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By late winter, when most of the low-hanging food is gone, some land managers cut trees so deer can reach the buds and twigs.

Downed trees provide food that deer are used to eating. Clearing the canopy helps sun reach ground plants, which deer eat later in the year.

The tip comes from an article written by Bob Wagner of the Susquehanna Chapter of the Quality Deer Management Association.

Offering new foods to deer, on the other hand, typically does more harm than good, as the Pennsylvania Game Commission points out in a pamphlet “Please Don’t Feed the Deer.”

Deer need two to four weeks to adjust to a new food. In that time, they develop gut bacteria that helps them digest and draw nutrients from the new food.

Gorging on an unfamiliar food that is high in carbohydrates, such as corn, can cause an acid imbalance that kills deer.

Deer also don’t need as much food in the winter. Their metabolism slows. They conserve calories by traveling less and staying in sheltered areas to retain body heat, and they burn fat stored before winter.

Chip Sorber, of the North Mountain Branch of QDMA, said the association’s research suggests that deer might eat 20 percent to 40 percent as much food now as they would in spring, summer and fall.

A deer might eat 1 or 2 pounds daily during the winter and 4 or 5 pounds a day the rest of the year.

Even though snow covered the ground and February temperatures stayed below freezing and sometimes below zero, Sorber said the deer look pretty healthy on 15 acres that he manages in Noxen on the edge of a state game land.

“I found only one dead deer. Usually, I see more,” said Sorber, who checks his land daily.

Winter fatalities are a natural way of thinning the herd to what the land can support. The stronger deer generally survive to pass along their traits.

This winter, however, Sorber noticed that deer kept paths open, despite deep snow. They excavated a snowy hillside to uncover acorns.

Although the temperatures thawed last week, March challenges deer. Much of the easy-to-reach food is picked over. The snow melts and refreezes, so deer have more difficulty digging for nutrients.

Sorber said when he cuts down trees in March, he sees deer eating from them the next day.

The QDMA suggests timbering trees in scattered areas that deer can reach on trails they normally walk.

Concentrations of any food, the game commission pamphlet says, forces deer to concentrate — to their detriment.

Herds become targets for predators. Mange and chronic wasting disease can spread within the herd.

If people put down feed, deer might deviate from their normal routes and burn more calories to reach the food than they gain from eating it, especially if they’re younger and lower in the pecking order and get shouldered out by more powerful deer.

Sorber plants natural food that nourishes deer in all seasons.

He sows 60 percent clover, which deer eat most of the year — even in the winter, when they dig beneath the snow. The rest of his crops are soybeans, which deer “eat right down to the dirt” in the late summer and fall, and turnips.

Deer eat the turnip tops in October and November, but dig up the turnip roots during the winter.

“That’s what we suggest for people who are trying to feed them year round,” he said.