Noob Question For Those With Chestnut Trees

[bigbendmarine]

Embarrassingly ignorant question for those of you with chestnut trees... my trees are just producing their first few burs (which I appreciate may not have meaty seeds in them the first go round) but I've also got some friends with more mature trees, and one living in town offered me to have a decent haul of them for free if I want them.

So here's my question... I don't want to hunt over them but would like to put them out as treats for the local herd (and for some game camera captures) as well as introduce them to eating them since my trees will increasingly bear in years to come. Do the burs open and make getting the seeds out relatively easy for the deer, or do they have to paw the spiky burs open? Asked another way, is it a tough task for them to get the seeds out of the burs? One of the reasons I ask is the photo my friend sent of the burs he's collected look mostly closed.

Looking forward to being a bit less ignorant soon as someone answers and sheds some insight!

 

[Native Hunter]

I have many chestnut trees. I've found that the trait of the bur opening and letting the nuts fall varies from tree to tree - just like the drop time varies with individual trees. When I picked up chestnuts recently, a good number of them were just laying there on the ground, but there were some that I had to mash the bur and roll it with my boot to get the nuts out. I think if you plant several trees that some will be prone to letting the nuts fall free while others will be more prone to the burs not opening. The average tree will be somewhere in between with a few burs that open well and a few that don't.

 

[bigbendmarine]

Native Hunter, MUCH appreciate the reply but still has me wondering what the deer do with ones difficult to open. Are they able to paw them open? Or just leave them on the ground unopened?

 

[Native Hunter]

I think it would depend on food availability and how badly they wanted them. I've never really watched it that closely.

 

[yoderjac]

Embarrassingly ignorant question for those of you with chestnut trees... my trees are just producing their first few burs (which I appreciate may not have meaty seeds in them the first go round) but I've also got some friends with more mature trees, and one living in town offered me to have a decent haul of them for free if I want them.

So here's my question... I don't want to hunt over them but would like to put them out as treats for the local herd (and for some game camera captures) as well as introduce them to eating them since my trees will increasingly bear in years to come. Do the burs open and make getting the seeds out relatively easy for the deer, or do they have to paw the spiky burs open? Asked another way, is it a tough task for them to get the seeds out of the burs? One of the reasons I ask is the photo my friend sent of the burs he's collected look mostly closed.

Looking forward to being a bit less ignorant soon as someone answers and sheds some insight!

I believe it depends on the variety. One of the specific characteristics that Dunstan chestnuts were marked for is the fact that the nut falls from the burr while it is on the tree making them easy for deer to get at. A lot of the Chinese chestnuts I've seen have burrs laying on the ground partially open with the nut inside. I got the first few nuts from my (progeny of Dunstan) and the burrs opened enough on the tree for me to extract the nuts easily. That makes me think they will act like the parent tree in this respect. I picked my few nuts as soon as I saw the burrs opening so the animals would not get them as I wanted to play with growing them out. This year, a few of my trees have produced significantly more nuts. I'm going to let the deer and wildlife have at them this year. I should know for sure in a month or so.

It is my understanding that deer had no real problem extracting American chestnuts from the burrs when they dominated the eastern forest. So, I would not worry much about it.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[j-bird]

I suspect that once the deer realize they are food and that they like them they will paw at them as needed to extract the nut. I see deer do a similar thing with corn that has the husk on it. Some are delicate in nature...others simply try brute force....but if they are motivated they will do what they need to in order to access the food.

 

[bigbendmarine]

Haven't yet gotten delivery of the chestnuts but if/when I do, I'll set up a camera to video exactly how they take them on (assuming squirrels and/or hogs don't rob them all first).

Appreciating the nuts I'm about to mention are a completely different beast and literally, as the old phrase goes, "a tougher nut to crack" I've got some hickories on my place that produced delicious meat but are so tough to crack the deer don't touch them though hogs will risk life and limb all hours of the day to get them and you can tell when they're eating them a football field away due to the God-awful cracking noise it makes... hurts to even listen to it, much less thinking about what would happen if I tried. Pretty sure I'd have to have dentures put in the very next day.

 

[bigbendmarine]

Well... unfortunately, looks like my desire to film deer taking on the burs "won't bear fruit" so to speak... seeds in the burs all appear to be bone dry, thin, and without any significant meat. Not sure if due to bine dry conditions we've had over last couple two months, lack of pollination, age of tree, or what but cant imagine much other than squirrels would fight to eat them.

 

[Native Hunter]

That is common in young trees just beginning to bear. It can also happen in older trees due to some negative factor such as unfavorable weather at pollination time.

 

[yoderjac]

I checked my Dunstan chestnuts today. None have opened yet. I think last year they began to open in mid-september. They are young trees just starting to produce. I'm not sure if that is it, or it is just the weather we have had, but it looks like they will hold well into our archery season (starts next Saturday) this year.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[TreeDaddy]

Mine have opened here(Dunstans)

collected 90 viable seeds.....soaked x24 hrs and into the crisper!!

bill

 

[Native Hunter]

Embarrassingly ignorant question for those of you with chestnut trees... my trees are just producing their first few burs (which I appreciate may not have meaty seeds in them the first go round) but I've also got some friends with more mature trees, and one living in town offered me to have a decent haul of them for free if I want them.

So here's my question... I don't want to hunt over them but would like to put them out as treats for the local herd (and for some game camera captures) as well as introduce them to eating them since my trees will increasingly bear in years to come. Do the burs open and make getting the seeds out relatively easy for the deer, or do they have to paw the spiky burs open? Asked another way, is it a tough task for them to get the seeds out of the burs? One of the reasons I ask is the photo my friend sent of the burs he's collected look mostly closed.

Looking forward to being a bit less ignorant soon as someone answers and sheds some insight!

bigbendmarine, since the time you asked this question I have been trying to pay more attention to the chestnut burs. I've picked up chestnuts twice since then, including another gallon today. The burs are not an issue with my Chinese trees. Today, 95% of my chestnuts were just laying on the ground free of burs, and all of the ones in burs could be removed with two fingers. I do recall that in the first bunch I picked up this year there were a few burs that seemed tight and I rolled them with my boot, but even these were very few. Today, I didn't do that at all, and for the most part then nuts were just laying in the wide open.

For what it's worth, I also noticed today that chestnuts were being eaten more under the trees closest to where deer leave the bedding areas and enter the tree planting. That makes sense, because they do the same thing to that end of the food plots. There was lots of "sign" showing up there but very little under the trees a couple of hundred yards down the trail.

Chestnuts are great for both deer and humans, but they aren't magic by any means as tree vendors would have us believe. My ground is covered with nuts right now, and they are being eaten, but many will just lie there and rot. The local deer are eating them, but deer aren't coming in from miles around to eat them.

 

[yoderjac]

Well, I won't be able to tell you when mine drop this year. I was doing some final tasks before bowhunting begins tomorrow. I drove passed the trees that were producing nuts and didn't see any. Just thought I was going too fast. On the way back I stopped for a closer look. They were all gone. No husks on the ground. All of the branches that had nuts were bitten off below the nuts. They were way too high for deer. It was clearly a climbing animal. GIven that no branches were broken and the nuts were on small diameter branches, I'm presuming squirrels bit off the branch and then dragged them away with the husks.

I've had squirrels bite off young trees on my deck, but this is the first time I've seen this in the field. We do have a poor mast crop this year.




Thanks,

Jack