The antlers of the deer and especially this male deer which are used for defense and signaling for reproduction are perhaps one of the most complex creations in the world of animals. It is said to have capable and very efficient speed, flexibility, and grace and can become active the moment it is interrupted. Moreover, it had acquired an extraordinary ability to digest various kinds of vegetation. Certainly, deer look noble no matter the species or color, but they are equally famous for wreaking havoc around the compound.
The deer is a threatening adversary for those who live right in the nearness of the forests. They will not only walk around and eat each plant that they find, they will dirty the floor or table and ruin your vegetables which you might prepare to eat. They may harm your health, aside from damaging your crops to the maximum extent possible. A good way to positively identify deer especially if you believe they are in your compound or in your yard is to look for their dung. Well, if deer scat does not resemble a raccoon’s one then how does it actually appear? And what can be found about deer just from the feces? More about deer poop than you ever thought you needed to know will be revealed in this article.
What Does Deer Scat Look Like?
Scalp, fecal conical and pellet shaped and resemble goat and rabbit droppings. As you can see deer pellets are four times larger than rabbits one but again it is sometimes hard to differentiate between the two.
Size
A deer pellet can be as small as 2 cm (.78 of an inch) and as large as 3 cm (1.2 of an inch) and they make big plops of turd which have more pellets per number two. The scat production by a deer is comparatively smaller to what you might imagine an animal of that sort will produce.
Color
The majority of deer droppings are small but with a dark brown color sometimes black in color. The last thing which contributes to the understanding of whether a deer is damaging your yard or not, is the color of the feces. If this scat is any color but rich dark brown or black, you can almost be sure, it is not from a deer.
How Does Deer Poop Aid Hunters?
Fortunately, hunters of deer will use poop analysis to know where to find this mammal. Hunters usually spend considerable amounts of time studying deer droppings, and droppings which are warm and moist are those of ruminants. Further one or two surveys are conducted to determine if the area is frequently used by deer or if they only transit through the area. That is they are able to quantify the number of deer around merely by counting the number of droppings left by the deer in a given area. In this case they just take multiple transects across a one square mile of land and count the number of pellets.
Another, which may be less obvious, is this: if you take a sample of dropping from another area and sprinkle it over your hunting grounds, the deer will undoubtedly come to sniff the feces of this new member of their group. You also can hunt in the daytime as well as at night in this period. Finally, and less desirably, there might be the idea. While setting up for hunting, some hunters dry the deer scat, crush it and rub the same on the treestand and hunting shoe. When hunting it will assist in camouflage of its body scent.
In hunting it is always advised that one should ensure his or her safety. You should therefore make sure to wear gloves whenever you are dealing with deer scat since you never know which animal has been infected.
What Do Deer Eat?
Deer Poop feed on twigs, leaves, grasses as well as vegetables.
The basic diet constituting these animals’ foods comprises leaves, grass, lichens, buds, fruits, and herbs among others. The deer family is a ruminant group of a mammal with a four-chambered stomach with the ability of holding Plant parts or fermentation of plants. In assisting with this task, different kinds of bacteria are used on each of the chambers. A meal will be ingested, chewed and swallowed then after reaching the first stomach the deer will be able to chew by ‘chewing the cud’ this means the plant matter must be chewed again as a result of being swallowed in hard form.
The rest of the stomach chambers then grind the meal for digestion purposes The remainder of the stomach chambers only churn the meal to facilitate digestion. However, they are more picky with their diet as compared to most other ruminant animals such as sheep and cow. They prefer healthy foods which can be easily metabolized in the body. This is due to the reason that antler growth is a process which consumes a lot of energy and nutrition.
