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Drought and poor-acorn year deer activity

BSK said:
Great description TN Larry.

In very poor acorn years to no acorns at all, I find bucks make much less sign than in decent acorn years. I believe that is driven by energy reserves. Making sign burns precious energy reserves, and in a poor acorn year, deer have almost no excess energy to burn. I've found few rubs this year, although slightly more than the true total acorn failure we had in 2022. Similarly, scraping is way down this year, although where they decide to finally make a scrape, it gets a lot of traffic. And food plot and field edges appear to be the hot locations this year, as well as trails leading into open food sources.

In addition, in a previous post, I had talked about how field-edge scrapes get used less in daylight than scrapes back in the woods, and that trend intensifies the deeper into the season we get. Daylight usage of field-edge scrapes drops to very low levels by December, while scrapes "back in the woods" maintain about the same daylight usage all season. However, looking at just the data from this year and 2022 (another acorn failure), exactly the opposite is true. Field-edge scrapes have far higher daylight usage than scrapes "back in the woods." I believe that is because food is at such a premium this year that doe groups are almost living in the plots, and bucks are advertising their presence at food plot scrapes around the clock. Even now in mid-December, I'm getting videos of 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 year-old bucks working food plot edge scrapes at all hours of the day, something tht normally would not happen at this time of year.
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Seeing the same thing!
 
BSK said:
This year, our best days of hunting were the Friday-Sunday following Thanksgiving (Nov. 29-Dec. 1).
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Late to this very interesting conversation but the data in this graph matches exactly what we have experienced...First week of muzzleloader was slower than previous years...so we've killed two bucks off the property...both we believe are 4½ minimum...my buddys buck was Nov 15th and his buck was cruising alone...then my buck was Nov 30th and he was hot on a doe...no doubt better rut action was observed second week muzzleloader and first week of rifle matching your graph...this was northern middle TN...so not super far from your area....thanks for sharing your data and observations...very interesting conversation.
 
BSK said:
Great description TN Larry.

In very poor acorn years to no acorns at all, I find bucks make much less sign than in decent acorn years. I believe that is driven by energy reserves. Making sign burns precious energy reserves, and in a poor acorn year, deer have almost no excess energy to burn. I've found few rubs this year, although slightly more than the true total acorn failure we had in 2022. Similarly, scraping is way down this year, although where they decide to finally make a scrape, it gets a lot of traffic. And food plot and field edges appear to be the hot locations this year, as well as trails leading into open food sources.

In addition, in a previous post, I had talked about how field-edge scrapes get used less in daylight than scrapes back in the woods, and that trend intensifies the deeper into the season we get. Daylight usage of field-edge scrapes drops to very low levels by December, while scrapes "back in the woods" maintain about the same daylight usage all season. However, looking at just the data from this year and 2022 (another acorn failure), exactly the opposite is true. Field-edge scrapes have far higher daylight usage than scrapes "back in the woods." I believe that is because food is at such a premium this year that doe groups are almost living in the plots, and bucks are advertising their presence at food plot scrapes around the clock. Even now in mid-December, I'm getting videos of 2 1/2 and 3 1/2 year-old bucks working food plot edge scrapes at all hours of the day, something tht normally would not happen at this time of year.
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Agreed on less sign in low acorn years.

The funny part though is the scrape line that I hunted opening morning of muzzleloader is probably the longest one that I've ever seen. It was up a flat creek bottom and was probably 30+ scrapes in about 500 yards. I was still finding scrapes when I turned around. If there wasn't an over hanging limb in say 50 yards, they would just make one in the open or next to a tree with no over hanging limb for the heck of it. And it was scrapes and not turkey scratchings. LOL. They even made one under a dead limb from a tree that was blown down. The funny part is I put a camera over it and didn't have a picture of a buck in a week's time. The camera is not a cell cam and still there so curious what I see when I go retrieve.

Just a weird but great year.............
 
i have to believe that, at our farm, we had a late freeze. the reason i say that is because we have half of our acorn producing trees in a bottomland/swamp area where drought wouldn't affect them due to the moisture content in the ground all year. i need to go back and look at the temp reports from april/may to confirm though
 
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BSK said:
So sorry to hear that Smo. It has certainly been a tough year in our area. But for my place, 2022 was even worse.

The only thing that keeps me optimistic is next year. In 37 years of tracking acorn production, we've never had two failures in a row. So 2025 should have some acorns.
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We've had either complete or near complete failures 4 out of the past 5 years with the boom year last year the exception.
 
AlabamaSwamper said:
We've had either complete or near complete failures 4 out of the past 5 years with the boom year last year the exception.
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At my place, in 37 years we've never had two total failures in a row. Only once have we had two poor years in a row (2003, 2004). But the acorn crops over the last 5-6 years have been wildly fluctuating. On the below graph, a total failure year is a zero, while every tree producing a big crop is a 10:
 

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We have hunted the same 3400 acres the last 25 years in SE TN. Last year was as dry as this year but we had acorns last year. Our place is %100 mountains land and what plots we have failed due to drought. The deer bailed out of the mtns first of November when they saw zero mast. In the valley around pastures etc you can see hundreds of deer last hour of daylight. I know some that are hunting low in these areas and they have had a banner year. Several have killed 2 of their biggest ever. The few we have are surviving on greenbrier and what little bit came up in plots. Two years of drought will also lead to EHD taking a heavy toll. We have several old bucks at mineral sites in the summer that have completely disappeared. I have never seen a complete acorn failure like this year. Tough
 
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