Today in Nature: Deer Food and the Prehistory of Toronto

September 29th: I nearly fell when I walked on these acorns today,  it was like walking on ball bearings. Acorns are inconvenient for us, but deer like their protein for fattening up for winter, and to help males in their head-butting competitions. In the 1780s, just before the city of Toronto ( York) was established, the Mississauga tribe used to travel to the Oak Ridge Moraine to hunt for deer when the acorns dropped in the fall. Skins and smoked deer meat would then come down the Humber River to villages close to Lake Ontario.