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Forbs offer high quality nutrition in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) diets when they are available, but their abundance is highly influenced by environmental resource pulses in semiarid environments. We hypothesized that variation in precipitation and temperature has a greater effect on presence or absence of 2 palatable perennial forb species than deer population density. The study was conducted on two ranches in southwest Texas. Our study sties on each ranch included 6 81-hectare enclosures with target deer populations of 0, 20, 40 or 60 and 1 feeder/water, one enclosure with 60 deer and 3 feeders/waters, and one enclosure with 80 deer and 4 feeders/waters. We permanently marked 20 individuals of low menodora (Menodora heterophylla) and blackfoot daisy (Melampodium cinereum) in each enclosure. During 2014-2015, we recorded presence or absence of marked plants and recorded whether they appeared senesced or browsed. We then compared the effects of monthly average precipitation, temperature, deer density, and deer:feeder ratios on the average percent of low menodora and blackfoot daisy that were present, senesced, and browsed. Preliminary results show that the presence of low mendora was unrelated to deer density, but presence varied over time (P < 0.001). In contrast, fewer blackfoot daisy individuals were present at higher deer densities (P = 0.031), and presence also varied substantially with time (P < 0.001). Managers making decisions about effects of deer density on habitat should take into account that forb abundance may reflect effects of variation in environmental factors more strongly than deer population density.