Feed year round or just during the growing months? If not year round what do you switch to and when? What about when other feed is available? For example we have 40 acres that are planted in corn every summer. We also have a heavy acorn crop every year to boot. Not a heavy deer population, but definitely healthy. Thinking maybe protein may give an extra little boost??

We feed protien from the last day of deer season till the mid part of Sept. It works for us and cuts down a little on the cost.

We feed year 'round.

I see it not only as a source of reliable nutrition but also a safe feeding area, very few of my mature bucks will consistently go to corn feeders...most all of them go to my protein feeders, and that's exactly where I would want them during deer season and not on my neighbors!

Best bet, if you can afford it, is feed year around. If you have to cut it off, September, or even late August would be the time. January through March it helps, but our winters aren't normally like the ones up north where you have to worry about bucks not recovering from the rut. If you can find something like a 16% maintenance ration, which is a little cheaper, that's the time to use it.

Once they start the new antlers I'd switch to at least a 17% or possibly even a 20% pellet, preferably with vitamins and minerals added. Actuall, that will depend more on your local range conditions and rainfall than anything else.

When you cut through all the hype and sales pitches, it will boil down to the vitamins and minerals more than the percentage of protein in a given pellet.

Throwing in a deer block won't hurt anything. Salt blocks don't really add a lot for deer in my opinion.