Just returned from a trip to my buddy's ranch and several questions came up we wanted to get the THF members input on.

1) Will deer eat acorns directly from the tree not waiting for them to fall?

2) We did two deer censuses on two consecutive nights and numbers are not as high as the past two years. The vegetation is thicker and greener than the past two years. We wonder if we just didn't see the deer because of the extremely thick vegetation growth.

Plenty of deer are coming to the feeders and the bucks have good racks and the fawn crop is good so we don't think the population has gone down.
We are wondering if anyone else is seeing fewer deer possibly because of the increased cover?

3) We haven't seen a coon at the feeder in months. That got us to thinking about how we have seen no raccoons on the nightly census and none killed on the highway. Has anyone else noted a decrease in raccoons on the lease or just in general?
We saw more cottontails than ever before so we wonder if the predator population is down too.

The ranch is in northwest Mason County.

Thanks in advance for your responses.

1. Yes

2. I can't speak for your property, but the growth here from all the rain has made a lot more cover than usual so I suspect they are just better concealed.

3. I trap raccoons and get a lot of them every winter. I have seen less activity from them due to the rain causing an abundance of food. They travel in search of food and don't have do move a lot to get full. Once the fall mast is gone, this will likely be a stellar year for raccoons. The predator population is just fine here but again, they don't have to travel much to eat, so they are observed less. I'm shredding right now and have never seen so many rats.

Im surprised this thread hasnt gotten more comments. Maybe everybody just busy like me.

Deer will grab low hanging acorns if they can.

I’ve been seeing less deer at feeders, as would be expected due to green conditions in the pasture. We are the greenest we have been in quite some time.

I’ve too have been seeing more cottontail bunnies. I have alot of jackrabbits but bunnies are few and far between.

I don’t have many coons compared to other places, so I can’t speak to that.

Not only do the deer have more cover, but also more food around them. Before the rut, they only move around enough to eat and drink. They are able to find water and food in a much smaller area this year, so they stay hunkered down much more.

I'm betting your numbers got quite a boost this year for both deer and the coons. You'll see it during the rut.

Going by this past Spring and Summer...if this is Global Warming...I'm a HUGE fan!

1. I would assume so, but don't know for sure.

2. I seem to be seeing more does and fawns than previous years, but few bucks. I'm hoping the lack of bucks is due to the good rains and cover.

3. If you need any coons, you can have some of mine. We've got extras.

Just wait. It's gonna be a banner year with IMO a lot of immature deer with large racks killed.

Racoons are very susceptible to distemper which is almost always fatal and very easy to spread. Your County Ag Agent could very well confirm if an outbreak has been seen in the local racoon population.

It is definitely the "greenest" we have seen since we started 3 years ago. There are a lot of bucks in the feeder pictures and many do seem young with larger racks than you would expect. Interesting take on the raccoon situations. I guess time will tell.
Another observation is the roads are filled with lizards during the day and rabbits at night.
Thanks for the responses.

1- yeah
2- have never had good or consistent results with spotlight surveys, think largely because we have pretty dense cover.
3- it’s green now but was it dry as heck before? In times of bad drought we have seen it take a bit for coons to make a go back tour

#1, few things more bitter than a green acorn. They may eat a few, but they'll typically wait for them to ripen some or fall.

#2. I suspect you're just not seeing the deer due to foliage. The August heat killed everything green in my area, and I've never had higher deer counts at the feeders than the past few weeks.

#3. TxD's post above makes some sense. I know with cottontails, when you see a bunch, get ready because pretty soon you won't see any after disease runs through them. Same with armadillos. So I can believe there are coon diseases out there that will hammer them at certain times/places.

I walked down to the lake on a mud flat last night and stopped counting when I got to 100 coons. They were digging up mussels. It's so green it looks like spring here.