Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Small Game How's your acron crop this year?

The hickories, walnuts and pecans are all producing and dropping. But scarcely an acorn to be seen. I've seen a few red oak acorns and a single white oak acorn. Last season we had a bumper crop by this time and everything in the woods ate well. This year, I'm not seeing them on the ground or up in the trees.

I've heard they are raining down in northern Va. But here in Virginia east of Richmond, they are conspiucuoulsy missing. It happens from time to time.

How is it where you are?

Central MO. here. There's a few Walnuts, the squirrels started working hickories around the middle of July (about a month early). My side yard is covered with pin oak acorns but the squirrels are not eating them and walking through them sounds like stepping on potato chips... I don't think that there's anything in them.
Pig nut hickories are dropping a lot of nuts and they are working them which they normally wait until January or so.
On the other hand the persimmon trees are loaded. As far as white and red oak acorns I have not looked.

Very spotty in the Ozarks. One ridge won't have any white oak acorns and just a few red oaks and go a half mile away and white oak acorns as big as your thumb are all over the place.

I went for my walk at lunch. Last year the streets under the white oaks were covered with crushed acorns. I didn't see a single one today. The reds and pin oaks have dropped just a few.

This last spring I noticed the lack of catkins (those wicker things oaks shed). Most years they are thick. This last spring there were next to none. This is likely the reason for the lack of acorns. No catkins, no acorns. I just don't know what causes the lack of catkins. And it rained a lot last spring so maybe that kept the oaks from being pollinated well.

Zero white oaks everything else is plentiful

Nothing considerable on our white oaks.

Went squirrel hunting yesterday and all 3 I saw, were all walking on the ground.

This in extreme SE KY near the Ky/Tn/Va line.

We've had a good spring and summer, though more dry than usual.

Loaded on my property along with the walnuts and hickories. Not seeing large amounts of squirrels but the food is here if they happen to show up.

Maybe a late frost? Frost often occurs very spottily (yup, that’s a real word) depending on wind, sun exposure etc. We’re actually under a frost warning tonight up here even though the temp is supposed to be over 40. I suspect too that sometimes trees just take a year off from fruit or nut production for reasons unknown. My fruit trees certainly do sometimes.

As I noted on another thread on the subject, yesterday I was on the local WMA, and the new, very extensive food plots showed no use I could detect, but one lone Burr Oak’s crop had been almost totally scarfed up, and it’s located right on the edge of one of the plots. They must be really zeroed in on the “aykerns”.

in my area in Minnesota lots of white oak acorns

Not many Oak trees in my section of woods but lots of Hickory trees dropping nuts like crazy. I have two Black Walnut trees dropping their ankle wrenching nuts as well...

almost none in Hardy county WV

I just saw this article on the acorn situation in Virginia on our DWR website:

https://dwr.virginia.gov/blog/2023-acorn-production-report-wildlife-will-be-on-the-move-in-the-fall/

lots of walnuts here this year. use you in the walnut trees are full so are they acres and they are..

The White Oaks have been Dropping like crazy with a large Mast! The Deer and the Squirrels are loving it!

HS 58

Lots of whites and reds dropping like crazy .

Two big Pin Oaks in the yard here in NEPA, they’re loaded. At least 4 Gray’s working them from sunrise to sunset

In SC all of ours have dropped and are gone. Probably due to the drought we have had for the last 5 months.

My yard is like walking on ball bearings....

On 1.5 acres, I have like 85 trees that drop acorns,

time and weather took out a large branch on one. When I cut that up, the acorns hung from all over the place
like grapes on the vine.

My yard has been full of deer and elk, out here going to town on them.

When it rains real hard, elk hoofs can put hundreds of divots in the ground, about the size of a coffee cup.
time that by 4 feet per elk and then figure I have 25 to 50 elk in the yard at one time.

I wish these trees weren't oak trees, but my wife just had to have this house because she fell in love with, and a big selling feature for her, was it looked so "homey" with all of these damn oak trees...

Still hardly any white oak acorns in my neighborhood. Only one here and there. But nothing like last year. Last year, where the oaks overhang the roads, the roads were obscured in some places by acorns crushed by cars rolling over them. I was mowing down little white oak seedlings all sring and much of the summer from the crop last year. I guess this coming spring and summer I'll be seedling-free. And I haven't seen one on any of the WMAs or the state forest I hunt. I've seen a few red oak acorns, and tons of hickory nuts. But the white oaks - nothing. I guess it just one of those years.

The acorns were thin in my area of WV.

Very Spotty in southern Indiana.

I had surgery on Oct 10. I'm just now getting to the point where I feel like getting into the woods. But there is an oak tree in my front yard. Never seen so many. They are 2" deep and completely cover the ground under the tree.