By R.J. Mackie, R.F. Batchelor, M.E. Majerus, J.P. Weigand, and V.P. Sundberg
Whitetail habitat on each side of the Continental Divide differs greatly in vegetative characteristics. On the west side of the Rockies, whitetails typically are found where closed-canopy forests are intermingled with forest openings that have abundant browse to provide winter forage. The low statured shrubs increase after a fire, which creates favorable deer habitat. Natural plant succession is toward a closed-canopy coniferous forest, with very few low-growing browse plants. Following the many large forest fires in the early 1900's, the natural succession away from widespread shrub communities toward closed canopy forests may be one of the primary factors for the decline in whitetail numbers west of the Continental Divide.
East of the Divide, whitetail deer are usually associated with deciduous vegetation growing on bottomlands along drainageways, often close to agriculture. Bottomland habitat generally consists of riparian vegetation that included ash, box-elder, cottonwood, willow and associated shrubs, forbs and grasses.
White-tailed Habitat Requirements
Foods
White-tailed deer occupy varied habitats;thus they eat a wide variety of forage foods - the leaves, needles, succulent stems, fruits and nuts - from shrubs, forbs, domestic crops and grasses. It is useful to classify the important deer foods into two categories, according to each food's ability to attract and sustain deer in good physical condition. Proper classification reflects seasonal palatability and nutritional content of plant parts eaten. Choice foods attract deer and maintain vigorous health and reproduction. Fair foods are somewhat deficient, but usually are sufficient to maintain life through critical periods of the year.
Choice browse species consumed by white-tailed deer west of the Continental Divide include serviceberry, chokecherry, snowberry, mountain maple, kinikinnick and Oregon grape. Juniper and bitterbrush are also considered choice foods when they are available.
East of the Divide, whitetails prefer chokecherry, serviceberry, skunkbrush sumac, snowberry, cottonwood and dogwood. Other browse species occurring in their diet include hawthorn, rose, green rabbitbrush, greasewood, buffaloberry and several species of sagebrush. During spring and summer, a variety of forbs are consumed by whitetails on both sides of the Continental Divide.
Wildlife biologists have long recognized the importance of the supply or quantity of food in deer management. Only in recent years has the importance of nutritional quality of forage plants been emphasized. Almost without exception, low deer populations can be traced directly to an insufficient quantity of high quality food items.
Habitat Management Suggestions
Maintaining healthy stocks of white-tailed deer is primarily a matter of keeping deer numbers in balance with their supply of winter food. Healthy deer populations grow very rapidly if the annual surplus of animals is not harvested. Overpopulation invariably leads to pressure on food supplies, which results in malnutrition. Starving deer can do immense damage to their winter range, depleting browse species and sometimes preventing regeneration of valuable forest trees. Moderately heavy hunting helps prevent these natural catastrophes by holding deer numbers in check, while, at the same time, providing thousands of person-hours of recreation and tons of valuable meat.
Humans can do little to modify the severe winters which deal so harshly with the white-tailed deer, but we can help provide and maintain the food and shelter that are so essential to the deer's survival.
Bottomlands used for livestock production, especially winter protection, are important to whitetails and should be maintained for deer whenever possible. Logging, which often favors deer by opening the forest canopy, can be made even more beneficial to deer if sufficient coniferous cover is allowed to remain to provide shelter from deep snow. In areas where brushy or woodland cover is scarce, suitable deer habitat can be saved from fire or land clearing.