I was in the doctors office this morning and picked up a Discover Magazine, May's issue and found an intresting bit of information concerning Oak leaves.
"The Northern Hemisphere is home to about 450 species of oak. The Oak leaf's surface is covered with bunches of tiny hairs called trichomes, which concentrate light for photosynthesis and reduce water loss. Oak leaves also contain tannins, which can poison horses that have a taste for foliage."
My question is "If they can be poisonous to horses can they also be poisonous to deer?" I was under the assumption that deer forage on oak leaves as well as the acorns. This can be some useful information to me because I hunt deep woods whitetails that their primary food source is oak's in my area espically.
Poisonous Oak Leaves
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Re: Poisonous Oak Leaves
I have never seen deer eat oak leaves... They love maple leaves though.
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Re: Poisonous Oak Leaves
I knew they tore maple leaves up but I wasn't sure about oak, I guess with tannins present is the reason they do not.
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Re: Poisonous Oak Leaves
Here is a video I made of a small buck eating oak leaves. He was only eating the ones that fell on a branch. He ate quite a few. He wasn't starving either, it was early Dec. I guess these weren't the poisonous ones.
A buck will see you three times, and hear you twice, but he's only gonna smell you once.
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Re: Poisonous Oak Leaves
I know deer will eat dead oak leaves. If a branch falls while the leaves are alive they will stay on the limb. Once winter hits and they are brown the deer will flock to those limbs and eat all the leaves off.
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Re: Poisonous Oak Leaves
Its probably talking more so about red oaks, they have more tannin. Deer prefer white oaks as far as the acorns because they have less tannin. The tannin makes em taste worse. I think its poisonous to anything if enough of it is eaten because it's tannic acid. Maybe horses just have a lower tolerance for it? I read somewhere native americans used to soak the accorns in water to lesson the bitter taste, and they'd use the water (containing tannin) to die things.
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Re: Poisonous Oak Leaves
Pretty cool, appreciate all of your input...learned a thing or two today. Having a biology background, I'm going to have to put it to the test this fall and winter to see what I conclude.
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