Beechnuts, Pine & Other Mast

It’s a bad acorn year. The hickories were thin too, and the oaks you scouted are barely dropping. Are the squirrels gone? No — they’ve shifted to the backups. Beech bottoms, pine ridges, and lingering soft mast become the whole game in a lean year, and knowing them keeps you on squirrels when the prime mast lets you down.

Quick recall

Recall from the oak-drop lesson: once the sweet white-oak acorns are gone, what do squirrels turn to next?

Recall from the oak-drop lesson: once the sweet white-oak acorns are gone, what do squirrels turn to next?

The red-oak acorns they buried earlier — watch for ground digging They leave the woods entirely They hibernate until spring

Check answer

Beech and pine: the backup hard mast

After acorns and hickory, two more hard-mast foods matter in the Piedmont:

• Beechnuts. Beech trees grow in cooler, moister coves and creek bottoms and drop small triangular nuts squirrels eat readily. Beech doesn’t produce heavily every year, but in a good beech year a beech bottom can hold squirrels when the ridges are bare.
• Pine seed. The seeds inside pine cones (loblolly and longleaf in our region) are a genuine food — especially for fox squirrels, which feed heavily on seeds in green cones in late summer and fall, and which matter most as a fallback in years when the oak crop fails.

These aren’t the headline foods, but they’re the difference between a tough scout and a productive one in an off year.

Deep dive Why fox squirrels and pine go together

Southeastern fox squirrels are tied to open pine and pine-oak woods, and during late summer and early fall they’ll feed almost entirely on the seeds inside green pine cones — clipping and shredding cones to get at them. You’ll find the cob-like stripped cone cores and scales piled on a stump or log, the pine equivalent of hickory cuttings. In a year when acorns fail, pine seed can carry fox squirrels through. (Gray squirrels eat pine seed too, just less centrally.)

Soft mast and buds: the gap-fillers

Between and around the big nut crops, squirrels lean on soft mast — softer, perishable foods that don’t store but bridge the lean stretches:

• Summer/fall fruit: mulberries, wild cherry, blackberry, grape, dogwood berries, black gum fruit.
• Tree seeds: maple samaras (the “helicopter” seeds) and elm seeds.
• Spring buds and flowers: in late winter and early spring, before any nuts ripen, squirrels feed hard on tree buds — especially maple buds and flowers. This is the year’s leanest stretch, and buds carry them through it.

You won’t usually hunt soft mast the way you hunt a cutting hickory, but it tells you where squirrels drift when hard mast is thin — a mulberry in June, a dogwood in early fall, maple buds in February.

Pine block: pine seed (fox squirrels, late summer) Cove / creek bottom: beechnuts in a good beech year Edges & bottoms: soft mast (mulberry, dogwood, black gum)

Knowledge check

It's a poor acorn AND hickory year in your woods. Which backup food is most worth scouting for FOX squirrels in early fall?

It's a poor acorn AND hickory year in your woods. Which backup food is most worth scouting for FOX squirrels in early fall?

Pine seed in green cones in the pines Maple buds Nothing — if the nuts failed, the squirrels are gone

Check answer

Take it to the woods. Map the backup foods on the property you hunt, so you’ve got a plan for a lean year.

Map the backup foods

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Reset

• Find any beech in moist coves or creek bottoms and note if it produced
• Note pine stands and check stumps/logs for stripped cone cores
• Mark soft-mast spots: mulberry, dogwood, black gum, wild cherry, grape
• Remember the lean-season fallback: maple buds in late winter/early spring When nothing's on the ground, look up at the buds.

Sources

• SCDNR — Gray Squirrel species publication (mast variety in productive habitat; hard mast including beechnuts as fall/winter food): https://www.dnr.sc.gov/wildlife/publications/pdf/squirrel.pdf
• USDA Forest Service — “Cone consumption by southeastern fox squirrels” (fox squirrels feed on green-cone seed of loblolly/longleaf/slash pine; pine seed important in oak-mast-failure years): https://research.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/9826
• Oklahoma State University Extension — Gray and Fox Squirrels (seasonal diet: hard nuts in autumn; buds/flowers and soft mast in spring and summer; mulberry, black gum, maple, dogwood as food): https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/gray-and-fox-squirrels.html
• Pennsylvania Game Commission — Squirrels (spring buds, especially maple, as a key lean-season food; summer samaras and soft mast): https://www.pa.gov/agencies/pgc/wildlife/discover-pa-wildlife/squirrels