Hunting the Acorn Crop

This is an article as it appeared in the Game and Fish publications throughout the south.

Hunting For Acorns

Many hunters bewail the years when the acorn crop is abundant. That may make it harder to find deer in food plots — and you may actually have to hunt them! Here’s how.

By Carl Warmouth

The stand was about two-thirds of the way up a hardwood ridge. I was overlooking a hillside bench that’s one of my favorite deer travel corridors. The bench ran the perimeter of the rise, connecting a thick pine bedding area on my left to a white oak flat to my right.

It was the afternoon of opening day of bow season. I was glad to be back in the stand where I’d killed two deer on consecutive days the previous fall.

Today, a 15-mile-per-hour wind blew from the direction of the bedding area, making the sweet gum tree I was in sway back and forth. It also made white oak acorns thump down on the ground like hail.

With an hour of daylight left, I was hoping the weatherman’s forecast would be correct. As if cued by my thought, the wind suddenly died.

This was the magic hour.

Minutes later, I heard water sloshing in a creek, just beyond my sight. A deer was crossing the creek and heading my way. I stood up in the stand, fastened the release to the bowstring, took a comfortable stance and waited.

Soon I saw movement — a patch of brown, a hint of white and antlers!

My strategy was to let him pass by me on the trail and take the quartering-away shot as he headed for the acorn-bearing oaks. What I hadn’t anticipated was that he would stop in front of me at 15 yards — broadside.

I drew the bow, settled on a fluff of hair behind his shoulder and squeezed the release.

I watched in disbelief as my arrow ricocheted off a twig I hadn’t seen before. With a loud crack! it slammed into a tree 10 feet behind the deer.

To my further amazement, the buck didn’t even flinch. He never even paused to look up as I nocked another arrow, ducked below the twig this time, and put a broadhead on target.

To me, hunting the acorn crop is as good as deer hunting gets. For me, it has been as good as the rut, if not better. Deer get stupid over acorns, and when they’re plentiful, you can count every deer in the woods having mast on its mind.

I’ve probably killed more deer that were feeding on acorns, or heading to acorns, than in any other situation.

That’s why it always surprises me to hear hunters complain about “too many acorns.” Throughout most of the South, 2007-08 was a banner year for acorns.

For me, it was the best year I’ve had for sighting numbers of deer.

And yet, I heard many hunters say that it was their worst year for deer sightings. Throughout the season and well into the post-season, I listened to hunters and read their posts on Internet message boards saying that the deer were just not moving. From what I could tell, for most hunters it was a feast or famine year.

But while the many complained, a few seemed to be enjoying the time of their lives. Those who weren’t having much luck made statements like, “There are too many acorns in the woods. So the deer don’t have to move,” or else, “The deer must all be moving at night. I’ve been hunting both mornings and evenings and haven’t seen a thing.”

Then there’s my favorite: “Our food plots are knee-high this year, but the deer haven’t been in them. There are too many acorns on the ground.”

Yes, I understand that many factors influence deer movement. But I can’t understand why a hunter would continue to sit over a food plot if he knows his quarry is eating acorns.

Early in my hunting career, I was taught that the key to success was to follow the food source. Time of day, moon phase, temperature, barometric pressure, wind, terrain and deer densities are all factors that a good hunter should take into consideration. But food sources top them all.

RIGHT SPOT — RIGHT TIME
In deer hunting, hunting over acorns may be as close to a sure thing as you can get. But it’s not quite as simple as merely hanging a stand in an oak tree and taking your pick of the deer as they parade by.

It can be that simple, but there are some clear strategies you should know — particularly if you’re bowhunting in the early season when close shots are the rule.

Hunting “the woods” presents its own set of problems and challenges, and can be intimidating to people accustomed to hunting over food plots. Let’s look at different situations at various times of the day and year, and see if we can lessen the intimidation of hunting the acorn crop.

Coming in late also lets you hunt sites where bedding areas abut the oaks. In this scenario, setting up right in the middle of several oak trees makes perfect sense. You’ll be away from the bedding area and, while the deer graze on acorns, have plenty of time to make the shot.

MORNING HUNTS
I have a friend who does not deem himself a good deer hunter. And yet every year, he manages to shoot at least one big buck and several does for meat. His strategy?

Go into the woods late.

He’s amused that I get up at the crack of dawn and reach my stands at daybreak He claims that deer are bedding down at around daylight, but get up a few hours later to move around and feed some more — just about the time when most hunters are calling it a day.

He insists that he discovered this not because he’s so savvy, but because he’s too lazy to get up early.

It took me a long time to get my mind around the concept of going hunting after breakfast. Most of us are conditioned to begin our hunts very early in the morning. We anticipate that first hour or two of daylight.

I don’t mean to take anything away from this strategy, but deer sightings are high during the early morning, and an awful lot of deer have been killed during this time.

The problem is, we get busted an awful lot when we approach an oak flat under cover of darkness. When I approached oak trees early during a year of heavy acorn production, I don’t think I’ve ever made it to my stand without getting busted.

Once I finally convinced myself to do a midmorning hunt, I was sold. I can’t believe how many frustrating crack-of-dawn mornings I endured while deer blew, and stomped and ran away before I realized I could avoid all that by going in at, say, 9:00 a.m.

When acorns are on the ground, especially during the early season when deer haven’t yet felt hunting pressure, the animals move throughout the day. It’s not unreasonable to expect deer to bed down just after the sun comes up, and then return to feed on acorns a few hours later.

In fact, my hunting journal shows that in heavy acorn years, I saw the most deer, both bucks and does, between 10:00 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Coming in late also lets you hunt sites where bedding areas abut the oaks. In this scenario, setting up right in the middle of several oak trees makes perfect sense. You’ll be away from the bedding area and, while the deer graze on acorns, have plenty of time to make the shot.

Another good option for a morning stand that can be used before daylight is at the very floor of a bottom.

Ordinarily, I tend to avoid these areas because swirling air currents make it hard to stay upwind of a deer’s sensitive nose. But the wind is often at its lightest early in the day, and if you pick the right day, this can be a killer spot.

On my hunting property, there are two big hills. Between them is a deep bottom, and on top of those hills are many big white oaks. At either end of the hills are thick bedding areas.

Setting up along a travel route between oak trees and bedding areas can be effective at catching deer moving during the midday period. But I’ve found that sitting in the middle of the oak trees is more effective, particularly when those oaks are on a hilltop.

I think this is representative of many hunting properties. Deer use that bottom to travel from their bedding area to the acorns.

I love to sneak into this spot early, taking care to stay far away from the oak trees, and wait for deer to come by as they leave to go bed down.

The main difference is that in the approach mentioned previously, I am set up right in the feeding area, waiting for them to return to eat. In this one, I’m set up near the bedding area, waiting for them to leave the feeding area. In one approach I am counting on the deer to come back to the acorns, and in the other, I wait for them to leave the acorns.

MIDDAY HUNTS
Setting up along a travel route between oak trees and bedding areas can be effective at catching deer moving during the midday period. But I’ve found that sitting in the middle of the oak trees is more effective, particularly when those oaks are on a hilltop. For some reason, deer seem to be attracted to hilltop oak stands between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

At those times, an acorn-covered hilltop is going to be my first choice.

The advantage of being in the thick of the food source versus on the trail is that you can have a good long look at the deer as they move around between trees. Also, since it’s midday, you have plenty of time for tracking a deer, downing it and dragging it out.

If there are no oak-covered hilltops on your property, then any area featuring several oak trees, or a single “heirloom” tree among some pines will work just as well.

AFTERNOON HUNTS
Much as I love sitting on top of a hill, surrounded by oak trees, that’s probably the last place I want to be during a late afternoon hunt. I’ll admit to you right now that I can be a stubborn, prideful slow learner. I’m ashamed to admit how many times I’ve sat in a tree well after dark, waiting for feeding deer to leave. It’s been more times than it should have been.

The circumstances were usually something like this: With 30 minutes of daylight left, I would hear the unmistakable sound of deer tromping thorough the woods. A few minutes later, I’d glimpse of three, four, maybe five deer feeding towards me, just out of range, moving slowly and randomly. That would remind me that deer really have nowhere they have to be and no deadline for getting there.

As the final moments of daylight gave way to darkness, those deer would just be getting into shooting range. By the time it was pitch dark, they would be feeding right underneath me. Occasionally, I could wait them out. But more often than not, I would have to spook them before I could climb down.

Of course, just seeing deer is a lot of fun. But if your goal is to actually shoot one, then a better approach would be to intercept them before they get to their feeding area at dark. Obvious enough, but sometimes easier said than done!

That is where a hillside bench comes in. It’s not always easy to predict from which direction deer will approach a feeding area. But if that feeding area lies atop a hill, they will almost surely travel along a hillside bench for at least part of the way up.

As white oak acorns become scarce, deer focus their attention on the acorns of both red oak and water oak.

Of all terrain features, a bench is my favorite. While flats and bottoms can be hit or miss, a bench seems to be a whitetail’s consistently preferred route through the woods. The bench can be as wide as 30 to 40 yards, or barely as wide as the trail.

When choosing a site for my stand, I tend to look for the place where the bench becomes defined. It will tend to fade out where the hill gives way to flatter ground and might pinch down very narrow if the hillside gets steep. If you can find the spot where it becomes defined, you’ll likely be just far enough from the feeding area to avoid getting treed, and just far enough from the bedding area to avoid getting busted.

Set up above that bench within your comfortable shooting range.

ACORNS THROUGH THE SEASON
Much can be said about acorn production in general terms, but there are very few absolutes. Oak trees with large crowns generally produce more nuts than smaller oaks. Excellent acorn years are sometimes — but not always — followed by poor ones.

Rainfall, wind, frost, disease, and many other factors can influence acorn production. But depending on the species, the effects might not be seen for two to seven years later. Similarly, one tree might produce an abundant harvest while a similar tree a few yards away might be barren.

Of the many different varieties of oak trees in the South, three species are of primary importance to deer hunters: the white oak, the southern red oak, and the water oak. All of them bear varying degrees of significance, depending on which is most abundant on a given hunting property.

In general, the white oak is by far the most important. A white oak’s acorns are less tannic and therefore, more palatable than the other two types. Deer prefer them over the acorns of other varieties. White oak acorns are typically the first to be eaten and as such should be the focus of hunters during the early season.

With last year’s heavy white oak crop, many acorns remained on the ground all through the winter. In fact, many went uneaten and became rotten and moldy, though in most years they get devoured fairly early.

White oak trees can be identified by their scaly or shaggy bark, as well as by their leaves that are multi-lobed and rounded on the edges. White oaks get hit hard by deer, and the evidence they leave behind can be easily seen — cracked shells and a ring of trampled leaves around the tree.

As white oak acorns become scarce, deer focus their attention on the acorns of both red oak and water oak. Red oaks’ leaves have pointed lobes, while water oaks’ leaves are kind of spatula-shaped. Through deer may browse on the acorns of these two trees opportunistically, they really focus on them starting in about late November.

THE SAWTOOTH OAK ADVANTAGE

Early-season bowhunting in the South often means hot weather and dry conditions. Succulent browse is scarce, fall food plots havent’t come in, and white and red oak acorns have not yet fallen. This is when a planting of sawtooth oak trees can be of benefit to both hunters and deer. Sawtooth oaks are an Asian variety that have become naturalized in North America and do very well in the South. The advantage of having these trees on your property is that they produce heavy acorn crops and the acorns are huge. Given a choice between white oak and sawtooth acorns, deer will still take the white oaks, but sawtooth oaks produce much earlier in the season than any other variety. Consequently, they are deer magnets during those first few weeks after opening day. These trees also produce much earlier in their life than the other varieties. Sawtooth oaks produce acorns in as little as four to five years is they have plenty of sunlight, are watered well after transplanting, and are given fertilizer once they are established. Fertilizer application should not be done until the second growing season’s leaf-off period. A 10-10-10 fertilizer is generally suggested for landscape trees like sawtooth oaks. I have cultivated many sawtooth oak trees by collecting the acrons in the fall, planting them in milk jugs and potting soil and transplanting them in the spring when they are already 12 to 16 inches tall. You can also buy seedlings from nurseries. A relatively quick return on your investment and a sure way to attract deer during the early bow season make sawtooth oaks worth of a second look.

This is when it becomes important for hunters to set up an ambush based on this food source. It’s easy to tell when deer have been feeding on these acorns, as nearly every dead leaf around the trees will be tuned over.

Since these oaks’ nuts are much smaller than white oak acorns, they fall in between the leaves and become buried. Deer and other wildlife scavenge on them voraciously.

Many sources of food and natural browse are important to a deer’s diet. In the South, planted food plots certainly have their place, but acorns offer a great natural forage base.

If you take a few hours to identify the various species of trees on your property and plan a strategy based on their location, you’ll surely be in a better position to score when deer season rolls around.

Mountain Bike Hunting

This is an article as it appeared in the Fish and Game publications throughout the south in August 2008.

Tricking Out Your Bike

We’re talking about more than sticking a baseball card in the spokes to make your bicycle sound cool. Make that mountain bike a deer-hunting machine! (August 2008)

By Carl Warmouth

 With the right accessories, a mountain bike provides a very practical way to get into the woods for bowhunting. Photo by Carl Warmouth.

From my perch 18 feet up in a sweetgum tree, I couldn’t even see my hunting vehicle, which was barely 40 yards away. I’d stashed the camouflaged bicycle in a brushpile, and it was hidden so well that I was beginning to worry that I might never find it again.

My eyes traced the route that I’d taken through the woods along the hillside bench, past the big red oak, and around the felled pine. I knew it had to be down there somewhere.

Suddenly, movement to my left broke my concentration. A patch of brown was moving through the trees, leisurely working its way towards me. Within a few minutes, a mature doe had closed the gap between us to within 30 yards of my stand. Then it stopped abruptly to peer intently at something through the woods, head bobbing up and down as it strained to make sense of the object of curiosity — and I saw that my bike was actually much closer than I had realized, less than 10 yards from the matriarch. The animal finally seemed satisfied that the inanimate object was no threat and resumed feeding on white oak acorns.

I waited patiently as the doe worked its way closer, and when it got to within 20 yards, I placed my top pin just behind its shoulderblade and released my arrow. The broadhead found its mark, and a few minutes later, I was giving thanks for my first kill of the season.

GOING MOTORLESS
Before I started bowhunting, I had no idea of the joy that hunting unpressured deer brings. Only one other archer was in my hunting club, and those first few weeks before gun season started were truly wonderful.

An unpressured deer is a different animal: It moves around throughout the day, relaxed and casual in its movements. It strolls into open areas during daylight without even considering that it might need to look up into trees to check for humans.

But when trucks, four-wheelers and marching hunters break the eight-month silence and begin spreading foreign smells through the woods, it takes almost no time at all before the deer completely change their ways, transforming, seemingly overnight, into nervous, mostly nocturnal animals that proceed with caution, scenting the wind before emerging from thick cover. They pattern human movement — not difficult to do when humans are associated with running motors and exhaust fumes.

Hunters who want to avoid being patterned often park their vehicles a distance from their stands and take a long walk in, but unless you’re Ishi — and who among us wants to walk through the winter woods barefoot? — that’s a slow, noisy process. There’s no mistaking the sound of a human’s footsteps crunching through the leaves and snapping twigs along the way.

Getting to remote stands usually requires entering into the woods well before daylight; getting out requires long walks in the dark. Neither scenario makes for a silent passage. Striking a compromise between a quiet approach and a quick advance can be difficult — which is exactly what a mountain bike can offer.

Covering several hundred yards quickly is a simple affair for a hunter on a bike. Moreover, a bike seems to make less noise — or at least a less recognizable noise — than does someone walking; it certainly makes less noise that an ATV. Of course, if you’re riding in before dawn, you’ll want to have scouted the route before hand.

ikes can be surprisingly stealthy contraptions. One day a couple of years ago, I was riding back to my truck after a morning hunt. As I got within sight of the vehicle, I saw that my hunting buddy had made it back before me. Although I wasn’t trying to be especially quiet, I was able to ride right up behind him without him even knowing I was there. He nearly jumped out of his skin when I skidded to a stop!

On private land, a bike offers the benefit of getting in and out without spooking the deer onto adjacent properties — let the ATV riders push them to you! — while on public land it gives you an advantage over other hunters, getting you well off the main thoroughfares, past gates, and away from the hunters dependent on roads and big trails, and even those willing to do some walking in the woods.

If the mountain bike excels as a hunting machine, it shines even more in post-season scouting. If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t mind venturing into bedding areas once deer season ends, but you still want to get in and back out as quickly as possible. With the bike, you can do just that.

One tactic involves using the bike to ride primary doe trails, taking note of cross-trails — which are easy to see after the season is over — along the way. I don’t mind if I bump a buck at this time of year, either, since my bike and I will be long forgotten by the following fall.

Of course, a bike simplifies pre-season scouting as well. One of my favorite deer-related activities is a last-minute “speed-scouting” venture undertaken about a week before the season starts. I quickly beat a path across the property, checking cameras, surveying acorn crops, and looking for bucks’ hoof prints at creek crossings. My feeling is that the less time I spend in the woods scouting, the less likely I’ll be to spook deer. Scouting by bike allows me to accomplish in a few hours what might take days to do on foot.

SCENTED OR SCENT-FREE?
Another of the bike’s virtues: It’s basically devoid of petroleum aromas and other smells associated with internal-combustion vehicles: no gas, oil, coolant or transmission fluid to leave scent trails through the woods. Think of the bike’s tires as rolling rubber hunting boots: If your bike does double duty, its tires can obviously pick up scents from roads and parking lots, but if it’s a dedicated hunting tool, you’re virtually assured scent-free passages.

Of course, a thorough dousing with scent-eliminating spray never hurts, especially on the handlebars, tires and seat, where the maximum amount of human scent is likely to be deposited.

At the other end of the spectrum, a bike can be used purposely to lay down a scent trail. Try pouring your favorite estrous-doe urine into a small pump-spray bottle and spraying it onto a small spot on a tire. Every time that tire goes around it leaves an olfactory footprint just like a hot doe’s.

Opinion varies as to the effectiveness of scents for attracting deer, but I’ve witnessed at first hand non-human predators being attracted by a trail of deer odor.

During an afternoon hunt, I’d followed my customary practice and stashed my bike in some brush. With just a few minutes of daylight left, I saw a coyote approaching over my right shoulder, just trotting along at first. Suddenly it crossed the path that my bike’s doe-urine-anointed tires had rolled down as I rode in. Immediately picking up the olfactory cue, it crouched low to ground and began belly-crawling towards my bike, stopping to sniff each spot of deer scent left by the rubber. It stalked right up to the brushpile, and I believe that it fully expected to see a young doe bedded there.

After crouching and sniffing for several minutes, the songdog finally stood up and walked into the brush. It carefully inspected the bike, looked around the area, and then jogged off.

TRICKING IT OUT
The first step in building the ultimate hunting machine is picking out the bike. Personally, I didn’t want to invest a lot of money. A more passionate cyclist might criticize me on that point, arguing that you get what you pay for, and in retrospect, I might be inclined to agree with that view, as the model that I chose has required several repairs and upgrades over the past few years.

But my rationale for going cheap was that I knew from the onset of this project that my bike would be used for one purpose only: hunting. General abuse — crossing creeks and being tossed over barbed-wire fences, hidden in brushpiles and left outside for months at a time — was going to be the rule for this bike; it wouldn’t hang by hooks in the garage for very long.

The first order of business: Lose all the shine. After removing all the decals, I lightly sanded the finish and wiped the bike down thoroughly with acetone; then, every surface from which light could reflect was covered with olive-drab spray paint. My ride looked cooler already.

I continued the camouflaging process with adhesive vinyl in a popular camo pattern that a local sign company was able to order for me. The same material sometimes used to cover golf carts and panels on vehicles so I knew it would be sturdy. Applying it was more time-consuming than I’d anticipated, but in a few hours, the entire frame and several other parts were completely covered. (One tip: Putting the tape on in small pieces works much better than does trying to cover the whole thing at once. The small pieces blend together so well that everyone who’s seen the bike assumes that it was film-dipped.) The vinyl applied, I finished by breaking the remaining olive drab areas up with flat gray, tan, brown and black spray paint.

After three years of rough use, the vinyl covering has held up surprisingly well, marred only by a few predictable chips and scuffs, and the olive drab base coat continues to prevent any glare or reflections.

The next step: Accessorize the bike for hunting. My primary goal was to customize a bike that I could use to carry my bow and, perhaps, a small pack into the woods. (The design I eventually came up with works for rifle hunters, too.)

My first idea was to devise a means of carrying the bow across the handlebars somehow, but they were too narrow, and the handbrakes were in the way, so that proved impractical. The handlebars would have to serve another purpose. A visit to a local bike shop produced a large handlebar-mounted basket; perfect for carrying my backpack or other bulky items, it removes easily when not needed. A fanny pack fastened to the handlebars is another good option for carrying smaller items.

At the same bike shop I also found a cargo rack that mounted over the rear tire. Next came a homemade bow rack consisting of a piece of aluminum tubing, purchased at a hardware store and a set of bow/gun holders designed to mount on an ATV rack or handlebars. To make the bow rack I attached the piece of aluminum tubing crossways at the farthest rearward portion of the cargo rack, using nuts and bolts, and then mounted the ATV bow/gun holder to that. It worked like a charm, and I was soon making it silently to my stand in a third of the time that it’d have taken me to walk.

It wasn’t long before I was using my bike for other hunting chores, like hanging tree stands. Of course, you’re not going to carry a ladder stand through the woods on a bike, but lock-on type stands and even some climbers are easy to strap to the rack. By using the front basket to carry a bag of screw-in tree steps, a safety harness and a haul line, and tasking the rear rack to carry the stand, hauling my entire set-up to even remote parts of my hunting property was a simple affair.

But it didn’t happen without some trial and error. My first design flaw became apparent when I tried to carry a lock-on tree stand and a bow on the rear rack at the same time: not enough room. Raising the height of the bow holder with longer bolts and metal spacers solved that problem. By getting the bow above the cargo, I was able to make use of the entire length of the rack.

PACKING IT OUT
Admittedly, ATVs outperform bikes when it comes to one critical task: getting a deer out of the woods. Sorry, folks, but I’ve tried it all — plastic sleds, bike trailers, you name it — and there’s just no good way to lug dead weight with a bike.

Every stick, vine, rock, branch and felled log finds a way to impede your progress — and that’s just going downhill. Skinned ankles, banged-up shins and the never-pleasant lunging off the seat and onto the bar of the bike are good-enough reasons not even to try it.

When it comes to dragging that trophy buck back to the truck, you’re far better off either using a motorized vehicle or doing it the old-fashioned way with muscle power; go back for the bike later. If that’s discouraging, take heart in the fact that you might not have even seen that deer were it not for the bike.

* * *

If you’re looking for a low-impact way to hunt, using a mountain bike will serve that purpose very well. It’s quiet, quick, versatile and just plain fun. If you’ve never tried it before, you owe it to yourself to pull that bike off those hooks in the garage, trick it out and hit the woods with it.