They fed em around my place last winter, deer and elk both. Elk did fine but the deer just died next to the feeding sites , piled up by the dozens. I don't know what else to do, but what they did was a fail . I helped a mature doe that was stuck in a fence in December, she was so weak I doubt she survived. January was the death blow in my area.
I wonder if they just had big sagebrush groves out in the flats. Then when the deer are hungry, just cut down the sagebrush and take it up on the mountain for the deer to eat. There's got to be something we can do.