Early Sign Points to Good Deer Season
John Woods 10.15.18
This past week, remnants of high winds blew through my neighborhood. The gusts left pieces of limbs and leaves all over my yard. As I worked to clean up the mess, a huge grin came across my face. My neighbor’s huge white oak tree left limb residue all over the ground, but every piece was loaded with green acorns – That’s a sure sign that points to a good deer season!
Finding a tree full of green acorns in late summer spells good news for the coming fall. If there are already acorns on these trees in a residential neighborhood, then the same species of oaks will be bearing acorns wherever they are in this region.
I can now check that pre-season scouting find off my list.
Early Sign Points to Good Deer Season
As we all know, the whitetail deer love acorns. They are certainly a prime fall food for deer and they can be counted on to rush into oak groves to gobble them up. Acorns are rich in valuable food nutrients, and despite good habitat foods in quantity, deer will come to falling acorns as soon as they start hitting the ground.
Again, I refer to my previous statement: Seeing acorns now is fantastic news!
Hunting contacts that I monitor this time of pre-season already have a number of trail cameras out in the woods and overlooking early planted food plots. Doing camera work now gives hunters an edge to know what kinds of bucks are in the area, as well as doe numbers. This is critical data for hunters, as it tells us how many deer are visiting what areas, as well as any potential bucks that might be showing up.
“I put out cameras on all my food plots that I just planted about a week ago. We have had good steady rains after a long dry spell and the plots are already coming up. My first review of the camera cards showed a number of does coming in to browse around on the first ryegrass blades. Small bucks were already stepping out of the woods, too,” noted Kerry French, a seasoned buck hunter from Central Mississippi.
“The one puzzling piece right now is that all of the bucks on camera are already being caught at night. So far, I am not getting any bucks on camera during the day like last year. Even so, this is good info I need to know before opening day,” said French. Early sign like acorns or deer on cameras sets the stage for a good deer season ahead.
