Whitetails need minerals for antler growth, but putting out a lick may produce more than you expect!
Winter 2025
Article and photos by Susan Lindsley
As hunters we all want to see healthy deer, bucks with nicely balanced massive racks, and frisky fawns. Many of us put out feed, such as corn, to supplement their winter food or, since now allowed in Georgia, as a lure to bring in the deer to where we hunt.
But it’s not just the food supply that enhances antler growth and mass. Minerals are needed, and the deer crave them. In my yard they created their own mineral lick. One summer afternoon, when it rained, a puddle formed in a low spot, and the deer drank from the puddle although I had a pool only a few feet away.
I soon learned why they preferred the puddle: From youngsters to antler-wearing adults, deer urinated at the puddle site. Instinct? Smelling where another had urinated? Surely not logic, I thought.
I was tempted to add cattle minerals to the site, but hesitated. This is my yard, and I have the only pool I want: One contained in a prefabricated plastic. I don’t want what a neighbor’s deer created a few miles down the road.
Several years ago, this neighbor laid out a mineral block, mostly salt, on her wild land. Deer consumed the mineral block and what they didn’t devour, rain soaked into the ground. The deer keep on finding minerals and salt in the dirt and now my neighbor has her own pond, created from only one salt/mineral block.
The neighbor’s unintended pond.
Although deer need salt, their need for minerals is far greater. The cattle mineral block is mostly salt. For deer, the loose minerals, those in a sack, provide more for the deer.
Dr. Karl V. Miller and others in a study at the University of Georgia in 1985 reported they detected eleven different minerals in whitetail’s antlers. The two most prevalent were calcium at 19.01 percent and phosphorous at 10.13 percent. Next were magnesium at 1.09 percent and sodium at 0.50 percent. Other studies show that the deer deposit minerals in their skeleton and store them for later use in antler growth, or in the case of the does, for fetal development or milk production.
Mineral supplements for deer need to be high in calcium and phosphorous, and include magnesium and other minerals. Salt is also needed, and will serve to attract the deer to the mineral site.
Just remember, you are beginning to build a deer lick/watering hole. Be sure the landowner is aware of your plans and approves the site.
Susan Lindsley is a member of the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association and an award-winning author of several wildlife and deer books, including the two-part book set Whitetail Secrets: Family Life and Bachelor Life. She has also published other Georgia-based nonfiction, novels and poetry. Visit her website yesterplace.com and purchase her books on amazon.com. She splits her time between Decatur and Milledgeville.