which ones do deer like?
The green ones, or the dry ones?

what are the insects that bore little holes in them?

does that kill the acorn so they won't grow?

am I going nuts asking about acorns?

Weevil grubs. As long as there is any “meat” inside the acorn the deer will eat them green or dry. White oaks are preferred over Red Oak acorns. Deer eventually eat them all. At least this is my experience.

Not sure if the weevils will stop the acorn from germinating. Probably would not help with germination.

These are dropping now, and they are getting hammered.

White oak

Some begin to brown and drop, same tree.




Same tree a few days, some browning up

I’ve sliced few bellies open and found brown acorns mostly.

The green white oak acorns on the tree turn brown very quickly after hitting the ground. It seems just about everything in the woods goes after them pretty quick.

I always loved sitting up in a white oak dropping acorns with a bow in October

I think a frost helps cure the red oak acorns and deer start really going after them.

Very heavy acorn year here in western Oregon. More on the ground than I can ever remember seeing.

what does deer stomach acid do to green acorns?
that might be a interesting bit o lore to develop next tim you do a bit o belly slitting...
catch the juice and drop in some green acorns...



kinda like acorn tea? white is supposed to be better?



does sun make them brown on the ground faster than shade?

Red oaks put out every other year, I believe

It matures-turns brown

Circle of life

Fruit ripens, turns colors

The stems ceases to supply life and nutrients to the seed,fruit,nut etc. The cap/cup dries and the nut falls out

Or a gust of wind, first frost, squirrel, blue jay, crow, etc mechanically hastens that process by severing the cup stem

yeah, but I am betting stomach acid will turn your green acorns brown. and not yer "brown eyes blue..."

Can you up the acorn production by fertilizing the trees with Ammonium nitrate?

If you have a late frost that kills other acorns, the red oaks will still produce that fall. But they wont the next fall.

Actually they will produce every year, unless there is a killing frost in the spring.

I knew Red Oak when I was in college. Thats not true about how often she would put out.

Nitrogen tends to promote foliage as opposed to fruit.

You can spike the drip line, but in a dense stand, there a lot of competition. Jobe used to make some large spikes.

Would only recommend that if you had a solitary tree in an open area

Lots of live oaks down here. They produce lots of acorns

^^^Beautiful trees and tasty acorns being in the white oak family. Those big assed branches that grow straight out from the trunk are impressive!

Deer really like acorns out of the Blackjack oaks in east Texas

Decent bbq wood also, not as good as mesquite

I thought those things were called "aykerns"?

The Apaches make a pretty good stew/soup with them ground up................yes, after leaching out the tannins..............sheesh.

I lived in Arlington many years ago and I used to lay out tarps around the live oaks to collect acorns to use for various baiting schemes. If you hit it right you could hit the motherlode!

Do they make a baffle for the corn feeders that works with aykerns?

White oak and Pin oak aykerns falling pretty hard now. Several big trees in my yard are pinging them off the metal roof and the cars constantly. Squirrels having a heck of a time.

Oh no

The acorns have magnetic RFID chips in them..,,

Who wants to run off with that and start a thread? “THe inDiCtMenTs” !!

Even gathering and replacement of acorns is considered INTENT TO BAIT in Ten-O’-Cee

Lose your weapon, wheeler, maybe vehicle, fine, revocation of hunting privileges

We have a good drop this year, mostly from the blackjacks

Bout this time last year I walked back to a stand of whites we left in a field corner.
Nearly every limb 1" or less in diameter was on the ground.
Fuggin bears

how they gonna prove some squirrel didn't rake them all up into a pile 20 yards from your neighbor's tree stand though?

Good stuff here:


https://www.catmanoutdoors.com/southeastern-oak-trees-1



Catman is a Tennessee feller.

Got a 30 something foreman where I work. We call him Scrat...

Catman. LOL


Catman gut-shoots about 1/2 of every scrub buck and doe he lobs an arrow at. The rest l....he looks for for about an hour and gives up. Then finds em a week later when tracking his next gut shot deer.

Eustis Jr

LMFAO

They is, but we'uns that ar edjukated didun fiqer you yanks wood no whats we'uns wus talkin bout.

This foreman looks like a skinny younger version of Steelhead. Nearing the end of a multi week outage on a production center, he made some real boneheaded errors in judgement. Refuses all advice from millwrights who've been in the facility for nearly the span of his lifetime. He's been there for almost a year.
One night in the break shack I asked him "Just what the hell were you thinking?" His eyes bulged and he walked out.
Short while later he approaches the senior millwright on our shift asking, "Whats with John and his attitude?"
Guy answers, "You've been a dick for the last 2 weeks and it sounds like you just got called on it."

End of shift he announced that he was leaving night shift and would never return, and, "Particularly not to this crew!"
Four weeks to the day later, there's another management shuffle. Right back with our crew...

Suppose we can all be dicks occasionally. Being a complete spaz aggravates it...

Careful where you store your acorns....

Texas is not as fascist as Tennesse I guess.

Not to worry

Lots of titty baby rebels still feel the need to bait in Tenn

It’s all they know, a family tradition

Only deer I ever shot in Tennessee I was riding on the fender of a tractor.

Nothing wrong with that. 👍😃

Seeing that around here, too.

Have a good many big oaks in the backyard and 2 in the front. Front white oaks rain acorns every year but the deer stay in the back. So I started repurposing the front yard crop. With the Shop Vac. Neighborhood walkers always looked at me funny when they walked by, but never came over to talk. Same reaction as when I used the Bust Duster to vacuum the puff ball floaters off the dandelions.

Yeah, true dat,


but I lernt me some backwuds speekin' a long time ago. Twas nessessarie wut wid alla da movin round I done.

Empty the spores in Karen Walker’s front yard

I never knew my ex-wife's nick name was Red Oak.

I have been meaning to ask about acorns and deer. We don't have acorns here so this question might be kind of unusual for you guys.
Does a deer just start crunching on them? Shell and all? Or, do the deer break them open and eat the nut only?

Thanks for your time,
Ken

IIRC, red oak acorns take two seasons to mature, but I think the “crops” overlap, so some are finished each season. They have more tannin because they take longer to sprout and the tannin protects them from rot, but fuggs up the taste. White oak acorns are milder tasting but go bad quickly if they don’t germinate. Rule of thumb is to hunt the white oaks early, the red oaks later because the white ones get scarfed up pretty quick.

Our Fall turkey season opens tomorrow, so I’ll be in the woods next week scouting around, but the leaves are still on.

Gut-shooter or not, Catman spent an entire Summer making up that guide I posted to, and it’s full of good info. I found out that the native oak in my yard is a Shumard. It’s already dumped its crop.

They just start munching them and let the hulls fall out the side of the mouth. At least all the acorn munchers I’ve seen in the past 50 years. It’s funny to watch them get a big log roller marble sized acorn off a swamp oak in their mouth and try to deal with it.

sounds like the former AG of california...

"Squirrel" has always been a favorite game of mine. Climb the trunk, lay on the limbs, stuff nuts in the crotch.....

How long will the acorns be good to replant if they are just picked up off the ground?. Spring this year one of my granddaughters wanted to earn some money. I told her I would pay for all the acorns she picked up out from under our Shumard oak. She picked up about 8 or 9 gallons. Would they still be good to plant this fall?

We have Bur oaks here and the deer have pretty much already cleaned them all up.

White oak acorns will start to sprout a small tap root very soon if they stay on the ground, especially if the ground is damp. I have seen them start sprouting within a week or two. Red oaks on the other hand take much longer to start sprouting, sometimes until spring.

Love those Burr Oaks. I sure miss my old North Dakota creek bottom Burr Oak stand.