Many hunters are familiar with the term “hard mast.” Acorns and hazelnuts are well-known hard masts that are favourite foods for many birds and animals, including game like bears, deer, and turkey. There’s not much talk about soft mast, however.
Collectively, all the fruits, nuts, and seeds of woody plants are mast; nuts and seeds are hard mast while fruits and berries are soft mast. Generally, plants with soft mast depend on birds and animals eating the fruit or berry and having the seeds contained within distributed when the bird or animal does a number two.
In Ontario, particularly the north and central parts, the most important mast for wildlife is the blueberry, obviously a soft mast. Blueberries, there are at least five species here, can be astonishingly abundant. It’s been estimated that a single hectare can produce as much as 4,500 kilograms of blueberries. When blueberries are abundant, a black bear in a lush patch can eat 30,000 berries a day.
But blueberries aren’t the only species of soft mast that can be abundant and important to wildlife.
Strawberries, raspberries, Saskatoon berries, cranberries, wild plums, wild grapes, and apples are just a few of the soft mast species that can be locally abundant and fed upon by resident or migratory game. Dozens of plant species produce fruits and berries.
A few key fruits
Although most fruits and berries ripen in mid to late summer, it’s not unusual to find patches of abundant berries come early autumn. Some can be found at any time during the year. Wild plant fruits and berries aren’t just eaten by wildlife; many are also pretty darn delicious to the human palate and are rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Here are just a few to look for.
Saskatoon berries: Almost everyone likes a blueberry pie, but a Saskatoon (also called serviceberry) berry pie is similarly scrumptious — ask anyone from the rural prairie provinces. And Saskatoon berries are abundant in Ontario, if one knows where to look.
Hawberries: On Manitoulin Island, an abundance of hawberries — the fruit of a hawthorn tree — once helped early European settlers battle scurvy during famine. The berry has become culturally significant there; Manitoulin Islanders are commonly referred to as haweaters.
Hawthorns grow best in dry soil along fence lines, open fields, and woods. Although the berry has a slightly sour taste and is difficult to pick because the trees have inch-long thorns, they make delicious preserves. Knowing the whereabouts of hawthorn thickets can be a big plus for a hunter. Hawberries are sought by ruffed and sharp-tailed grouse, cottontails, and deer and often remain on the tree for the duration of winter. Just watch out for the thorns.
More berries
Cranberries: There are a number of species of cranberries that are creeping or trailing shrubs that occur in Ontario, mostly in open or treed bogs. The aptly named large cranberry, usually nestled in thick moss, ripens into a dark red berry beginning in late August. The berries can be two centimetres, or nearly an inch, in diameter and can remain on the plant over winter. After emerging from hibernation, black bears can be spotted foraging for cranberries in bogs. In much of Ontario’s forests, particularly where bogs aren’t a dominant landscape feature, bogs with an abundance of cranberries are a treasure, especially for a black bear hunter.
In the spring, large red cranberries in piles of black bear poop are a sure sign of a nearby bog chock full of cranberries. Sharp-tailed grouse are commonly found in large clearcuts and the big bog areas north of Fort Frances, near Cochrane, and elsewhere. In these habitats, sharpies are often where cranberries are plentiful. Another cranberry is a relatively large shrub that isn’t even really a cranberry. The highbush cranberry is a viburnum, a group of berry-producing shrubs and small trees with no all-inclusive vegetative characteristics. Cranberry shrubs have maple leaf-like leaves and can be loaded with loose clusters of juicy-looking, bright orange berries as early as August. Look for this viburnum in swamps and bogs and moist or wet areas in cutovers. Ruffed grouse and a wide variety of small birds and mammals like these berries. The leaves and twigs are a preferred moose browse.
These berries make great jellies, but it’s the true cranberries, nestled among the mosses in bogs, that make the much superior cranberry sauce of the turkey dinner.
Lots of soft species, sometimes
Wintergreen: This small plant grows a bright red berry with a pleasant taste. It is often associated with common junipers and bearberries (all with berries that overwinter) on rocky, open pine forest ridges, where they can provide excellent ruffed grouse gunning
There are many, many species of soft mast. Cherries, plums, and apples have relatively large fruits relished by wildlife as well as human hunters and gatherers.
Like hard mast, the crop of soft mast varies greatly. Some years it seems every plant species that can produce fruits and berries does — and in abundance. Most years only a few species have good fruit and berry production and sometimes there doesn’t seem to be much at all. Knowing where to look and find fruits and berries is a plus for every hunter and gatherer.
Originally published in the Fall 2023 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS
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