BCJ_FALL17 Digital Edition

KIDS’ CORNER
NUTS
ABOUT FALL
Michael Furtman photo
BY KEN KEFFER
THE FORESTS ARE CHANGING COLORS and the leaves will
be dropping soon. Football season is here, and so is hunting season!
It is an exciting time of year to be in the backyard and in
the backcountry. The temperatures might be dropping, but the
fall is heating up for the animals. They are busy finding food and
preparing for winter.
FILLING UP
Fall can be frantic for many critters. Have you ever watched the
squirrels in your neighborhood? Sure, you see them coming and
going all year long, but sit and study them for 5-10 minutes in the
fall. Observing animal behaviors will make you a better naturalist
and a better hunter. In autumn, squirrels scurry about with added
urgency. They collect seeds and nuts and store them up for winter.
Gray squirrels tend to bury nuts throughout their entire home
range. Red squirrels generally collect their bounty in one location.
If you’re out hunting in the woods, look for red squirrel middens.
These are piles of pine cone scales. The squirrels store up a
supply of cones and then sit on their favorite perch snacking away.
They chew into the cones to get to the pine nuts (or spruce nuts
or fir nuts) and the cone scales get tossed aside like peanut and
sunflower seed shell. This leaves behind a messy pile of cone scales
that can be many inches deep. If you’ve found a midden while
squirrel hunting, you’ll know you are in the right spot.
ABUNDANT ACORNS
Acorns are the seeds of oak trees. They are a treat for a bunch of
creatures large and small. There are about 90 species of oak native
to North America. Oak trees take years to mature before they
start producing acorns. Some species make acorns after 20 years.
Others can take 50 years or more before the first acorns appear.
The amount of acorns made by each tree is different from year to
year. Great weather leads to large amounts of acorns. These mast
years become an all-you-can-eat buffet for everything from deer
mice to white-tailed deer.
The acorn caps can make a great whistle. Pinch it between your
pointer fingers and your thumbs while holding the top away from
you. Press your thumbnails to your lower lip and give it a blow.
Adjust until you get a pure whistle. Even if you don’t have an oak
tree around, you should be able to find some fall leaves. Collect
a few and examine them closely. Can you tell the top from the
bottom? How many differently colored leaves can you find? Find
a leaf that has at least three colors on it.
DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE
A few duck species will munch on acorns. Wood ducks especially
seem to bob for acorns in shallow water like you might bob
for apples. Woodies, along with mallards, will munch on acorns
right from the forest floor, too. In the fall, Canada geese also will
get in on the acorn meal plan. So how do ducks and geese eat such
a hard food? They swallow acorns whole. Then, with the help of
a special organ called a gizzard, they crush the acorns. Waterfowl
eat small pebbles of rock that are stored in the gizzard. This helps
grind up hard foods. These birds are the original dine and dashers.
They eat up as quickly as they can before moving to a more
protected area to finish digesting. However, acorns are not on the
menu for much of the year. Instead, they are just a fall treat for
waterfowl.
Fall is the season for wildlife to fatten up for winter. It’s also the
time of year when hunters harvest their bounties to feast upon.
Next time you’re in the woods, thank the trees. Their seeds and
nuts help feed the animals each fall.
Author, naturalist and BHA member Ken Keffer grew up hunting
and fishing in Wyoming. He has written seven books connecting
families to nature, plus the Hiking Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains
guidebook. Find him at kenkeffer.net.
FALL 2017 BACKCOUNTRY JOURNAL | 23