Are the deer just switching their diets to winter browse, we are approaching the rut, so are they changing their travel patterns based on that? I have noticed the limited visits even by the does has gone 80% nocturnal. What do you all think? Any advise strategy?
Deer are absolute experts at finding the highest-value food source they possibly can at a give time. I’d like to ask they how they do it.
Until I can talk to the deer to confirm this, I’d speculate that you’re seeing deer “go nocturnal” because you’re catching them on the move to and from a different source of food. Almost always this is because the deer have found standing corn or soybeans somewhere and now they are on the move every night to get to them. This is not at all uncommon but keep the faith. If you’ve got brassicas, they’ll most likely be back.
I have noticed that despite the snow and cooler temps this fall, the brassicas have been very slow to sweeten. I have 2.5 acres of brassicas and I’m astonished that the deer as of last week were still in the “try one a day” phase where they were testing sweetness. I plant our Brassicas Bender blend, and the forage radish were (according to the deer) just barely edible last week. The deer were just starting to pull and eat the samllest ones they could find. The turnips and beets were getting the metaphorical thumbs down for now and that’s the way it usually is, the radish always seem to sweeten first.
Grouse
