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Acorns- What do Deer prefer?

Headhunter said:
where i hunt in middle tennessee the white oak comes in second to chinquapin oak. The chinquapin rules.
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In Middle TN, that's usually the case, especially in areas like Cheatham County.
 
rukiddin? said:
I hunt a farm that has hundreds of 20+ year old sawtooths planted on it. This place is like a zoo IF there are no white oak acorns falling. Witnessed first hand last year, they will walk right over sawtooth acorns that litterally cover the ground to go to a white oak....But in a bad white oak year and later in the season, the sawtooths are incredible!!
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I've seen just the opposite. If Sawtooths are available, even whites are ignored. Plus sawtooths fall first.
 
BSK said:
As other have pointed out, white oak acorns are preferred over red oak because of the white's lower tannin content (tannin produces a bitter taste). However, within the white oak family, there are differences in preference. The Swamp Chestnut Oak and Swamp White Oak are THE most preferred white oak acorns. Following those are the Chinquapin and true White Oaks. Post Oak and Overcup follow those. Low on the preference list (in the white family) is the Mountain Chestnut Oak.

Sawtooth Oak acorns are very highly preferred, but Sawtooth are not native to the U.S., although they have been planted so extensively for landscape and wildlife purposes that they can often be found "in the wild."

The Sawtooth Oaks drop acorns first, followed closely by the Mountain Chestnuts. The other varieties of whites generally drop two weeks after the Mountain Chestnut.

Red oaks are more variably. I've often found that reds start dropping very early, but continue to drop over a very long period of time. I've seen individual red oaks start dropping in late September yet are still dropping acorns into early December.
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Yeah we have a lot of mountain chestnuts up here on the plateau and I have never seen deer eat them.
 
tailchaser said:
I don't know if it's true.but a guy I use to work with ,said you could taste the acorns , and to hunt at the sweeter ones first.
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Considering tannins are poisonous, I wouldn't recommend eating too many!

The early Americans ate a lot of foods with acorn paste added (and even made bread from ground acorn paste), but they leached the tannins from the ground acorns by pouring boiling water through it several times.
 
THANKS.BSK,I always wonder if they were,glad i didn't try it.I don't think he ate them I think it was more of just a little taste.He said some were more bitter than others.
 
tailchaser said:
THANKS.BSK,I always wonder if they were,glad i didn't try it.I don't think he ate them I think it was more of just a little taste.He said some were more bitter than others.
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The reds would be noticeably more bitter than the whites, due to tannin content.
 
The beauty of the sawtooths is that they begin producing acorns much sooner after planting than other oaks...sometimes within 7 years.

There are preferred acorns even among the same species of trees and within the same areas. Just exactly what makes the difference is a mystery to me. I've seen the deer pass through areas where the ground is covered in freshly dropped acorns just to get to a certain tree. They would primarily feed on a certain tree's acorns until that tree was through dropping acorns before hitting the others. This had absolutely nothing to do with surrounding available cover.
 
348Winchester said:
What ever happened to Pursuit Hunter and his dominant tree theory?
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great theory, I was using it without knowing it many years before he officially announced it. Since the late 1980's early 1990's I have always looked for the "hottest" oak tree, meaning finding one that is dropping with tons of deer sign under it. If you can find the right one, it can be magic for a short time. I have killed some nice bucks and screwed up several opportunities at nice bucks (a couple of giants) hunting hot oak trees, mainly in the evenings. Chris is a great guy and the only point I disagreed with him about it is that you cannot always find a "hot" tree and it is especially tough in a year when there are acorns EVERYWHERE. He always said he liked it when there an abundance of acorns. I like it when I find a place that has one good oak tree dropping, that is almost a sure thing. My brother and I have found hot trees on our way to lunch and instead of going to lunch, climb the tree and get a shot at a deer in almost minutes after climbing. I found a hot tree several years ago walking out at lunch, told my brother about it, he went to it at noon, killed a big doe, gutted it under the tree. I helped him drag it out, climbed the same tree and killed a big doe within an hour of dragging his out. Passed up 2 small bucks. For a week we had a blast hunting that tree. There was a fresh cut corn field about 100 yards away.

That is one reason I basically never scout. I can almost look at a place from a distance in bow season and pick out oak trees and look at them as I hunt. I also do most all my scouting on the way to a stand and back out. I have seen deer pick a red oak over every other oak tree and the others had plenty of acorns, but that is the exception. Rutherford county and Davidson county are full of chinquapins and in my experience they will pick them over any other oak there. There is one oak tree where we hunt, I do not know what it is. but it has acorns as big as golf balls and when it is dropping it is almost a guarantee to see a deer and generally several of them.
 
Headhunter said:
I have always looked for the "hottest" oak tree, meaning finding one that is dropping with tons of deer sign under it. If you can find the right one, it can be magic for a short time.
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Ditto, exactly what I do as well, especially during bow season.

Headhunter said:
Chris is a great guy and the only point I disagreed with him about it is that you cannot always find a "hot" tree and it is especially tough in a year when there are acorns EVERYWHERE. He always said he liked it when there an abundance of acorns. I like it when I find a place that has one good oak tree dropping, that is almost a sure thing.
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I do most of my deer scouting in August using 12 power bino's looking in the tops of trees picking out and eliminating areas to hunt. I have done this for years and it really works for me.
 

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