Outdoors: There are several types of oak trees, acorns in Illinois

I had a friend that asked me to hunt deer on her farm as they were ruining her corn patch. I thought this should be easy, just set up a blind near the corn and wait. Well, sometimes nature fools you. I sat near that corn patch for several days and didn’t see any deer. I asked her when she was seeing the deer, but she didn’t know. I figured it must be that they were hitting her corn at night.

I didn’t notice any fresh tracks in the corn rows during an inspection, so I decided to look elsewhere. Her property encompassed a woodlot about 50 yards from the cornfield, so I decided to look there. Sure enough the deer were feasting on dropped acorns. The scarlet oak trees were the first to drop acorns and the deer really liked them. In fact, they gave up on the corn while the acorns were available.

Actually, there are several types of oaks in Illinois. I learned them while I was squirrel hunting years ago. There are northern, red, scarlet and black oaks. Some of my southern buddies call the black oak an over cup, or bur oak. The scarlet usually drops its acorns first and they are ripe and tasty to the deer. The bur oaks acorns are usually the last to fall and they are the largest of the species. They keep the squirrels in good shape through the winter.

There are some acorns that one can boil and make tea with. I’m not sure which ones that can be used as I never tried any. The deer like them as they are easy to open up. They cannot feed on hickory nuts as the shells are too hard.

It didn’t take very long to shoot a deer in those woods. In fact, I placed my ground blind just downwind of the oak tree and shot my first deer 1/2 hour after sunrise. Actually, the acorns didn’t taint the meat at all. My experience with acorns is that they are very bitter. If one cracks one open and tries to eat it right under the tree you won’t try another.

Hunting report

I haven’t talked to any waterfowl hunters that traveled to hunt snow geese. Like I mentioned in an earlier column the only place I have seen them was in Lake Holiday near Dekalb County. I received some news from folks that I use to work with in Joliet that they have seen some near some of the lakes in Will County before they became frozen over.

Fishing report

I saw some fishermen launch their boat at Alan Park this morning. I didn’t stay long enough to see if they caught any saugers. The river has cleared up considerably and good fishing should return soon.

Farm ponds and small lakes are still giving up good catches of bluegills through the ice. I don’t know how much longer the ice will be safe to walk on with the warm weather we will be getting.

Bluegills are hitting wax worms on a small jig and the saugers are hitting large fathead minnows on a 1/4 ounce lead head jig. They will also hit a trolling rig consisting of a heavy trolling weight with a floating jig head. Make sure your minnow swims upright while pulling it up stream.

• Fred Krause is a Shaw Media correspondent.