They
solved a big mystery near Grapeland,
in Houston County, a few weeks ago.
Yep, the lingering mystery of the purple
deer droppings has been unraveled, according to Grapeland Messenger writer Wayne
Fears.
It all began when a hunter we’ll call Jim went to his favorite
oak tree during the first day of bow-hunting deer
season.
As Jim scanned the woods with his binoculars, he saw on the forest
floor something he had never seen before.
Climbing out of his deer stand,
Jim started studying the ground. As the sun rose, he saw purple deer droppings
glistening in the daylight.
Naturally, he was puzzled. All of the deer
droppings he had seen in a lifetime of hunting were, for a lack of a better description,
a different hue.
So Jim kept walking and exploring the purple deer droppings,
hoping to find the deer’s
food source, which might explain the purple droppings.
As he approached
a forest clearing, where all of the trees had been cut, Jim found the answer.
The clearing was covered in staghorn sumac and poke weed. Or, as it’s
known in the South, poke
sallet.
Both plants produce reddish and purple berries.
When
Jim saw the plants, he realized that, because the acorn crop had failed, the deer
had switched to a diet of sumac and poke weed, two highly nutritious and palatable
deer foods that
are among the first plants to regenerate on the ground after a clear cut or forest
burn.
After solving the mystery of the purple deer droppings, Jim walked
back down the deer
trail and found a spot about 20 yards away from the edge of the clear cut area.
He
hung up his deer
stand and, later in the day, he took a fat, white-tailed buck with eight points,
probably filled with the plants that resulted in the mystery of the purple deer
droppings.
Bob
Bowman's East Texas
September 5, 2010Column.
A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers |
