Just went out to the area on public land I have hunted for the past 3 years and lo and behold the area is just loaded with crab apples. I am assuming that all these tree's are relatively young as I read that a crab apple tree doesn't produce mast for 3 to 4 years. My question is how much do deer love crab apples. Do they prefer them straight from the tree or off the ground. If off the ground will they be eating them now or wait until after a hard freeze and the sugars change. Any input would be great, Just really excited that now there is actually something to eat in my area rather then just a travel corridor.
The deer don't wait around for a freeze. Once they hit the ground they prefer it over anything in my observations. Set up on the apples while they are still falling!
Apples and any kind of fruit will pull in deer. I have a few apple trees on my property and this year I have had deer picking apples as soon as they popped out in June and continue to eat them. I started Planting Crab apples and some wild pears 2 years ago and heard any kind of fruit deer will find and eat on the ground or off the tree. As they eat more they have to get on their hind legs to get to where the fruit is since they have picked all the lower fruit but also bears will be visiting for the fruit and they trash trees pulling down limbs to get to the apples. I have Siberian & Zumi Crabapple starting but it take about 5 to 7 years to get the apple trees to produce fruit but I have sandy loam soil and have to add better soil and fruit tree fertilizer to get them going and producing apples this year has been a bump crop last year we had a late frost that kill 99% of the blossoms. Deer will eat ot off the nround or pick it off the tree if they can reach the fruit...
The only problem I see is that there are So many crab apple tree's producing now ( someone must have planted them 4 to 5 years ago) that there is no shortage of crab apples. We will see how it unfolds Oct. 1st if I can get the day off of work.
best early season food source period. of course in areas that the deer know what apples are. i got 600 pics in 5 days under one big apple tree on the edge of our swamp. 11 different bucks checked the tree for a snack.
If you have crab apple trees everywhere that are full of apples, then it will be hard to pattern the deer. This is illegal so I would never do it but I have heard that some people collect the crab apples and then put them out later when the other trees have dropped their apples. The crab apples will last a couple of months after they are picked. I wish that I had a bunch of crab apples trees that were producing. I have planted a couple but so far no apples.
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