, who fills the feeders, etc, etc. It’s one thing if you live on the property, but if you’re trying to do all this by remote control, it’s just too complicated.

Now with all this said, after seeing the poor, scraggly-assed, skin-and-bones, deer that emerged from those bad winters, I will say that I’m open to reconsidering this at any point if things get bad enough. I’ve seen what happened when the DNR, the wolves, and bad winters combined to drive our deer herd off a cliff and I’m not eager to go backward any more. The DNR’s “research” on the effectiveness of supplemental feeding doesn’t mean squat because the focus on the macro/big picture, I’m only looking to improve the micro ie the survival of the deer on/around my property.

Grouse

We have 55 acres at our farm that is rented out and is in alfalfa right now. I may ask the farmer if I can buy 3-4 round bails this fall from his last cutting. Cover them with a tarp, then a couple times this winter go up and roll out a bail and see what happens. If I place a bail in a different spot each time I might be able to keep the browse pressure spread out enough.

Grouse,
I will be living there… so when its the dead of winter.. its nothing for me to go out and give the resident deer some rations (give me something to do)… just add it to my chore list.. scoop snow, feed the barn cats, feed the deer..

Sticker,
when you researched possibility of “over browse” .. what kind of information did you get? What resources are getting depleted?

Since this area is a known “wintering ground”.. I am curious is that situation would apply to me? Most likely would concentrate things a little bit more than naturally I suppose. I guess they could eat me out of house and home!
But I disagree on one thing… any extra boost food wise in FEB and MAR would do some good regardless of how regular it is available. Some is better than none.

They were talking about trees being browsed up to a level where the deer could no longer reach them. This takes either cutting those trees down and letting new ones grow or planting new trees. Again this is what I found in research not something I have experienced.

The feeding will give them a boost, but unless you do it consistently they will begin to rely on it and then if for some reason you are out of town, or run out of feed money and can no longer feed they wont have the food they have come to rely on. Living on the property gives you a huge advantage for this as you can always monitor the food supply. For those of us that have to travel 3-4 hours to feed are in a much tougher situation when it comes to feeding. If for some reason we can’t get there for a week or two the deer will struggle.