Thursday, October 22, 2009
Hunt the acorns first and you will find the deer
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
Hunt acorns, then hunt deer.
Hunt acorns, then hunt turkeys.
Hunt acorns, then hunt bear.
Hunt acorns, then hunt squirrels.
You get the point. The key to successful hunting for most wildlife species is to first find the animal’s food source. The meat and potatoes of species like deer, turkey, bear and squirrels is oak mast -- acorns.
You can get a reading on the abundance of mast in the woods without even leaving the roadside. If you are seeing a lot of deer in the fields, chances are the mast crop has failed, leaving little food in the woods. If there are few deer in the fields, then the woods are likely to be thick with acorns, and that’s where the deer will be.
It is much the same with turkeys, bears and squirrels. Their movements are determined by the food supply (Check how the big beech crop will impact turkey hunting on Cochran’s Field Reports.)
So what kind of oak mast year is it for the 2009-10 hunting season?
I’ve been getting mixed reports from hunters, and from my own observations. One guy reports seeing 20 deer in a field; another say he is seeing very few.
“Mixed” also is a good way to describe the recently released Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ annual mast report. It credits white oak -- a favorite of most of the hunted wildlife species -- as being in short supply.
“White oak production was particularly poor; among the lowest estimates of the survey history,” said Gary Norman, DGIF biologist who put the survey together with help from 29 foresters of the Virginia Department of Forestry.
White oak generally is a first-choice food for hunted wildlife. If you know of a white oak tree, or a grove of them, dropping a heavy crop of acorns, you’ve got yourself an ideal hunting spot. Such treasurers won’t be easy to find this year in many areas, which makes scouting all the more important.
“If you look at the mast [report] graphs, the only place that seemed to have any white oaks this year is the Southern Piedmont,” said Matt Knox, deer project leader of the DGIF. “Everywhere else seems to have had a white oak failure. Also note that for the last decade or so white oaks statewide have shown a consistent two-year cycle, one year up followed by one year down. This is a down year.”
Not so for red oaks.
“Better production was seen with red oak, beech and dogwoods,” said Norman.
While the survey shows white oak production to be the poorest since 2001, red oak is the best in three years.
Deer will turn to red oaks when the white oaks have failed or the supply has been exhausted. Look at it this way: if there are no steaks available they will survive on potatoes.
The kind of mixed mast conditions being reported this season favor the accomplished hunter, the one who will get off the roads and scout the woods, who can tell a white oak from a red oak, who will build his hunt around the mast crop, or the lack of it.
“If they can find any acorns they should find the deer,” said Knox. “Otherwise, the deer will be in the fields.”
Even during years of heavy acorn crops, deer don’t give up on fields. They are attracted to the succulent grasses and agricultural crops they find there. But when mast is available, they tend to spend less time in fields, arriving later in the day and leaving earlier in the morning.
“We have data from several western counties that clearly shows that the doe kill spikes during mast failure,” said Knox. “We have hypothesized that during mast failure in these heavily forested counties the deer are concentrated in areas where hunters can get at them -- fields.”
The mast crop not only determines the whereabouts and movements of deer, but also the quality of the health of the animal and that impacts reproduction and antler development. A good mast year frequently is followed by a good trophy year the next hunting season. When food is plentiful, the deer survive the winter in good shape and their bodies have more energy to devote to antler growth.
So, with last year’s mast crop impacting this season’s antler development, what kind of trophy year can be expected?
A look back at the 2008 mast production shows that the white oak and chestnut oak crops were much better than this year, and the red oak production was down only slightly. All this points to a decent trophy year.
