Are Deer Strictly Vegetarians?


This past summer we have a soaker hose that has been left on a dribble most of the summer to water some of my wife’s plants up against the house and by the driveway…

Not only is the hose covered in moss but lately we have had tons of little bitty frogs the size of tree frogs… Tons of them in fact….

Well tonight at dinner I noticed that we had a mother deer and 2 fawns in the front yard by the house, and they were nibbling away on the grass and flowers of course….

However, when taking pictures thru the window of the house, I notice that first of all both of the fawns are going to be bucks… you could see the horns trying to grow….

The second thing I noticed was that they, including MOM were chasing something across the grass… a zoom in on the camera and I noticed that once they caught what they were chasing, and lifting their head to chew on it….That it was those tree frogs all over the grass and in those bushes!

I always thought deer were pretty vegetarians… but I gather I was wrong…
At least in the instance of these three!

Thru the reflection in the glass window I couldn’t get a good enough close up to document this on the digital camera…

But if we have any wildlife biologist in the crowd… is this normal?
Or is it the peculiar tastes of the Blacktail deer around here???
Or maybe just these three.. LoL….

cheers
seafire

Not too long ago, I saw some pictures posted of deer browsing on bird's nests with the eggs and chicks being consumed with the browse. The biologist, that was conducting a browsing study, first thought that this was accidental or incidental. He later observed and photographed the behavior on a number of occasions, and concluded that the deer were seeking out the occupied nests and occupants for food.

Think it was a quail or turkey nest depredation study in OK that documented the deer eating the eggs.I remember a study (from Penn State,I believe) that mentioned odd things in stomach content analysis.One was a rufous sided towhee (carrion?) and another had a shad.

For all practical purposes, deer are vegetarians. But as noted, on rare occasions they will avail themselves to take advantage of other food types. Years ago, when the Great Lakes were undergoing large alewife dies-offs (before the introduction of salmon), deer were documented eating the dead alewives washed up on the beaches of Lake Michigan.

I don't recall many deer blinds being built on the beaches, however

While this isn't deer related, many years ago when I lived in nevada, I noted many times that after a session of shooting Pocket Gophers, when returning the next day to shoot a few more, that other gophers were feeding off the carcasses of the ones my buddy and I had shot the day before. We actually got paid by several ranchers to thin out the hordes of these gopher that were raising holy hell with their alfalfa fields. They furnished the ammo of our choice and paid us real live money to boot. We called the gophers "grunts" and we got to the point where any grunt within 150 yards was dead meat and they were in serious peril at 175 yards, especially if there was no wind.
We decided that they were eating the dead ones, probably to gain extra protein in their diet. We've seen them do the same thing with roadkill as well. Makes me wonder if deer do that for the same reason?
Paul B.

Many "vegatarian" species will consume animal protein. Hippos at the famous Mara river crossing have been filmed chowing down on wildebeast carcasses. Several species of dwarf African antelope are acutally bird and egg hunters, although most herbivores are meat-eaters only as opportunists.

Only recently due to the Mad Cow disease scare has it been prohibited to spike cattle feed with . . . cattle (disgusting, no?)

No.

IV