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acorn drop timing

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BSK

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Joined
Mar 11, 1999
Messages
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Location
Nashville, TN
Anyone else seeing a weird acorn drop timing? We have a very, VERY poor acorn crop this year, but while out last Friday I noticed freshly dropping (although underdeveloped) Chestnut Oak acorns. That's about 3 weeks late. Normally, peak Chestnut Oak acorn drop in my area is around Sept 15-20. I'm seeing a few Black and Red Oak acorns on the ground, but most are full of weevils. However, deer are still eating them like crazy. I'm just hoping acorn drop timing is "off" by a couple of weeks this year, and somewhere there are still some acorns waiting to fall. I'm also hoping the oaks in the Red family do what they normally do, which is drop a few acorns over the whole fall season, unlike the Whites which usually drop at all once. We have a very few Reds with acorns and some Blacks as well.
 
Our reds have been dropping for since first of September end of augest. Poor acorn crop. Whites don't have many left on the tree around us already. Lots of small acorns at that. We don't hardly have any chestnut oaks so haven't been around one to check. Seemed as many of our reds aborted acorns. Not surprising due to drought.
 
Checked a few trees this past weekend as I hunted, and noticed a few whites falling, and a few trees looked like they were carrying a few still.

Saw a few Scarlet oaks dropping, which is a touch early over on our place in Henry county. Black oaks looking pretty good, but like you said, it just seems weird
 
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Found some whites dropping with fresh droppings around it. Hunted it and saw two different groups of deer feeding on red oaks. Actually could hear them popping them as they eat. Couldn't believe they fed on red oaks over the whites this time of year
 
Accidentally found some Black Oak acorns with a trail-camera. I positioned it to shoot across a traditional scrape that hasn't been opened yet. Did I get any bucks at the scrape? Nope. But what I did get in the background was 360 videos of does, fawns and a couple of bucks feeding in one little area. Checked it out, and it's Black Oak acorns from one tree.
 
Best red oak and white oak crop on our property...maybe in the last 23 years. I don't hear many dropping now, but there are plenty on the ground. I'm really excited to see it.
 
I realize this is probably something very local, but another odd observation I've made about the acorn crops the last few years is how wildly variable they are. I've been keeping track and grading the acorn crop on my property every year since 1987. That's 38 years. One of the things I look at is the statistical variance between years. "Statistical variance" is simply a number representing the average distance from the mean a group of numbers are. A low variance means all of the numbers in a set are close to average. A very high variance means the numbers in a set are very far from average. Looking at variance for 5-year sets of data, at no point in the last 38 years has the variance been anywhere near as high is the current 5-year span (2020-2024). And I mean the variance is sky high.

I wonder what is causing this local extreme variance in acorn crops? Great crops every other year, with near total failures in the years between. Never seen anything like it. Monster acorn crops 2021 and 2023, almost complete failures 2020, 2022 and 2024. Over the 38 years, we've seen acorn failures before, but never 3 out of 5 years, interspersed with monster crops.
 
White oak were short this year and mostly gone. Pin oak are loaded. Almost every tree has acorns. Would be a duck haven in past years if flooded. Other reds have some acorns but scattered.
 
There's a mixture of oaks on the property I hunt and none are really producing many acorns. There's some shriveled up acorns but that's about it.
Hoping for a better acorn crop next year.
 
Here in East TN this is 5 years in a row we have had at least a moderate Acorn crop. I too have kept records for the last 35 years and never have we had decent crops for 5 years in a row until now. I did find a much smaller crop in the Nashville area over the wknd when hunting and scouting, very scattered and what is falling the deer are keeping cleaned up as they fall.
 

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