Late season food source

[MUSKY18]

SO....the deer activity in my area has slowed down to a trickle of activity. As long as I had the food sources around my woods, the deer were around. After I sat last night I drove around the block to see how much food was left out in the ag fields of the neighboring farmers...and there wasn't much there. Almost every field has been combined and plowed/disced under already. Alfalfa fields are brown and deer are gone. SO my question is what do they eat now? Back to browsing on twigs and berry's in the woods? Grass knoll's?

[1eyeReD]

Don't know what kind of food is found in there, but I've had luck seeing deer in thick nasty swampy cover along marsh edges, river bottoms, creek bottoms etc this time of year up until close of the season. Mostly afternoons. If anyone can chime in what the heck they are browsing on this time of year that'd be awesome.

Another note: some of these areas will look like a group of wild pigs went through and dug up the ground. But no acorns in the area so wth?

[sticknstring]

I've noticed the same thing Musky. Tough time of year to fill a tag unless you have a good food source. Sea of black out there right now. If you don't have any food, cover is the next best thing. They'll browse on white cedar, willows, red-stemmed dogwood, among others. If I could convince them to eat buckthorn, I'd be in good shape. I've noticed that as long as there is no snow, they'll continue to come & go periodically, but once we get a few inches they head off to yard for the winter and it's game over.

[Musky Buck]

Now that things are froze up in my area it doubles or triples the bedding grounds, it's red willow, grass and cattails now, the snow eventually knocks the grass down hard and then they'll use the blowdown areas for shelter more. Have standing corn everywhere still so I know where they're eating and why I'm getting flooded with muzzleloader requests. Lots of nocturnal scavenging, few acorns, some grass, some clover a few twigs and then into a sea of standing corn. I'm glad we're not plowed black like last year, that definitely changes the game a lot as they search and follow each other looking for a solid food source and once found if unbothered they'll hang fairly close to that source but without snow now they can wander wherever they want, good luck out there, now is tcam time really without snow to find out what may be around yet.