I have been closely inspecting the oaks in my hunting areas and for some reason there are oaks with a lot of acorns surrounded by oaks with no acorns. They all look like the same type of tree. Anyone have a reference where I could see if these trees are really different or if it's some other reason for the difference in acorn production.
PM Dan Bonner on this website. He can tell you all you need to know including the Genus names of every oak tree in you hunting area. He is one of my bow hunting buddies and he has taught me alot.
White oaks have leaves with rounded lobes. Red oaks have pointy lobes. White oaks usually have lighter bark too. Otherwise, it could be the heavy trees this year werent last year, and vice versa.
Also, larger white oaks have a shaggy bark. Kind of like a hickory but to a lesser degree.
Rob
Tee white oak in my back yard was loaded last year. This year not a nut to be seen. I believe it was duew to a two week long rainy spell we had last spring at bloom time.IMO ?
Here in NH the acorn crop seems spotty in my hunting areas. Most think that is because we had such a warm Feb. and things started to come out of dormancy. Then we had spell of bitter cold, freezing weather that probably affected the new growing buds. The good news is that if you can find an oak that is actually dropping acorns you will have much better odds of getting a deer at that tree than if you had acorns all over the place. On of my favorite oaks was dropping many, albeit small, acorns and I shot a big doe the first time I hunted it two weeks ago.
Bob,
We had three days of below freezing temps this spring when the oaks were putting on buds. It hammered the white oaks. The red oaks are spotty.I am not sure if you had a freeze in OK but mast production is the lowest I have seen it in the past 14 yrs here.
On a side note check out the Persimmons ours are loaded up here.
Sean
Much of S. IL experienced a late freeze right about the time the whites were in flower. On the properties I hunt the white oak acorn crop is down 80% or better. However, the reds seemed to have produced fairly well.
here the oaks are loaded with nuts, or should I say was loaded...they are fall all dday long... there are so many you can't walk with out steping on one... They happen like that every 4 years or so
I was at my hunt club in GA this past weekend. Water oaks were dropping but were very small due to the drought conditions in the S.E. US. I saw very few white oaks and I saw no red oaks.
A spoty acorn season can be a plus for hunters. The deer have to travel to find acorns so you have a better chance of seeing more deer. When there is a heavy crop of acorns the deer don't have to travel to eat so sightings are sparc.
White oak acorns are annual(produce acorns in one year) and red oaks are bianniel(takes 2 years for acorns to mature). A late freeze, like we had last spring can effect the production of white oak acorns more so than red. Pat
Here in Southern Oregon, we have both black and white oak. All of them seem to have dropped a lot of their acorns early and small this year. Folks in these parts, noting also that a lot of the poison oak turned red in August, say a cold winter is coming.
White oaks only produce acorns bi-annually and red oaks every year, barring any problems like late frost. Those other trees may have produced last year.