Acorn Souring.....Myth or Legend.....

[Smart]

Here is a thread I try to bring up about this time every year because of numerous posts about acorns souring. Ricky T and some of the folks on this thread provided some seriously good insight and changed my mind on the souring quickly after a rain theory....or at least those acorns not bored into keeping well into the spring.


It is a pretty good read.....Not trying to change anybodies mind but it will make you think. We don;t really ahve any acorns this year so its a non-issue for me..

http://discussions.texasbowhunter.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110555&highlight=acorns

[D C]

Man thats crazy. Always heard that rain would spoil em. Never thought about how squirrel will bury one and eat it several months later. Guess that shoots my hopes down for our acorn crop to be done in a couple weeks

[Patton]

good thread for sure

[Bonesplitter]

They dont sour unless cracked is what Ive always heard.

[Mike Murphey]

I think they are too dense to absorb too much water...like stated above, squirrels will bury them and come back in months to eat them.....

[ZZ Pops]

...Guess that shoots my hopes down for our acorn crop to be done in a couple weeks

I wish we had an acorn crop to worry about. The deer are starving in our little part of the hill country.

[dbaio1]

We have around 120 or so, 100+ year old white oaks along a creek bottom that that runs a little over a mile in length and ranges from 50 - 250 yards wide on both sides of the creek that floods every year. Sometimes the bottom will hold 1-2 ft of water for a few weeks. I can assure you I have seen deer eating acorns in these areas once the water goes down. I had an old timer tell me years ago, the deer/wildlife might move on to acorns out of the flood zone once it floods, but once the dry ground acorns are gone, they are going back to the bottom and finish off the acorns. The results are right there on the ground. So with that said, I think it may alter the taste but eventually they will be hammered and consumed till all gone. Glad to have acorns with corn around $10 per 50#. We have cut our corn tonnage in half.

[KickerPoint79]

Ive always heard it but doesn't jive with my observations. I see deer and other critters eating acorns well into the spring. Those acorns have been rained, snowed on and froze yet they still gobble them up.

[miket]

Every one i have tasted was bitter/sour.

[Ricky T]

Smart: I love ya, brother.

[unclefish]

There was a survival show on the other night where they gathered acorns for food. They were very bitter so the leached them in water over night and made them taste much better. It gets all the tannins out which make them bitter in the first place. It sweeten them up I guess.

Something else to think about.

[Ricky T]

Another interesting observation I've seen concerning acorns is that the oaks seem to anticipate trouble down the road and make/drop abundant acorn crops in drought years. HOWEVER, severe drought causes all kinds of havoc. A lot of the oaks I've seen this year anticipated the drought and started making their acorns but the severity of the drought didn't allow them to mature and they just made a bunch of popcorn acorns that dropped early for the most part. Some of the trees this year were so stressed they gave it up early and didn't even make.

And, as always in nature, there were many oaks with roots in favorable ground where water is retained for whatever reason, rocks, sandstone, layers of dense ground, shade, that allows water to stay around that made a bunch of acorns even this year.

I'd still rather arrow an old whitetail buck slipping into an acorn tree than a feeder any day, but the feeders oughta be GOOD this year!

[BigL]

I actually do have acorns in my oak trees. About 5 years ago I cleaned out all the cedar trees around this one clump of oaks and they have been producing acorns every since like you couldn't believe it. This year is no different. Only difference this year is that I finally got around to putting a stand ~20 yards away...