History of your acorn crop

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john1984
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History of your acorn crop

Unread postby john1984 » Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:23 pm

Since 2015 I started to pay attention to the bumper crop years and bare years. I'm going to list them. Please feel free to tell me about when you witnessed the bumper acorn crops and bad years. Please mention the region of the state.

West central Wisconsin
2015 bumper acorn crop
2016 no acorns whatsoever :cry:
2019 bumper acorn crop
2020 no acorns whatsoever :cry:

2021????


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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby clandestine.misfit » Mon Jun 07, 2021 1:39 pm

Is this for white or red oaks? To my knowledge (which is very little if any at all) i thought it was like a 3 year mast and then nothing. I could be entirely wrong but i do know that I’ve heard the word mast lol
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby john1984 » Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:05 pm

clandestine.misfit wrote:Is this for white or red oaks? To my knowledge (which is very little if any at all) i thought it was like a 3 year mast and then nothing. I could be entirely wrong but i do know that I’ve heard the word mast lol


Both I guess. Just acorns in general
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strutnrut716
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby strutnrut716 » Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:22 pm

Great topic. I'm always trying to figure out acorns. I believe there may be a thread on this in the beast archives...
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby greenhorndave » Mon Jun 07, 2021 2:39 pm

john1984 wrote:Since 2015 I started to pay attention to the bumper crop years and bare years. I'm going to list them. Please feel free to tell me about when you witnessed the bumper acorn crops and bad years. Please mention the region of the state.

West central Wisconsin
2015 bumper acorn crop
2016 no acorns whatsoever :cry:
2019 bumper acorn crop
2020 no acorns whatsoever :cry:

2021????

There were very few pockets of acorns in SE WI... the ones that were there were reds and relatively untouched.

I did run into a really hot white oak in Northern WI last year on non-huntable land. You could spook the deer off it and they’d be back in 2 minutes.

It’s super hard to predict, but I’d guess things will be better this fall, but who knows. Lot of time between now and then.
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby Hawthorne » Tue Jun 08, 2021 1:38 am

I mostly pay attention to the white oak family. Reds in my area will be on the ground till January when they start eating them. 2019 and 2020 had zero white oak acorns. 2017 had them 2018 was a bumper crop. Those were two great years has I tagged out on 8 points or better both years. Looking foward to see what they have this year. Will start looking in august or September
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby Grizzlyadam » Tue Jun 08, 2021 12:51 pm

I just pulled out my stack of journals and looked at my mast acorn crop observations for each season going back to 2009 here in the Northeast. Here's what I had written down at the end of each season for the area I hunted.
2009 moderate to high
2010 abundant
2011scarce
2012 moderate
2013 low/scarce
2014 abundant
2015 very abundant
2016 abundant
2017 scarce
2018 no acorns
2019 abundant
2020 abundant
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hunter_mike
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby hunter_mike » Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:53 pm

Yesterday in the city park. Little tiny acorns started
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby greenhorndave » Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:57 pm

I hope that bodes well for the crop this year.
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby mauser06 » Fri Jun 25, 2021 6:21 pm

I too have been trying to figure acorns out....

All I can figure out is every tree seems to do its own thing. I can't predict anything...and deer definitely seem to prefer certain trees and will walk by others raining acorns...of the same species.


My best hunts have been going in late morning/early afternoon. Stand on my back and basically still hunting till I find THE tree. I will stop and look and listen...walk towards the falling acorns and squirrels. Scan for fresh buck sign as I get close....keeping known or suspected bedding in mind. Once I find what I'm looking for, climb a tree.


Some areas I hunt have oaks everywhere. Others have few. Others have small patches.

In areas of limited oaks or small patches, I've been marking them on the GPS and OnX to speed things up in the future.

Post season scouting I noticed several specific trees/areas that were obviously hot based on the rubs.

For areas I hunt, it's such a big piece of the puzzle. Just can't seem to predict much.


My yard has big mature whites and reds. I have tons of reds on the ground still. They didn't care about them till winter set in...then they were digging up the yard to get after them. They clobbered the whites as fast as they fell...

Used to have a ridge I hunted that had a couple chestnut oaks. If those trees were dropping the hunting was awesome....every critter around came in for them.
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby brancher147 » Fri Jun 25, 2021 11:14 pm

I don’t keep a record because around me it is highly variable and there are usually acorns somewhere every year you just got to find them. Some years they will be up high some years down low, some years scattered, some years only certain aspects. Sometimes white oak, sometimes red or scarlet or black, sometimes chestnut oak, sometimes a mix of everything. Sometimes they are multiple counties away and there are sometimes where they fail pretty much everywhere. I go back and forth on whether I like hunting mast years or mast failure years better. They both have their advantages and disadvantages IMO.
Some do. Some don't. I just might...
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby Grizzlyadam » Sat Jun 26, 2021 4:41 am

Looks like this year is going to be a bit different than I'm used to. We have been invaded by gypsy moth caterpillars. They are hammering the oaks trees especially the white oaks.
KIMG3577.JPG

You can really see the impact on this hillside.
KIMG3573.JPG
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby Bigburner » Sat Jun 26, 2021 2:24 pm

Go back and see what years your had a dry spring or late frost. Drier springs and summer usually produce more acorns. The tree feels the need to propagate seed almost as a survival mechanism. Late spring storms or frost nukes the flowers and usually contributes to a poor or no crop.
And all this can vary over a landscape due to aspect and soil type. For some reason where I’m at certain species in the red oak group tend to do better. Ive have bucks come right out of bedding and start vacuuming up willow oak acorns which are small and have a very high tanic acid amount. But no whites that year so it was game on. I look for these trees on the off years with the white oaks.
But logging the good years is a good idea but if you have a bad one go look to at those last frost days.
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john1984
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby john1984 » Thu Jun 30, 2022 11:08 am

john1984 wrote:Since 2015 I started to pay attention to the bumper crop years and bare years. I'm going to list them. Please feel free to tell me about when you witnessed the bumper acorn crops and bad years. Please mention the region of the state.

West central Wisconsin
2015 bumper acorn crop
2016 no acorns whatsoever :cry:
2019 bumper acorn crop
2020 no acorns whatsoever :cry:

2021????



2021 ended up being a pretty good year for white oaks in my areas of west central Wisconsin.

How about your areas ?? How was the 2021 crop where you hunted?
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Re: History of your acorn crop

Unread postby Brad » Sat Jul 02, 2022 6:35 am

I live near St Louis MO & have a red oak in my yard that produced more acorns this past fall than any of the previous 8 years.
I don't know what would make a bumper crop, but I've heard poor acorn crops have mostly to do with when there is a late frost. Also I remember heading something about white oaks being effected the same year as the frost and red oaks crop being effected the year after the late frost... or something like that...


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