The sound of acorns falling in the backyard has not gone unnoticed by a few of the "locals"...
These youngsters only have a week or three coming up before the velvet comes off and the friendships become a bit more competitive. By the looks of the round bellies, it has been a good year for feeding!

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Do or do not. There is no try.

Ahhh.....venison on the hoof.


Don

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Laus Deo! <><

Buckeyes and acorns were the best slingshot ammo a kid could find.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Yep....we had no buckeyes, but lots of acorns and crabapples - I remember the welts!

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Do or do not. There is no try.

That brings back memories....our ammo was mostly acorns and hickory nuts. Daggum those could hurt.....but it was still fun. Parents today would "freak-out" over some of the things that was normal for us 'way-back-when'.

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Laus Deo! <><

Forgive the drift but I remember having hedge apple wars with the neighborhood kids. We'd all go home covered in pop knots and Elmer's glue.

Nature's perfect grenade.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Homemade slingshots, bows and arrows, kites and we ate all kinds of stuff, wild stuff. My neighbor and I made a box kite with a seat in it. We weren't sure it would even fly but we put a little kid in it and when we got it off'n the ground he bailed out right pronto....and for some reason we couldn't get him to get back in it. We had my fathers crab trotline on it so It woulda held the pull(we thought). My father got a little annoyed when we used his nylon net line to make a kite string more'n a mile long. It cut the heck out of or hands and even though it was strong..it still broke

Don't you all know that them crabapples can put yer eye out?

Funny we don't see more eye patches.

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Foster Positivity.

No kidding!

Pellet rifles, bows and arrows, slingshots and hatchets, this was all normal, every day equipment for us!

We didn't have acorns, but we used to have fights with those hard middles from the center of a skunk cabbage.

When we were 12, my friends Pat and Herbie and I all got hatchets. There wasn't a tree around under 12" in diameter that was safe. And we all kept our fingers!

Seeds of the Christmas Tree palm.
When small perfect size in a plastic straw pea shooter.
Full size about 3/4 " greens are hard as a rock, red would leave a sticky red smear on impact.
Wonderfully ballistic shape.

I like the "hoist" for your bird feeder.

That is an idyllic scene indeed.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I've got crabapples running out my ears. Nobody wants them. I've been trying to give them away with no takers. So, I go shake the trees, the apples hit the ground, and they're gone the next day...with incriminating tracks under the trees. It won't be long.

Popcorn through a straw. Not great for long distance, but up close was painful if you got hit by the pointy end. My friends and I used to take the 1/4 to 3/8 inch wide rubber bands and put about ten of them together. Fold up whole sheets of paper and turn them into those V shaped projectiles. One of us would hold the rubber band string and the other mounted the projectiles and launched them. We could hit someone 75 yards across the commons area.

Homemade ramps for jumping our bikes. We killed so many rear wheels with the traditional wire spokes. They would just collapse on landing. It was great when they came out with fiberglass bike rims.

Wrist Rockets with hospital tubing. First bird I ever brought down in flight was a grackle crossing right to left about 15yds in front of me. I was using Dad's supply of half inch nuts as ammo (got my hide tanned for that a couple times). Led the grackle and released. Watched that nut seem to curve right into the birds head and it folded and went down.

Lots of memories coming back with this thread.