In years with heavy acorn crops, deer have little reason to leave the security of the timber. That leaves bowhunters little choice but to move in and hunt close to bedding areas. (Lance Krueger photo)
October 17, 2024
By Bill Winke
As bowhunters, we know acorns are probably a good thing for us. They give the deer something more to eat, and when acorns are dropping, we can hunt near oak trees, but I am not sure we really appreciate how much power those little brown balls have to change the behavior of the deer we hunt.
I learned last season!
I have been bowhunting whitetails for 45 years; seriously for about 35 of those years. During that time, I have never seen an acorn crop like we had last fall in Iowa. Every oak tree, of every variety, seemed to be loaded with acorns, and the result was a tough season for me and several of my friends. When the deer can stop and eat anywhere they please, and eat something they really like, it makes it much harder to get them to travel through the fringe locations where you have the advantage as a bowhunter.
When the acorns are thick, the only way to get the deer is to go in after them. That brings us to a bigger discussion of hunting strategy and playing the risk/reward tradeoff. But to cut right to the point, when you must hunt close to where deer bed to see them in daylight, your season becomes a ticking time bomb. Once the deer know you are hunting them, the bomb explodes and the deer become a lot harder to kill. They figure it out really fast when you are sitting in their living room. So, you typically only get a few opportunities to hunt near bedding areas before the jig is up.
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That’s the big picture of how acorns affect deer hunting. They dramatically change the way the deer move. Now, let’s dive into the details and discuss how last season played out for me and what I learned along the way.
Acorns and Deer Behavior Over the years, I have evolved into a very cautious bowhunter. Based on last year, I would say I may have become too cautious. In any event, I like to stay on the fringes of the timber and not go in deep unless conditions are just right. I cringe at the thought of a buck I am hunting finding me sitting in a tree in what he normally considers his haven. If I get him, great; but if not, educating him may lead to a really challenging season.
As a result, I only hunt bedding areas and big timber locations when the wind is blowing hard enough to cover any noise and movement I make sneaking in, and only when I have a good wind advantage in the stand. Even then, I usually only do it on choice days during peak rut.
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Maybe you only get that ideal wind a few times in the first 10 days of November. Even then, if the wind isn’t blowing at a decent speed, you risk spooking deer by walking across crunchy leaves that sound like crunching Corn Flakes as you approach. In a normal fall, I may only get to hunt my favorite bedding area stands two or three times. Normally, I bridge the days between these ideal hunts by sitting in known funnels or blinds near small food plots just inside the cover. Usually, that approach works well: hunt carefully until the conditions are right, and then make the big move.
The forests in my hunting area in Iowa are dominated by oaks, and every one of them was filled with acorns last fall. It’s no wonder the deer weren’t using my small corn plot in the valley’s bottom! Last season, however, this time-tested approach was my kiss of death. The deer weren’t using those fringe area funnels, and they weren’t swinging past those small food plots. In fact, they weren’t feeding in any open areas, at least none I could identify. It was as if the acorn drop caused the deer to dig holes and crawl into them.
After a few weeks of seeing very few deer, I realized what was happening. Yet I didn’t have enough good stand sites scouted out deep in the timber to feel comfortable going in after them. I didn’t feel good about just piling into those bedding areas with little more than hope. I figured it was better to keep the deer at ease. I told myself it was just a matter of time before they would revert to their traditional patterns. So, I continued to play it safe all season (other than two days) and stuck to my fringe stands.
At one point I went five days without seeing a deer! And I thought I was hunting good spots. Granted, that farm doesn’t have tons of deer, but I should have seen at least a few on each sit. It was by far the slowest hunting of my life, even going back to my boyhood years.
I mentioned the two exceptional days a couple paragraphs back. I did hunt a stand I had deep in the timber twice, and both those hunts resulted in great action — the only great action of the season. On the first trip, Nov. 9, I was able to shoot a very nice buck and a doe. I think he was bedded on a nearby ridgetop point (a typical bedding pattern in bluff country). He was drifting along the hardwood ridge in my direction, not seeming to be in any hurry, more than an hour before the end of legal shooting time.
Luck favored me and the nice 10-pointer zig-zagged right to my stand on the edge of a rarely used two-track lane. The shot was less than 20 yards, and the buck went down fewer than 75 yards from my stand. When that buck showed up, the adrenaline was like getting struck by a lightning bolt after the slow hunts I had been having.
I made my first foray into the timber last Nov. 9 and immediately found myself in the thick of the action, taking this great 10-pointer and a doe on the same sit. I hunted that stand again a week later, and on that day I watched another good buck chasing does just out of bow range. I saw eight different bucks and a handful of does that morning, more than I had seen the past two weeks combined!
So, with all the acorns, the deer weren’t leaving the deep timber, and they weren’t traveling nearly as much as they normally would. Even during the rut, the does didn’t have to move to find food, so the bucks didn’t have to cover much ground to find them. The patterns of the entire herd were compressed to the places where the acorns were piling up.
The acorns lasted all winter on this farm. In fact, there were still viable acorns (not hollow, rotten ones) on the ground in April. I have never seen so many little oak trees springing up in the timber from all the uneaten acorns as I did this spring. It’s no stretch to say that back in the fall, there were tens of millions of acorns littering the forest floor. That represented so much food the deer barely touched my plots. One small plot of corn I planted was still less than half eaten in the spring.
Iowa bowhunters weren’t alone in experiencing an overabundance of acorns last fall. Just about everyone I talked to from all over the country saw the same thing — tons of acorns on every oak tree and deer that weren’t leaving the timber. Those bowhunters who naturally hunt deep in the timber reported a great season, while those who usually hunt fringe spots and small food plots reported a slow season.
The Takeaway It was an eye-opener for sure. I never thought, after so many years of bowhunting, I would encounter something that really took me by surprise. I never expected to say this, but you can have too many acorns. I wasn’t ready for it. I am not sure if I will ever see another year with as many acorns as we saw last year, but I do believe that even on “normal” high-output acorn years (they happen every few years), deer change their behavior enough that it is worth tuning into this cause and effect.
Scouting the oak trees in your hunting area during late summer to determine whether the year’s acorn crop is plentiful is important in planning your fall hunting strategy. When acorns are plentiful, you should plan to spend the majority of your time in the timber. (Emily Konkler photo) First, I am going to make sure I have more huntable spots deeper in the timber. At least then I won’t be caught flat-footed. Second, I will be sure to pay a lot more attention to the number of acorns on the trees I pass during late summer. It makes sense to scout acorns in August, so we know what’s coming. If it appears we have a good acorn year in the offing, plan to hunt more of those timber stands.
Third, I won’t just assume I can wait the deer out until they mop up all the acorns and go back to normal food sources prior to the rut. Why give up that part of the season? I may as well be hunting them where they feed, even in the early parts of the season, not just after they eat the acorns.
This is a lesson I should have learned a long time ago. I remember back in late October 2004, a friend named Larry Zach presented this insight and I failed to pick up on it. That was another big acorn year, and Larry found a really nice 10-pointer on a farm I also had access to hunt. Larry saw that buck several evenings on an oak ridge where the deer spent hours each day, eating acorns near his bed. I can’t remember if Larry moved his stand, but I do remember that finally, on Oct. 21, he got the huge buck within bow range and was able to tag him.
Acorns come in many shapes and sizes, depending on the oak species. Shown here, from left, are acorns from a Chinkapin oak, white oak and swamp white oak. I wrote it off as Larry just being a better, more patient deer hunter than me. I was content to wait for the rut. But in reality, Larry was just reacting to what the deer were doing better than I was. It was a big acorn year, so he spent his time back on the oak ridges hunting over acorns. It was that simple. Find the food, find the deer.
I was content to wait for the rut while my friend was out there making things happen. In the end, that really is one of the key traits of a good bowhunter — being able to quickly react to changing conditions and changing behavior. I was stuck in my “rut,” and that hurt me.
Don’t let it hurt you.
