Rut activity Update?

[electricstart]

3 minutes ago, archer36 said:

If you have acorns, they will focus on them. Any other bait will get ignored. 

Agree, White acorns deer will eat over everything in my area. 

[hammer4reel]

8 minutes ago, archer36 said:

If you have acorns, they will focus on them. Any other bait will get ignored. 

Many will 

not all 

[archer36]

16 minutes ago, electricstart said:

Agree, White acorns deer will eat over everything in my area. 

Up until about three weeks ago, deer were predictably in the orchard. Eating fruits and grasses. Once acorns started dropping, you saw less and less. Now you hardly get a picture of a single deer and there are tons of apples on the ground. 

[electric10162]

4 minutes ago, archer36 said:

Up until about three weeks ago, deer were predictably in the orchard. Eating fruits and grasses. Once acorns started dropping, you saw less and less. Now you hardly get a picture of a single deer and there are tons of apples on the ground. 

Apples are tough on a whitetail's stomach. Before I had my own property, we used to mix apples with corn and "sweet horse" to lessen the acidity. Unfortunately this is candy to the black bear.

One thing I noticed with my clover plots is deer can eat for an hour, but will hang in the edges for woody browse for quite a while after.

[archer36]

7 minutes ago, electric10162 said:

Apples are tough on a whitetail's stomach. Before I had my own property, we used to mix apples with corn and "sweet horse" to lessen the acidity. Unfortunately this is candy to the black bear.

One thing I noticed with my clover plots is deer can eat for an hour, but will hang in the edges for woody browse for quite a while after.

Yes. I am not saying that is a preferred food source. I can tell you, in late winter when apples are long gone, they make great bait if you can catch a stretch of moderate temps and they don't freeze solid. 

We don't have any Bear problems in my hunting area. 

Edited October 17, 2022 by archer36

[electric10162]

4 minutes ago, archer36 said:

Yes. I am not saying that is a preferred food source. I can tell you, in late winter when apples are long gone, they make great bait if you can catch a stretch of moderate temps and they don't freeze solid. 

Wasn't disagreeing either. Chestnuts are nutritionally better and are more palatable after the first good freeze making acorns bitter apparently. I have tons of acorns and some chestnut in addition to food plots. I ordered 50 Dunstan Chestnut trees for a early spring planting. They should begin producing in 3 to 5 years.

[BowhunterNJ]

I spoke with TurkeyWing and verified with @Rusty, the rut ended in August.  
 

Im seeing some young bucks pushing does around.

[archer36]

8 minutes ago, electric10162 said:

Wasn't disagreeing either. Chestnuts are nutritionally better and are more palatable after the first good freeze making acorns bitter apparently. I have tons of acorns and some chestnut in addition to food plots. I ordered 50 Dunstan Chestnut trees for a early spring planting. They should begin producing in 3 to 5 years.

Well I can't disagree. I years of abundant acorn crops, you see them laying on the ground long after the winter is over. Deer don't seem to want them after that. But if you ever tasted an acorn, even when it first falls to the ground, it's bitter as hell. I don't know how much worse it can get. 

Edited October 17, 2022 by archer36

[Bucksnbows]

5 minutes ago, archer36 said:

Well I can't disagree. I years of abundant acorn crops, you see them laying on the ground long after the winter is over. Deer don't seem to want them after that. But if you ever tasted an acorn, even when it first falls to the ground, it's bitter as hell. I don't know how much worse it can get. 

White oak acorns lack that bitterness. You probably sampled a red oak acorn. 

[archer36]

4 minutes ago, Bucksnbows said:

White oak acorns lack that bitterness. You probably sampled a red oak acorn. 

I'm not an acorn expert but they were pretty big a "white". 

[Bucksnbows]

3 minutes ago, archer36 said:

I'm not an acorn expert but they were pretty big a "white". 

LOL, white oak acorns are green like all other acorns. They turn brown in time. Some will turn yellow. The bark of their trees is much whiter than red oaks, hence the name. 

[Mixbaghunter]

I have a group of doe's and small bucks at different times on pile bucks have been play fighting for a while . Bit all activities are at night. Hoping the cold weather will kick things off. But can't shoot buck till permit. All this in zone 8

[smittty]

Let me share a story. I hunted a produce farm for years when I first started hunting it the farmer and 80 year old man seen me driving to the back of one of the fields with a load of corn he says to me where you going with all that corn I said am baiting the deer he started laughing and said they won’t eat it. Welp I thought he was crazy and put 400 pounds of corn down next night I hunted the corner pile. Well them deer came out I mean a lot of them walked right over that corn and kept going to the watermelon field. They wanted watermelons and that was it the corn rotted then when the melons where gone they moved to sweet potato and would just eat the top where they are attached to the vine or root then when they where gone they went to the apples then finally the collards. Them deer knew what they wanted and that was that. 

[archer36]

21 minutes ago, Bucksnbows said:

LOL, white oak acorns are green like all other acorns. They turn brown in time. Some will turn yellow. The bark of their trees is much whiter than red oaks, hence the name. 

Well, that's why I had "white" in quotes. They were not white but whiteish. They shouldn't call them "white" acorns then. So, I guess everyone is a little wrong. 

[archer36]

15 minutes ago, smittty said:

Let me share a story. I hunted a produce farm for years when I first started hunting it the farmer and 80 year old man seen me driving to the back of one of the fields with a load of corn he says to me where you going with all that corn I said am baiting the deer he started laughing and said they won’t eat it. Welp I thought he was crazy and put 400 pounds of corn down next night I hunted the corner pile. Well them deer came out I mean a lot of them walked right over that corn and kept going to the watermelon field. They wanted watermelons and that was it the corn rotted then when the melons where gone they moved to sweet potato and would just eat the top where they are attached to the vine or root then when they where gone they went to the apples then finally the collards. Them deer knew what they wanted and that was that. 

Deer won't touch pumpkins on one of my farms. Guys say they get creamed in other places.