As many of you know....i am out in the woods a lot...in part because of Fred. I watch and i notice things...maybe because of my old job. I know several folks like me...one of em, ol RC from down in GA. Now that is one fine person. Anyway....he looks for particular trees that have a lot of food ( fruit..nuts) and watches when they start dropping. I have been noticing, and posted some pics earlier...not all hickories, or oaks or apples ( i know of no persimmons or paw paws up here) have a good crop each year. In fact...i find it amazing hoow some trees really put off the fruit and others...not so much.
When scouting....keep your eyes open for that...mnot just for the trees themselves.
I get it, but, when acorns start dropping up here the bears abandon bait sites. In some places things are different than in other places.
Found some pawpaw's down by the creek. The elderberry is getting eaten by something too. The pawpaw crop is never much around here, but they sure are a neat fruit.
You have to not only look but understand. Wild fruit like persimmons and muscadine etc. are a short term food. One of the places I hunt in Louisiana is a federal refuge, any persimmons or muscadine are gone by the bow opener. There will still be plenty of tracks and sign but it's old and the food source is gone.
One of the Midwest places I've hunted the woods are absolutely covered with hickory's and various oks the ground is covered in acorns and hickory nuts. You could sit in a tree for months and not see a deer eat an acorn. They travel from bedding to crop fields beans and corn are thier preferred food until it's gone. You may see a deer pick up an acorn or two waiting to step into the field at dusk but hunting a feed tree in crop country is usually a waste of time until the crops are gone. By then the acorns are in the ground. Bedding areas and travel corridors are the way to find them then.
The feed tree hunting is nothing new except to utube it's been around forever. It just doesn't work every where. Each habitat is different and so are the best tactics to hunt the deer there.
In Louisiana there are miles and miles of swamp with zero crops of any kind. A deer may live his whole life and never see a piece of corn unless he stumbles off the public land and passes someone's deer feeder. Places like that are where feed tree hunting is the best. And it doesn't really matter how many acorns are in each tree. There will be preference for certain trees at certain times. And that's the tree we are looking for, and the deer will tell you which one it is.