doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Acorn crop way down from last year in NH?

I never really pay much attention to the acorn drop, but the two big trees by my driveway dropped so many acorns last year it was like driving over a bed of ball bearings, this year, I have to look hard to find any, there are precious few left in the trees...must be down about 90+%, is this a bad year all over...weather issues, or what?...must be tough on the critters that rely on them
cheers
franc

Franc, masting, as it is called, is basically an evolutionarily selected trait to leave seed predators high and dry occasionally and thus hold down their numbers a might and prevent further specialization of the predators on that particular seed. Many nut trees and also conifers do this. HOW they do it is another thing.

Northeast Massachusetts and southern Maine have good oak mast crops this fall. The deer should be happy.

Black walnuts are as rare as hens teeth this year. Red oak has heavy crop but white oak are almost bare. Red oak mast tends to be more consistent here with white oaks being up and down almost every year. I think an awful lot of deer are getting food from an automatic feeder there days.

lots o nuts here in southern nh...mostly leaf peepers from mass...

A ton of black walnuts falling around here this year.

Here in Michigan's North central lower peninsula we have a huge Red oak acorn crop, for the second year running. It seems like it is raining acorns.

I cannot remember ever having 2 such large acorn crops back-to-back.

I was going to post about ours ..... until I reread the title. He's interested in the rest of NH.

SRH

I had never heard of such a thing as the above definition of "masting". So I looked it up. Turns out, from several reliable sources, that isn't quite how it works.

https://www.britannica.com/science/mast-seeding

I didn't want folks thinking that their nut bearing trees had actually figured out a way to starve seed eating animals. I've always felt that the local or regional climate has a lot to do with nut production in any given year, just as climate during flowering and growing seasons affects production of many other crops. The fact that none of us are seeing anything that hasn't occurred before should reinforce the fact that so-called climate change is not spiraling out of control, as the hysterical anti-gun Liberal Left Democrat Chicken Littles are crying about.

The red, white, and pin oak acorns, hickory nut, and black walnut crop looks pretty good here this year. This thread reminds me that the 2nd week in October is the prime time to go out back and collect my hazel nuts, before the squirrels beat me to them.

this year in tidewater VA the acorns are extremely small and sparse. and some trees are not producing any. Seemed like very wet spring around the farm we use for dog training.