Overpopulation damages forest regeneration and agricultural crops and increases deer-vehicle collisions and disease. Overpopulation creates unhealthy deer herds because of inadequate food supplies and can reduce health and abundance of native plant communities. Plant communities, which provide staple deer browse foods like vines, forbs, woody plant leaves, and twigs, decline over time from overbrowsing. Deer herd health, including fawn production, body weight, and antler development, depends on good nutrition, age, and genetics. Nutritional requirements, including adequate protein and mineral levels, must be met through adequate habitat management.
Habitat management involves proper manipulation of commercial forestland and agricultural crops.
Depending on initial tree spacing and site quality, areas that are replanted to pine trees may provide good forage production for 3 to 7 years, and even longer for hardwood regeneration areas. Forage production eventually declines as the amount of sunlight reaching the forest floor declines. Later in the forest cycle, with proper fertilization, pruning, thinning, and other timber stand treatments, these areas can again provide excellent habitat. While native vegetation management has a much greater potential to increase total deer forage production than food plantings, plantings may be important seasonally to meet specific nutritional needs. Planting summer forages may be as important as planting cool-season forages, since antler growth, fawn production, and initial rearing take place then.