RED OAK, Iowa – Twigs snapped and leaves tore after a grapefruit-sized Osage orange lost its grip high in the tree and then slammed into the ground.
Whump!
Startled, I jerked my head toward the wallop before recognizing its source. I first encountered these so-called hedge-apples when hunting southwestern Iowa in 1992, but I never get used to how much noise they make when plummeting to earth.
A fox squirrel inspects a ladder-stick below Patrick Durkin’s tree stand in southwestern Iowa.
Meanwhile, a white-tailed doe 20 yards from my tree stand never twitched. It just kept nipping at buds and leaves on the bushes and saplings around it. The doe had obviously learned not to be alarmed by such commotions. After all, the woods around here are thick with Osage orange trees, and deer would short-circuit if they jumped in alarm every time one fell.
Eventually the doe disappeared as it continued westward through the woods. About 20 minutes later, however, I saw it angling uphill behind me, now heading southeast. I assumed it was the same doe, anyway. Its large body and long bottle-nosed face had the same mature looks, and it had come from where I’d last seen it.
I hadn’t yet used the $125 antlerless deer tag that Iowa forces nonresidents to buy, so I lifted my bow and clipped my release-aid to the bowstring. If the doe took five more steps on its path, it would reach an opening less than 30 yards away. I adjusted my one-pin sight and waited.
Finally, just when I started to fear the doe might smell me, it stepped into the narrow shooting lane as I pulled my bow to full draw. Seconds later my arrow pierced the doe’s chest, and my lighted arrow nock shined like a beacon in the hillside leaves and grass as the doe fled to its death. Seconds later it fell 40 yards east of my tree stand, the white hair of its underbelly distinct in the woodland’s weeds and brush.
About an hour later, my friend Jay McAninch, a Red Oak native, helped me haul my kill to my truck. While pausing to rest, I noticed the ground beneath an Osage orange tree littered with its large yellow-green fruit.
Squirrels dismantle Osage oranges to eat their seeds.
Picking one up, I weighed its heft in my hand while asking McAninch, “Do anything besides squirrels eat these things?”
“Nope.”
“Can you use them for anything?”
McAninch thought a few seconds, his inner biologist silently fact-checking his answer before speaking.
“Well, when I was a kid here, some of my classmates tossed them through windows of people they didn’t like,” he said.
These Iowans. Always so practical.
Osage oranges are dense and heavy, and make lots of noise when falling from the tree during autumn.
We should note that Osage orange isn’t actually an orange. It’s more closely related to the mulberry tree. In fact, if you study an Osage orange, you easily imagine a softball-sized green mulberry. Its Latin name is Maclura pomifera, and besides “Osage orange,” its other common names are hedge apple, horse apple, monkey ball, bois d’arc, bodark and bodock.
Useful or not, it’s hard to hunt a woods with Osage orange trees and not notice them. Three mornings after arrowing the doe, I returned to hunt the same tree stand, looking and hoping for a buck.
About 8 a.m. I heard ripping, gnawing sounds nearby and spotted a fox squirrel sitting atop a log, slaving away at an Osage orange. The oversized squirrel worked hard on that sticky fruit, patiently mining for its estimated 200 seeds, occasionally flicking its tail and flashing its orange undercarriage.
Eventually the squirrel finished its job and climbed my tree, perhaps looking for a comfortable spot to rest after its labor. When it reached my side of the tree, it nearly clanged its head on my metal stick-ladder. After backing off to assess things, it looked up at me and did a double-take, seemingly asking, “What the H?! What are you doing up here?” After deciding I was no threat, it left my tree and returned to work on another Osage orange.
– The Osage orange related to mulberry trees. Its fruit’s texture resembles that of a large mulberry
Breaking down this fruit is no job people tackle more than once. Even teenagers get frustrated trying to extract Osage orange seeds, the fruit’s only edible part. Besides having to penetrate the orange’s tough, stringy fruit, you must remove a slimy husk around each seed before eating it.
In contrast, squirrels routinely disassemble Osage oranges, and make a huge mess in the process. I’m sure they’d prefer acorns, hickories and walnuts, but those nuts seem scarce where we hunt, so the big squirrels make regular work of Osage oranges.
Even though Osage orange makes a poor snack for humans, the trees and their wood have long benefited people. The tree typically grows 26 to 49 feet tall, and bowyers have long valued its hard, flexible wood for making reliable, durable, fast-shooting bows.
Further, when planted in rows and aggressively pruned to promote thick, brushy regrowth, Osage orange trees created nearly impenetrable fencelines to hold livestock for early settlers. According to historians, before barbwire was invented in the 1880s, thousands of miles of hedge were planted with Osage orange trees across the Great Plains.
The best of these fast-growing hedges were deemed, “horse high, bull strong and hog tight.” That is, they were tall enough that horses wouldn’t jump them, stout enough that bulls wouldn’t push through, and tight enough with intertwined branches that hogs couldn’t squeeze through.
Once farmers changed to barbwire, they still used Osage orange wood for fenceposts. After all, the wood is so dense it resists rot, insects, termites and even presidential candidates. Today, these trees still prove effective in windbreaks and shelterbelts.
In fact, I found an especially large Osage orange tree in a windbreak to hold one of my tree stands, but it required more sawing and trimming than any tree I’ve ever hunted from. I didn’t arrow a buck from it, but it hid me from nearby deer and turkeys.
A yearling white-tailed buck surveys its surroundings beneath Patrick Durkin’s stand in an Osage orange tree.
It also proved a quiet place to hunt. Why? It must have been a male, because only female Osage orange trees bear fruit. And if a tree can’t grow fruit, it has no bombs to drop to the ground below.
