Keeping Deer Comfortable: How Heat Affects Herd Behavior

Deer patterns shift depending on the time of year. During rut season, they’re seeking out mates and covering a lot of ground during all hours of the day. During the winter, they move around in light snow but bed down during thick snowfall. In the summer, they find areas of shade under heavy tree or bush coverage to get relief from the blazing sun. Learn more about how you can keep the deer herd comfortable and how the heat affects their behavior.

Make Sure You Have Lots of Cover

The deer herd will seek out heavy foliage and shaded areas to get out of the summer sun. Make sure your property has enough coverage to encourage them to make bedding areas. You want to give them enough coverage that they’re protected from the sun, but you also don’t want to cut down so many branches that you inadvertently box them in without leaving them an exit route. They still need to be able to come and go through a clear path.

You can create these areas of cover strategically to align with your shooting lanes. Identify some already clear travel routes around your property, ideally between your Feedbank Gravity Feeder and/or Wild Water Systems. Set up your Stump blind along this path to catch the deer as they travel to the food and water sources. Once you’ve determined where you’ll place your blind, you can clear your shooting lanes in the surrounding area. Our Stump blinds have windows that go all the way around the blind, so you can clear a path in every direction. The open shooting lanes will set you up for clear shots in the fall and the foliage and branches left on the ground give the deer herd plenty of shade in the meantime.

They’ll Find Water

Naturally, the deer herd will seek out water sources during these hot summer months. Make sure your Wild Water Systems are filled up to allow multiple deer to drink from the 3-inch troughs at the same time. You can add our Wild Water Mineral Supplements to the water now to give the deer the proper nutrition they need while creating a dependence on your property. Our supplements are packed with a long list of vitamins and minerals the deer need.

Shift Toward the Night

To avoid the summer sun, deer might shift their habits to be more active at night after the sun has gone down and early in the morning before it fully rises. Point a trail camera at any water sources on your property. They might also visit your feeders after the sun goes down as opposed to high noon since the process of digesting food raises the internal body temperature and that’s not pleasant when the day is already hot. Check the trail cameras for any activity and see if you can spot a nighttime trend. Since it’s not active hunting season, you have a bit more freedom to check your trail cameras frequently since there’s plenty of time for the pressure of your presence to wear off. You should still use as scent masking agent, if possible, but the hunting pressure shouldn’t last.

Our Products Can Help

Use our products to offer the deer a consistent water source and manage your wooded areas to provide areas of shade and cover. Those helpful acts will keep the deer comfortable during the summer and help the herd beat the summer heat.

How do you keep the deer herd comfortable in the hot summer months? Let us know in the comments below!