Even my boys can answer that the space in which an animal lives is that animal’s habitat. But what exactly is habitat and what are the qualities in an area that an animal needs to thrive in an area? While the exact answer varies from animal to animal we primarily want to focus on four aspects of habitat:
Food
Water
Cover
Space
These each mean something different to each animal, but without one or more of these an animal must relocate or at least travel greater distances to find the missing element. When animals must do this they expend more energy (not good for survival of Wisconsin winters) and expose themselves to predators, hunters, and vehicles.
Knowledge of animal habitat can help you to find areas that provide all four of these elements for improved success in animal observation or hunting. If you are trying to attract animals to an area, a great start is to take inventory of which of these are available for animals in your area and seek out ways to provide the missing pieces.
Food
Deer are browsers rather than grazers, eating bites of plants as they travel. The preferred food of deer is young woody growth, for example, leaves, twigs, buds, shoots, and mast. What is mast, you ask? Mast is the fruit of forest trees and shrubs (e.g. nuts). These can be acorns or other tree nuts. Mast can also include berries such as raspberries, blueberries, winterberries. In agricultural areas, deer will feed on corn and grain directly from fields or left over from harvests. Deer will also eat forbs. Forbs are non-grass green plants. These are typically herbs and flowers which grow on the forest floor. With such a wide variety of food sources that deer will eat, it is to be recognized that a deer’s diet changes throughout the year depending upon food availability. Also, deer do not have top incisor teeth therefore deer browse can be identified by the pulling or tearing of the eaten stem rather than a clean cut from other animals such as rabbits.
Turkeys eat many of the same things as deer and therefore can be found in similar habitats. Turkeys will eat forbs and mast, but will also eat grasses. Turkeys are also omnivores, eating insects as well. are omnivores that eat grass and forbs, especially young, tender green vegetation, as well as fruit, nuts and insects. They will also eat grain from farm fields.
Grouse are omnivores as well and eat similar foods as turkeys.
Water
While animals are opportunistic feeders and if hungry can often find something that they will eat nearby (especially if the ground isn’t covered in snow), water is an essential need that the animal must travel to. The lack of water can force animals to travel from or to leave entirely an otherwise suitable area.
Deer obtain much of their needed water from the foods they consume. Deer will also drink free water, especially when available in the winter when their food is less succulent.
Turkeys on the other hand need to drink water almost daily. Therefore reliable open water sources such as creeks, springs, or ponds are a necessary component of a turkey habitat.
Grouse, being significantly smaller than deer or turkey, can meet most of their water needs from the water in the plants and insects that they consume. Grouse further obtain water from the dew/frost/moisture on their food. This allows grouse to sustain themselves in denser forest thickets away from open water sources.
Cover
Animals need shelter, whether it is to get out of the wind, feel safe from predators, or to hide and raise their young.
Deer seek dense thickets for sanctuary from predators and to stay warm through the elements. Cover helps to conceal deer while they eat, bed, or travel. Deer particularly prefer the edges where two or more types of vegetation, for example woods, clearing, fields, or marsh, meet. Deer will use the cover from one cover type to monitor the other area for predators. In this sense, deer prefer transition or young forested areas as opposed to singular stands of old growth forests.
Turkeys too like edge habitat because they use wooded areas for cover. Particularly, turkeys roost in trees at night to give them cover from predators. But turkeys also find most of their food in brushy open areas and nest on the ground, therefore turkeys need a diverse area of both forest and brush cover throughout the year.
Grouse are a heavily predated animal and therefore have adapted to take advantage of cover in both the summer and the winter. In the summer, the grouse’s brown and grey coloring and slow deliberate walk through the woods helps them to blend into dense forest thickets undetected by predators or hunters. In the winter their feathers and bristled feet/legs help them to burrow into deep snowbanks to hide from predators and to stay warm.
Space
As has been outlined above, animals must meet a variety of needs and often these needs are not met with a single location. Therefore, animals need an area or range in which they can safely travel to meet their needs. These needs also include reproduction and finding a mate. Some animals need hundreds of acres of range while other never leave a few acres.
Deer exhibit a large variety in range sizes. A typical deer has a range between 60 and 1600 acres, with the average range being about 1 square mile or 640 acres. A deer’s age and sex determine range with younger males having the largest ranges, searching for mates. The habitat itself including the food, water, cover, and the terrain will also affect the range of a deer. While a deer’s range can be large, such a range can support many deer. For example in Wisconsin in 2018, county-level deer densities ranged from 80 deer per square mile in Adams County to 4 deer per square mile in Milwaukee County.
Turkeys are more communal than deer, typically living within a dispersed flock that includes hens, jakes, and toms. A flock may consist of twenty or more birds, with each bird requiring about 30 acres of range. Therefore, the range of a flock is typically about a square mile. As noted above, the diversity of required areas from forested areas with mature hardwood trees for roosting to open areas for feeding and mating, and brushy areas for nesting and raising young require an expansive range for the flock.
Grouse are a relatively solitary species and have a much smaller range, requiring only a couple of acres of habitat. Males are territorial, and a suitable “drumming log” (although a stump, rock, or branch about 18 inches above the ground may also be used) is needed to perform their springtime mating ritual of drumming their wings. This drumming both attracts a mate and lets other males know that a territory has been claimed. Drumming counts are actually the primary way that grouse populations are estimated.
Hopefully, some basic knowledge of animal habitats and needs will lead to more successful observations of wildlife in your area.
More information on this and other related topics are available in numerous places, including the following:
My Wisconsin Woods
Wisconsin DNR Deer Management Assistance Program
Wisconsin Young Forest Partnership