RE: Deer food?
They look like young unripe juniper berries. Taste em, do they have the smell of gin?Get a leaf or needles from the tree and post a picture of it for positive Identification. If they are juniper berries then realize it may take more than a year for them to ripen andwould consider them a end of winter/starvation food source of last resort in their present state of green and immature.