RE: "The Truth on Acorns"
The Truth on Acorns
As a deer hunter, we all know how anxious we get during the summer for the upcoming season. We sight in our bows, set up trail cameras, scout the property, and supplementary feed our deer. However, as important as all these preparations are, it can all be changed by the acorn mast that has fallen that particular year. While an excellent acorn mast initially sounds like great hunting opportunities, it can also send you into a frenzy trying to figure out how to intercept the deer between their bedding and feeding areas and when to hunt each individual acorn lot.
The problem with acorns is that deer love them too much. As a bow hunter we set up our stands in reference to trails and along food sources. A heavy acorn mast can result in a screeching halt in deer movement. If there are enough acorns on the forest floor, the deer have no motivation and will abandon their previous food sources. At our privately owned property in Virginia we planted 3 food plots that the deer frequently visited during the summer. However when those acorns started to fall they immediately switched their attention from clover to nut. Excited about the activity in the clover fields during the summer we built two blinds on the edge of the plots confident we would have success come bow season. This strategy completely changed when the acorns began falling. The deer left the lush vegetation for the hardwoods.
It would sound easy to shift your attention from the preseason strategy to just hunt the acorns, right? Wrong! Just because there is a heavy acorn mast does not mean that the deer are easy to hunt. In some situations it can make them harder. Since there is ample food lying on the ground, the deer have no motivation to get up and browse for other sources. Which means you can go all morning in a usually productive area and not see a deer. As a hunter, you have to know which acorn lots are visited the most frequent and why. Since there is no way to predict this during the summer when we do most of our scouting, head out on a Sunday to scope out which areas are the most popular.
Obviously, you want to look for droppings in the area you are scouting. Droppings can only result from deer feeding in the area. Also look for beds. If the deer find an area that produced a healthy acorn mast they will spend several hours just feeding along. This is particularly true for morning hunts; the deer will feed all morning, then just bed down during the middle of the day, then return to feeding in the same area once the weather cools down. So, if you can find where the deer bed down during the day, you will greatly increase your chances of taking a deer in an acorn lot.
Once you have a particular area scouted, don’t be afraid to hunt that lot for a couple days in a row. It is important to remain scent free as possible and to find the best entrance and exit routes so you do not spook the deer. If a certain herd finds a certain lot of acorns that they can not only feed but also feel safe in, they will literally eat all the acorns off the floor before they focus on another food source. If there is a hunt in which you do not see as many deer as before, or the deer are in and out of there before you can draw your bow, then it is time to find another lot. In most cases, the deer will have cleaned up all the acorns and the lot is no longer of use to them, or you have done something to make them feel uncomfortable. Either way, do not get discouraged, the deer will just move on to another location where acorns are aplenty.
I hope this article has provided you with some information to make you a better early season hunter. Acorns can be tricky if you don’t have the knowledge of how to hunt them, but they can be a goldmine if you know the truth on acorns!