Being a whitetail hunter and having a majority of my success havesting whitetails in acorn droves, is there any kind of fertilizer I can spread around Oak's to ensure a good acorn crop every year?
Not really. The acorn is the fruit of the oak tree. Being a fruiting body, other environmental conditions have a greater impact.
These would include temperature and moisture, which you don't have that much control over. Excessive winds can blow flowers from trees as well as heavy rains. Too low of a temperture can freeze flowers or retard pollination. If fertilization was an answer, orchards would be doing more of it to get greater and consistent yields. Not necessarily the case.
You can control the amount of oak in a given area by eliminating the non-oak species. This can be done by either harvesting or girdling the non-oak species in the overstory. Also, having enough room for crown expansion will yield healthier trees.
Concur, fertilization not very effective. You may want to determine what type oak ecosystem you are hunting in, soil type, slope, aspect, moisture, etc. White oak is the most favored of white-tailed deer. Species in the white oak group produce good acorn crops every other year providing they are not limited by weather factors such as late frost. Species in the red oak group are more sporadic. They produce good ctops every 3 to 4 years. Oaks with crowns fully exposed to sunlight produce more acorns than those partially or totally shaded. They can also cope better with insect defoliation that may kill partially or totally shaded trees. Gypsy moth has been a problem in the Harrison area. Most oaks take over 20 years before acorn production begins. As stated by Woodtick, professional forest management will favor oak mast to increase wildlife benefits. You may want to pick up the Michigan DNR publication there in the local MDNR office if you haven't already, titled "Oak,Tree of Many Faces and Values" publication #lC4009; 2/93.
Is there any truth to something I was told by an old gent a while ago. He said that an oak's largest crop is usually it's last crop. He said that impending natural death can trigger a "procreate response". He also said that this is not an unusual thing in nature.
I guess I know of several plants that flower then die, and to take it up a couple notches look at the salmon.
Not sure about acorns, but I once had a sweet cherry tree that had a tremendous crop, and was early. It was dead by the next year. Again, weather would also play a part.
I guess you could look at it 2 ways. A last gasp, or was death caused by the stress of producing a large crop?? Yup, I am sure weather makes a play, I just invoke the chaos theory.
A butterfly flaps its wings in east africa, and the resulting air currents cause a hurricane to hit Florida.
On the thought of large crops preceding death or disaster- scary. A lot of my oaks dropped prolific amounts of acorns this year, and it did indeed make me wonder...It was just RAINING acorns in the woods. Sometimes a sudden change in the weather that will make a lot fall at once due to stress- and usually you'll see that they are immature. These were a mixture.
I guess I'll adopt a wait-and-see attitude- what else is there to do at this point? LW