Too many acorns!

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Bayou Buck

Bayou Buck

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 11, 2009
Messages
2,745
City & State/Province
Franklin, TN
Am I the only person who has too many acorns this year? This past week it looks like the remainder of the red oaks dropped and the roads and woods are covered with acorns.

On a different note, this was my first year planting rape and turnips and the deer are utilizing both even with the large acorn crop. I will try to get some pictures this weekend and post them.
 
the big white oaks in the yard of the old house had no acorns. i have found very few acorns anywhere. even the chestnut oaks in morgan co have/had no acorns this year
 
On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is no acorns at all and 10 is the bumper acorn crop from Hades, I would put our acorn crop at a 6. A big crop of red oak acorns (one of the best I've ever seen), but few white oak acorns.
 
BSK said:
On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is no acorns at all and 10 is the bumper acorn crop from Hades, I would put our acorn crop at a 6. A big crop of red oak acorns (one of the best I've ever seen), but few white oak acorns.
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i would put ours at a 2 at best. what few acorns i have found were reds but the squirrels ate most of them while they were still on the trees.
 
BSK said:
On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is no acorns at all and 10 is the bumper acorn crop from Hades,
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I'd put Ames at 8.5-9. The only reason I would not call it a 10 is because I have checked some trees (reds & whites) that are not dropping, but those are few and far between. The ones that are dropping are littering the ground to the point you can roller blade all the way to your stand on acorns. Ha! :D
 
BSK said:
On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is no acorns at all and 10 is the bumper acorn crop from Hades, I would put our acorn crop at a 6. A big crop of red oak acorns (one of the best I've ever seen), but few white oak acorns.
Click to expand...
Ditto this for most of the entire area around me here in East TN. Everywhere I have been is loaded with Reds but thats it, period! Only Whites I have found anywhere have been within yards of a lake or water source! Deer have hammered the Reds however, eating them without hesitation.
 
I have the most in my area at home that we have had since Ive owned that place. I also have way way less mature bucks on my place than normal so Im wondering if this has caused that. I usually am around 10 at this time of year and am now sitting at 1. Makes it discouraging to hunt.
 
Winchester said:
BSK said:
On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is no acorns at all and 10 is the bumper acorn crop from Hades, I would put our acorn crop at a 6. A big crop of red oak acorns (one of the best I've ever seen), but few white oak acorns.
Click to expand...
Ditto this for most of the entire area around me here in East TN. Everywhere I have been is loaded with Reds but thats it, period! Only Whites I have found anywhere have been within yards of a lake or water source! Deer have hammered the Reds however, eating them without hesitation.
Click to expand...

Ours in N. KY would be a 5-6 too almost exclusively with reds.

However unlike Winchester's observation, in N. KY the deer stayed on fields much longer than usual and didn't transfer to the reds until just recently (still hitting fields some). In Butler Co, heavy feed sign a month before I found it up around Lousiville and I spent the time scouting.
 
Football Hunter said:
Mine is about a 3 Id say,3 years ago was a 10,saw more mature bucks than ever,Related?Dont know.
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In fact, that's exactly why we started our habitat management plan. Being almost all ridge-and-hollow hardwoods, but with huge productive bottomlands nearby, we would experience "boom and bust" deer seasons directly linked to the acorn crop. Lots of acorns and deer would flock up out of the bottomlands to access the acorns in the hills, and we would experience a short-term surge in deer/buck population and have great hunting. But in an acorn bust year, no deer came up out of the bottomlands and even our low resident population seemed to abandon the hardwoods, producing terrible hunting.

So we designed our habitat management plan to produce far more natural food sources besides acorns (for the acorn bust years). And it worked too. We no longer experience dramatic boom and bust hunting seasons. We still draw the most deer in acorn boom year, but we can also draw some deer in an acorn bust year (as well as maintain a larger resident population).
 
BSK said:
Football Hunter said:
Mine is about a 3 Id say,3 years ago was a 10,saw more mature bucks than ever,Related?Dont know.
Click to expand...

In fact, that's exactly why we started our habitat management plan. Being almost all ridge-and-hollow hardwoods, but with huge productive bottomlands nearby, we would experience "boom and bust" deer seasons directly linked to the acorn crop. Lots of acorns and deer would flock up out of the bottomlands to access the acorns in the hills, and we would experience a short-term surge in deer/buck population and have great hunting. But in an acorn bust year, no deer came up out of the bottomlands and even our low resident population seemed to abandon the hardwoods, producing terrible hunting.

So we designed our habitat management plan to produce far more natural food sources besides acorns (for the acorn bust years). And it worked too. We no longer experience dramatic boom and bust hunting seasons. We still draw the most deer in acorn boom year, but we can also draw some deer in an acorn bust year (as well as maintain a larger resident population).
Click to expand...
I dont think food is my problem,have about 6 acres of highly productive food plots,very little else around me as far as that goes.I see the same,or more amount of deer on my place.Will be very interested to see what things look like tomorrw PM.Looks like Im gonna get a mid week PM/AM hunt in.

Im thinking the logging I had done will help hold more mature bucks,and create more browse to eat.Food they dont have to walk out in a field to eat.

Put the cam on a double scrape,cant wait to see whats on that.
 
Football Hunter said:
BSK said:
Football Hunter said:
Mine is about a 3 Id say,3 years ago was a 10,saw more mature bucks than ever,Related?Dont know.
Click to expand...

In fact, that's exactly why we started our habitat management plan. Being almost all ridge-and-hollow hardwoods, but with huge productive bottomlands nearby, we would experience "boom and bust" deer seasons directly linked to the acorn crop. Lots of acorns and deer would flock up out of the bottomlands to access the acorns in the hills, and we would experience a short-term surge in deer/buck population and have great hunting. But in an acorn bust year, no deer came up out of the bottomlands and even our low resident population seemed to abandon the hardwoods, producing terrible hunting.

So we designed our habitat management plan to produce far more natural food sources besides acorns (for the acorn bust years). And it worked too. We no longer experience dramatic boom and bust hunting seasons. We still draw the most deer in acorn boom year, but we can also draw some deer in an acorn bust year (as well as maintain a larger resident population).
Click to expand...
I dont think food is my problem,have about 6 acres of highly productive food plots,very little else around me as far as that goes.I see the same,or more amount of deer on my place.Will be very interested to see what things look like tomorrw PM.Looks like Im gonna get a mid week PM/AM hunt in.

Im thinking the logging I had done will help hold more mature bucks,and create more browse to eat.Food they dont have to walk out in a field to eat.

Put the cam on a double scrape,cant wait to see whats on that.
Click to expand...

I agree about the timbering. Our habitat plan had little to do with food plots and everything to do with creating lots of early stage successional regrowth by removing timber.

We didn't realize how important the later-stage regrowth cover would end up being until years afterwards. Now I cut timber to create cover, and I consider the natural food production just a bonus.
 
muddyboots said:
Ours is a ten but sunday i noticed some starting to rot.
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White oak acorns will go to root by late November, while the reds will stay good until spring. Whites are definitely the fat-building "candy" of fall, but the reds carry the deer through the winter.
 
I would give ours a 8, but suprised at how hard the deer continue to hit the green fields. Not complaining.

smstone22 said:
I have the most in my area at home that we have had since Ive owned that place. I also have way way less mature bucks on my place than normal so Im wondering if this has caused that. I usually am around 10 at this time of year and am now sitting at 1. Makes it discouraging to hunt.
Click to expand...

I am seeing the same thing with my trail cameras and sightings. I am seeing huge doe numbers, so I am hoping that will draw the mature bucks in. I am also hopeful that my January logging project has created enough cover to draw some bucks in. I need to post some pics, really happy with the cover that has been created.
 
All our acorns are wiped out for the most part on our lease but 5 miles away in Eagle Creek they are everywhere!!!! Un believable!!
 
In Greene co. I'd give my place a 8 on red's and a 0 on white's. Killed a good 8pt. in my foodplot though at 3 oclock in the eve. What else do you do BSK besides logging? Do you plant anything after or let mother nature take over? Mostly I let mother nature take over and it has made a tremendous difference.
 
In my places close to home we had a terrible yield this year. In my Bledsoe county spot I couldn't walk for them. Every kind, everywhere. I almost wish the two were blended. I had too many to pinpoint a good spot in Bledsoe and not enough to know what to do besides depend on browse at home.
 

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