DEC prohibits winter deer feeding
NEW YORK >> Officials with the Department of Conservation are reminding people not to feed deer during the winter or other times of the year because it is unnecessary and prohibited in New York and can have very negative consequences for deer, your neighbors, and surrounding wildlife habitat.
During the winter, deer primarily rely on woody and evergreen vegetation, collectively known as woody browse, for their daily nutritional and metabolic needs. The digestive enzymes in a deer’s stomach change in the winter to better digest this browse.
If deer are provided with unnatural food sources such as corn or hay after this change in diet has occurred it can result in deer becoming ill or even their death.
Deer will attempt to utilize the unnatural food source, but can develop acidosis, i.e., grain overload disease or enterotoxemia, i.e., Clostridium overgrowth, disease because they can’t digest the food properly. Both diseases occur acutely and can result in the rapid illness and death of deer in winter even though their stomachs are full.
Deer also congregate around food sources in winter which can increase the risk for disease transmission. For example, if a deer infected with chronic wasting disease visits an artificial deer feeding site it will shed CWD prions in its saliva directly on the food, which can infect any other deer that feed from the same site.
CWD is an untreatable disease of the brain and nervous system disease caused by a misfolded protein called a prion that kills deer species. CWD is contagious and has spread widely in North America in deer and elk over the last two decades.
Congregations of deer around artificial feeding sites can also increase the risk for deer-vehicle collisions and deer-related damage to landscape plantings, orchards, and tree farms. Inflated deer densities resulting from deer feeding can also exceed the carrying capacity of the surrounding habitat, resulting in wildlife habitat degradation.
Habitat improvement, especially the creation and promotion of early successional habitat, is the best way to ensure that deer and other species of wildlife have plenty to eat all year and avoids the negative consequences of deer feeding.
Anyone interested in improving wildlife habitat on their property can contact their regional DEC deer or wildlife habitat management biologist. For a list of tree and shrub species that deer prefer to eat in winter and that you can promote on your property, visit DEC’s winter deer foods webpage.
The following is a partial listing of tree and shrub species that are eaten by deer in the winter, arranged in order of quality and preference. This listing is based on thousands of observations in deer wintering areas over many years from all parts of New York State.
Preferred or Best Liked Cedar, white or arborvitae, sassafras, wintergreen, alternate-leaved dogwood, yew, mountain maple, witch hobble, basswood, apple, maples, flowering dogwood, and staghorn sumac.
Second Choice Elderberry, highbush cranberry, silky dogwood, nannyberry, wild raisin, red-berried elder, highbush blueberry, red osier dogwood, cucumber tree, arbutus, mountain ash, willow, honeysuckle, and hemlock.
Readily Eaten White ash, black birch, American chestnut, spicebush, black walnut, butternut, wild grape, sugar maple, yellow birch, black cherry, choke cherry, shadbush/winterberry, black ash, bush honeysuckle, oaks, hickory, witch hazel, elm, lowbush blueberry, hazelnut, and leatherwood.
Starvation or Poor Food Scotch pine, red pine, mountain laurel, paper birch, spruces, greystemmed dogwood, raspberry, blackberry, sheep laurel, buckthorn, pitch pine, beech, rhododendron, musclewood/blue beech, alder, red cedar, sweet fern, tamarack, hawthorn, white pine, aspen/poplar, gray birch, ironwood/ hop hornbeam, black locust, balsam, gooseberry, currant and pin cherry.