Deer Are King, But Deer Habitat is Great for Another Monarch

October 21, 2024 By: Kip Adams

As hunters who manage wildlife habitat, one of the biggest satisfactions we get is seeing deer and other animals using it. Well, one species that uses it and can really use our help is the monarch butterfly.

Everybody knows the monarch butterfly because of its striking orange and black color and the conspicuous white spots on its wings. During the warmer months, monarchs can be seen flying across fields and flitting around bright flower blooms. The adults feed on nectar from numerous different kinds of flowers, and the caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweed. 

As deer hunters we often create and manage early successional vegetation (ESV) because it provides a lot of things deer need. Whether you refer to this component as old fields, grasslands, ESV or something else, I’m referring to open areas dominated by annual and perennial herbaceous forages. These are the successional stages that occur prior to those dominated by woody (tree) species. Deer managers love ESV because it’s easy to create, costs only a fraction of what food plots do, provides tremendous cover, encourages daytime deer movement, and can provide 1,000 to 4,000 pounds of high-quality food per acre. That same acre can provide critical cover for fawns, giving them a place to hide and avoid predators. Adult deer also like to bed and hide in this cover. 

Quality Deer Habitat is Monarch Habitat

Those are incredible benefits for deer, and ESV is also incredibly important to insects. None are more closely linked than the brilliantly colored monarch butterflies. School kids throughout the United States have captured their caterpillars and watched them transform via a chrysalis into our most easily recognizable butterfly. As caterpillars, monarchs feed exclusively on milkweed leaves, and where do milkweeds grow? You guessed it – in old fields and grasslands containing ESV. 

Monarch caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweed species, like this butterfly milkweed plant. Photo: Scott Lamont, US Fish & Wildlife Service

Well, that same acre of ESV that’s valuable to deer can support close to 200 monarch butterflies. Yes, one acre can support nearly 200 monarch butterflies! The adult monarchs will visit the flowers to get nectar, and if there’s milkweed in the mix, the adults will lay eggs on the milkweed, and when the eggs hatch the monarch caterpillars will feed on the milkweed leaves. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 1.5 billion milkweed stems need to be restored to sustain the eastern North American migratory population of monarch butterflies.

Monarchs Need Deer Hunters

Now earlier I said that monarch butterflies really need help from deer hunters. Here’s why. The monarch butterflies in the eastern U.S. all overwinter in a very small area in central Mexico. That means these butterflies fly about 3,000 miles to get from where they summer in the U.S. and Canada to their wintering grounds, and along that route they need all the patches of ESV they can find. 

A monarch butterfly feeds on nectar from a swamp milkweed growing in Michigan. Photo: Jim Hudgins, US Fish & Wildlife Service.

Since 1996 the population of monarchs in the Eastern U.S. has declined by about 90%, and one of the biggest reasons is habitat loss. These butterflies need this early successional vegetation, with all the flowering plants, including milkweed, that occur in that plant community. So, when we create this kind of habitat for deer, we are also helping butterflies and many other species.

Throughout their range, deer use a variety of vegetative communities, and fortunately for deer and the other wildlife species using those areas, deer hunters and managers do more to enhance that habitat than any other species interest group. As hunters, we take pride in passing on our hunting traditions and our wildlife heritage to future generations. By creating and managing ESV we can help ensure that future generations enjoy both healthy deer and healthy populations of monarch butterflies. If you want to learn more about doing good things for monarchs while you’re managing habitat for deer, visit the Monarch Joint Venture website or contact your state wildlife agency. 

About Kip Adams:

Kip Adams of Knoxville, Pennsylvania, is a certified wildlife biologist and NDA's Chief Conservation Officer. He has a bachelor's degree in wildlife and fisheries science from Penn State University and a master's in wildlife from the University of New Hampshire. He's also a certified taxidermist. Before joining NDA, Kip was the deer and bear biologist for the New Hampshire Fish & Game Department. Kip and his wife Amy have a daughter, Katie, and a son, Bo.