i've noticed that hickorys are pretty consistant in producing nuts but i really don't see the deer hitting them. this year we had few acorns and you would have thought hickorys would be next in line since we i don't have beech in my area.
what are your thoughts on deer and hickory nuts?

thanks guys

Your right they don't like them, To bad because we have a ton of them around here.    

Tracy

There are some hickory nuts that are a bit softer and deer will definitely eat them. Some call them pignuts.

I was hunting amongst a few persimmon trees one year when a doe came in and began crunching something... it turned out to be "pignuts".

The problem in my area is that with the lack of acorns, the squirrels cut the hickory nuts while they hung in the trees. We have two shag bark hickorys near the yard and had hickory hulls all over... never seen one make it to the ground though.

I've watched a doe and two fawns eating the Bitternuts in my back yard...they are in the Pignut family.  They like them, and so does my Lab 8^).

We have absolutely nothing around here in the way of mast. Dogwood berries on my trees (only berries of any kind I seen anywhere around here)left in like two seconds this year. And that was before they were fully ripe. Going to be a tough winter on the game.

I have pignut trees on my land and in a year when other mast is scarce the deer will hit them hard.

They'll certainly eat them!

Gives me a toothache just thinking about it though...

One year we had a poor acorn crop. One afternoon on stand I had 9 deer show up when it was just about quitting time. It was just light enough out that I could see how many there were. I went back in the morning to see what it was they were feeding on and it was hickory nuts. Every place I found hickories I found that the deer had been into them. So, yes, they eat them but I do not believe that they are a preferred food source if other things are available.

I don't see how anything would have teeth and jaws strong enough to break hickory nuts!  they taste good, but sure are tough to break.

Didn't say they don't eat them    Just said they don't like them  

Tracy

Interesting info. I knew that turkeys would eat them, but I've never heard of deer doing it.

I`ve seen hogs go to Hickorys first then to the white oaks I was sitting on.RC

RC, maybe that's why they call 'em pignuts?       I can remember hearing the hogs going through the woods eating them. You could hear the crunching sounds before you saw them.

An off-subject comment: Dean Torges has an interesting entry on his blog at thebowyersedge.com on hickory nuts, for human consumption. When I was a kid, we harvested (not killed       ) them and hammered them open for the sweet meat inside. We only used the "scaleybarks", or shagbark hickory. My aunt cooked with them. We harvested them by the buckets-full in a good year.

Does anyone know which species the deer are eating? There are several "pignut" varieties. George mentioned bitternuts. I have several species on my place, and after reading this, I may have to move a stand or two!

All the hickories up here in NH  seem to be the shagbark type. We had tons of  them this year and lots of acorns in places. The deer did not seem to be interested in them but squirrels that are eating them are very good eating. I can't imagine turkeys eating them, they are about the size of  a golf ball.

We have lots of hickory nuts here in Alabama but I have never seen a deer eat one in 20 years of deerhunting. I honestly don't think they have adequate teeth for eating them. The squirrels will certainly eat them but it takes them a while to get into them.

We have all types of hickory trees here but none of them seem to be pallatable to the deer.

I can remember the first time I heard a hog bust one in the swamp. I thought someone was hitting something with a hammer. I put the sneak on that "tresspasser " and it was a big red boar that I missed at 20 yards.RC

Hickories are generally divided into two types- the thick husk varieties and the pecan hickories. The pecan we eat is actually a hickory, and there are several pecan relatives with soft husks and thin shells. Maybe that's what the deer and turkeys eat?