Perennial Deer Food Plots that are Drought Resistant?

What do deer like to eat that is perennial? And drought resistant?

We have four food plots that we plant then we don't get any rain.

Any suggestion for perennials that deer might like?  I know they love alfalfa though they may love it so much that I am not sure we could get it established.

To get any plant established you're going to need some kind of rain. Most perennials for food plots do best when planted in early spring or frost seeded in the winter. But if your climate is usually dry during this time of year then you may need to try planting during a wetter time of year. Alfalfa is definitely a drought tolerant option for food plots but like you said might be hard to establish if your deer population is too high. I prefer planting mixes over single species and that helps give the deer a buffet instead of eating the same thing over and over. Some drought tolerant perennials I would recommend are small burnet(extremely drought tolerant in my experience), red clover, kura clover, sainfoin, forage chicory, forage plantain, birdsfoot trefoil, crownvetch, cicer milkvetch, and blue flax.
Most of these are cool season and are adapted to dry summers and wet autumn through spring.  If you have long warm relatively wet summers though you could also try Illinois Bundleflower as it is a native warm season perennial.

A lot of people here plant chinese chestnuts for the deer.  They call them deer candy.  They bear pretty quickly, 3 or 4 years.  They are pretty cheap here too, if you get them from someone that sells deer and bear baiting products.  We just bouhgt some for $15 each.

Deer really love alfalfa. I have left a small amount only to find that the deer found the crumbs I left.

I have pondered this question for many years, so how in the world could a person ever get alfalfa established?



Small burnet or Salad burnet

Small burnet or salad burnet is a perennial vegetable in the Rosaceae family so deer would really love to munch on it:

https://permies.com/t/146433/perennial-vegetables/Perennial-Vegetables-Fall-Planting

Chestnuts would definitely be a good option if you have the right climate for them. And yeah I personally really like the burnet as it's done really well on my property and establishes very well with small amounts of rain.

What is the climate like in your area? Do you have a wetter warm season or cool season? Or what time of year is it the greenest in your area? I'm in Idaho and spring is very green then once it hits July and August everything turns brown. Most of the native vegetation is programed to green up once spring hits and after a wet winter and everything is usually in flower by June and goes to seed and dries out by midsummer. It can be really helpful to look at the growth pattern of the native vegetation in your area to determine what kind of food plot to plant.