Valuable for Game and Wildlife

Chestnuts are one of the very best trees for wildlife. Their consistent yearly crop (unlike oaks and other nuts that cycle between heavy and light mast years) of rich, nutritious nuts provides excellent mast for deer, turkey, squirrel, bear and many other game and non-game species. They are far superior to other oaks, even Sawtooth Oaks, which are commonly promoted as one of the best trees for attracting deer.

Because the deer love to eat chestnuts more than any other tree crop, many commercial orchardists have to put up deer fence just to be able to harvest any nuts. Even an electric fence is often not enough.  Every farm or hunting camp should plant a grove, as a favorite place to locate your stand.  Chestnut trees are a deer magnet!

Some chestnut growers lease their farms for deer hunting in the fall.  One grower in Illinois reports income of over $1500.00/week leasing their grove to hunters.  The big bucks love chestnuts!

Chestnuts are good not only as food for game, but also for livestock. In Europe, chestnuts are traditionally used as food for cattle and hogs.  In Italy today, Prosciutto do Parma is made from hogs fed chestnuts and whey.  Animals were grazed under the trees in the orchards and fed the nuts through the winter.  The crop was dried or stored under leaves on the north (cool) side of the mountain houses and used by people or fed to animals.  In the Appalachian mountains, chestnuts fed the game that supported the pioneers and early settlers into this region, until the chestnut blight killed off all the trees during the Great Depression.

"The chestnut is to the Corsican mountaineer what corn is to the Appalachian mountaineer in the fastnesses of Carolina and Kentucky..."     J. Russell Smith, Tree Crops, A Permanent Agriculture, 1950.

Dunstan Chestnuts grow rapidly and have an upright growth form, with spreading branches, similar to the American chestnut and unlike the smaller, more spreading Chinese form. These trees are long-lived, can grow up to 100' tall, and have timber value at maturity comparable to walnuts. Chestnuts are excellent for reforestation.

Dunstan Chestnuts have large, beautiful, lustrous green, dentate leaves and showy cream-colored blossoms. They make a picturesque ornamental as well as an edible landscape tree for backyards and homesteads.