• Deer are considered browsers, eating a variety of plants.deer image by Charles Kaye from Fotolia.com
  
  Deer prefer different plants in different regions, partly based on the total plant selection available but also on what they have "learned" to eat. Deer will eat almost anything -- even-poisonous plants -- if they get hungry enough. Considered browsers, deer tear off and eat leaves, buds and twigs of trees and shrubs; if there is a need to feed deer, grow plants that would naturally be part of their diet. As the New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife explains, deer are ruminants, and rapid changes in feed can cause death, because the microorganisms that help them digest their food can't adapt quickly.
  
  

To Feed or Not to Feed

• First, decide whether you need to feed deer in your area. Given that deer seem to help themselves to people's landscapes whenever possible, it's easy to assume they are hungry. Yet as New Jersey wildlife officials point out, deer are adapted to winter feed limitations. In winter, they eat less, move less, insulated by heavier coats and extra fat. Feeding deer concentrates more animals in a smaller area, increases food competition and may actually increase deer losses. If you must feed, assure adequate summer and fall feed to help deer survive winter conditions.
  
  

Evergreens and Other Trees

• Most deer are quite partial to white cedars or arborvitae, evergreens native to the northeastern United States that have flat scale-like leaves. Both native trees and cultivated varieties -- some as small as 2 to 4 feet tall -- used in landscaping delight the deer. While white-tailed deer also prefer white pine, yellow birch, yews, dogwoods, basswood and both sugar and red maples, favored tree foods for mule deer include varieties of these trees and tender leaves and fruits of apple, chokecherry and crabapple. They also prefer hazelnuts, mountain ash trees, and both green and freshly fallen leaves of aspens, according to the Utah State University Extension. While in the forest, both species seek out mushrooms and lichens, according to the University of Montana.
  
  

Shrubs and Herbaceous Plants

• Other plants that people generally grow for their own pleasure are also among deer favorites. White-tailed deer like the tender growth of arrowwood and other viburnums and hydrangeas, shrubs that seem to rate high for delectability. Garden lilies, daylilies, hostas and impatiens are also frequently devoured. Choice foods for mule deer include new-growth leaves and twigs of shrubs, including bitterbrush, buckwheat, ceanothus, cotoneaster, elderberry, mountain mahogany, sagebrush, serviceberry and willow. Favorite forbs for mule deer, those also offering high nutritional value, include bluebells, burnet, clovers, dandelion, hawksbeard, mulesear, trefoil, yellowbell and wild lettuce and onion, according to Montana State University.
  
  

Grains, Hay and Corn

• Natural browse for mule deer, whose western habitat includes vast open rangeland and oak woodlands, includes grass and grain crops -- either before harvest or in fields "gleaned" by deer after harvest. Choice foods include barley, oats, rye and wheat grown as grains; timothy, oat and alfalfa hay; and cheatgrass, needlegrass, bluegrass and bromegrass. Hunters often grow corn and other grains to attract deer during the fall-winter hunting season, because mature, dried ears of corn left standing in the field really draw the deer, according to the Montana State University.