Saturday, January 5, 2008

Squirrels or Deer

When you come across acorns that have been eaten in the woods don't get too excited about what you may have found until you do a little further investigation. 

Deer love acorns but so do squirrels. I know a hunter that has hunted over acorns with high expectations, only to be let down by the lack of feeding deer and all of the annoying squirrels running around his tree.

To tell if it was deer or squirrels eating those acorns take a look at the left behind portions of the acorn. Deer will snap the cap of the acorn off with their teeth and then eat the rest of the acorn. A squirrel will either take to whole acorn or will leave behind chewed acorns. They will look like someone took a bite out of the acorn. If you are finding mostly chewed acorns and not the caps, either change locations or go get your squirrel gun.

5 comments:

SimplyOutdoors said...

A very intriguing and informative post. Something I didn't no as well. Thanks for the tip.

Doug Skinner said...

Squirrels are irksome creatures...In one of the pieces I hunt I counted 36 different squirrels within my lines of sight...All running around, all doing their best deer imitations...

Good post here.

Anonymous said...

Great tip, Craig.

Most of the areas I hunt back east (NC) have a huge crop of acorns this year. I've actually been using the squirrels as sentinels to let me know when a deer is coming... as they'll grab an acorn and run up the tree if anything comes near.

Unfortunately, no deer interrupted the feeding frenzy... and the ground was littered with half-chewed acorns.

Othmar Vohringer said...

Good post and advice. As Phillip said squirrels are also good deer announcers. If squirrels barks get ready it might be that a deer is approaching. Squirrels and deer are direct food competitors thus squirrels don’t like deer much.

-ov-

Anonymous said...

That's a great tip. I didn't know you could tell from the way it was eaten. I'm going to be able to use this one.
Thanks





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