Alabama scouting tips and my report

Hey guys just wanted to check in on my bama brothers and say just how excited I am for this season. I have been scouting almost every off day ive had since the second week of july and let me just say here in the northeastern corner of Alabama we are having a very good year for persimmons. been finding lots of trees that are loaded to the breaking point and in my short 23 yeasr of life I can only remember 1 such year when they did this well and I was but a little squirt still holding my fathers hand in the woods( fondest memories that I have and I do reflect upon them often:). SCOUTING TIPS!!! when I was about 14 or 15 I used to go scout with my daddy a lot and he was an extremely smart man when it came to deer and outsmarting them. I would often tell him that ive looked and looked and I just cant find a reliable feed tree for early season and he'd just look back and say " well son that just means deer are gonna be easy to kill this year" took me awhile to understand what he meant but in years where there is no bumper crop of anything then scouting can be more rewarding for the man who puts in the hours, and as mr. Warren Womack says find that "primary feed tree"!! This year its lookin like persimmons are producing very well and don't get me wrong I love my white oaks but its kinda hard to beat a persimmon I mean I likem they taste great:) So we are scouting for persimmons, but even tho bumper crops do come and go and its important to understand your species specific oak acorn drop cycle EX. white oaks: semi heavy on their 3rd year and 4th year of their crop cycle is their heaviest drop. but persimmons are different they need a lot of sunlight for one so therefore they grow on the"EDGES"(fire breaks,roads,feilds,Cutovers ETC.)and from my experience and I tend to learn something new everytime I set foot in the woods, this tactic has proven to be true, also if you find one theyre is almost always a few more near by. That has been my primary scouting tactic this year and its looking good for oct. 15.this is the second year that I have struggled to find many dropping white oaks which is good and bad. The good, going back to what my dad said when theyre are not many trees dropping that means that if you scout hard and do manage to find one raining acurns then 75% of the time its going to see a good bit of deer activity and youll be able to key in on that singular feed location. The bad......... simply put you gotta find that tree and sometimes in skimpy years that can be tough(make you wanna pull ur hair out:) chesnut oaks are another good one but they are another story. Here in north Alabama I was talkin to one of my biologist buddies and ive seen it first hand but theyre seems to be a blight here attacking our mature chesnut oaks and hampering theyre acorn production somewhat and I will tell you that finding a dropping chesnut oak in the places that I hunt has been rather scarce now for goin on bout 5 years( I live in marshall county but I hunt the the state ) if someone has other input on this please do. red oaks ehhh not a fan but they have an 18 month cycle and are a second choice acorn to the white oak. these trees will produce acorns regardless of the cycle because red oaks will have mature and immature acorns growing at the same time on the same tree but they do have a heavier crop at the end of their cycle dopping much more mature(bigger) acorns. They also tend to drop for a really long time here in the south and will last much longer on the ground than others due to their higher tannin content but that is a double edged sword because the longer they lay, the higher the tannin content becomes(they become more bitter), and the less palatable they are to deer. Same thing happens with white oaks just not to the degree red oaks change. im sorry for my grammer, trust me I sound like I type:) this is just a few things ive learned from some rather smart Alabama bowhunters and it has helped me out a lot. remember to research a tree that you want to try and utilize and learn as much as you can about it and it will pay off when scouting. good luck to all my brothers goin in the woods this season, hunt smart, hunt safe, be METICULOUS:) AND WEAR YOUR SAFETY HARNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great to hear from ya man. Best of lucl & safety to you as well.