White oak acorns (Ohio DNR photo)

The other day I dropped into the office of Chris Ryan, game management services supervisor for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

I asked him when the agency’s annual Mast Survey and Hunting Outlook booklet would be completed. He indicated it would be finished late this week.

Then I asked how things were looking so far. Ryan grinned and shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said. “A lot of mast species are abundant this year, but the amount of oak we’re seeing is just unbelievable.”

Of the oaks, white oak acorns are most abundant. That’s terrific news, because critters (deer, bears, turkeys, squirrels and grouse) are particularly fond of them.

It’s nice to know that the information being compiled into into the Mast Survey actually matches the preliminary anecdotal reports I heard earlier from DNR field biologists. Sometimes anecdotal reports can give an overly optimistic or pessimistic impression. Apparently not this time, though.

I’ll post a detailed synopsis of the Mast Survey here as soon as I receive the draft report, which should be late this week or early next week.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 6, 2010 at 7:25 am and is filed under Hunting, Nature, West Virginia, Wildlife, WV DNR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.