Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Chestnuts and deer - NC piedmont

I always have a few american chestnuts producing fruit. Here's one from last fall and got two more this year that should be just ready for the beginning of bowhunting season. They really go crazy producing nuts far beyond their size for about the last two seasons before they die. They seem to know they are
going die and try and make up for it with a lastditch swansong. This is in the Catskills. You can really help them out alot by making clearings where you find seedlings as they really take off when you let them get some sunlight

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can't get picture to work but its there.

nyorange;

If you do have American Chestnuts that are fully mature and fruit bearing, would you mind posting the pics? I have seen some, and they are rare.

Also, you may want to be put in contact with the folks doing the American Chestnut research. If you have what you say you have, the genetics of those trees could go a LONG way toward helping get the A. Chestnut back to a viable, native species.

My grandmother used to tell of gathering them by the bushel in the fall in the western part of the state. Granddaddy Moore always bear hunted around Chestnut stands and said the lard from bears that were fattened on Chestnuts was the best. It supposedly made biscuits so light they would float off the table.

We lost probably the greatest mast crop we had to the Chink Chestnut blight.

You should be able to see a pic if you click the place where the picture was supposed to be showing. I am a member of ACF and these trees are certainly not resistant but they do grow old enough to produce fruit occasionally,but as I said they all die. I keep looking for one that will keep growing but as soon as I see one of them start producing a bumper crop of fruit I know it only has a little while longer to live. Like I said, they seem to know that they are doomed and really try to use everything they have left for future seeds. It amazes each time I see it happen.