Owl Eagle,
You are describing the woods surrounding my house. I was hiking the other day and found some fresh scrapes, and Lots of what I think are older ones. I wasn't sure about the older ones, the trees are damaged and apparently diseased, but they sure as heck look like scrapes. If they are, I have some BIG old bucks around here.
Bert, I have some chestnuts on my property and in the surrounding woods. I contacted the Tennessee chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation just last week to let them know, printed out their ID form and, and yes I have chestnuts.
Chestnuts used to one of the dominant trees here in Appalachia, but the blight got them. So, it's pretty neat to find some here.
I heard several years ago that a sizable amount of Chesnut logs had been found submerged in a stream in West Virignia.
I am johnny chestnut seed in East Tennessee. I have recruited volunteers to plant All American Chestnut seedlings here abouts.
I work with the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation that operates out of Va Tech in Blacksburg.
There website is http://ipm.ppws.vt.edu/griffin/accf.html.
(Much of the web work is mine. I set up the original site years ago. Looks like it needs some work)
As in all things there is disagreement. The ACF is the work of one of Dr Griffins students. Dr Griffin and his wife and many other academics and volunteers are at ACCF in Blacksburg.
ACF believes the solution to reestablishing American Chestnuts is to cross breed with blight resistant asian trees. This is also the method of some at UT Knoxville.
Dr Griffin and ACCF are purists. They have taken seeds from a few blight resistant trees and produced new trees that are again crossed to produce other generations. The goal is to produce a blight resistant variety with all American genes. To accomplish the goal they rely on volunteers like me to plant trees and out of the thousands find the individuals with the best resistance. This strain will be "All American"
So far out of hundreds there are only 50 still growing in my area. Of those, 1 seems to have pretty good resistance.
I would be interested in your report with some more specifics, mountains, ridge, flatland, elevation, size approximate number, do they bloom, have nuts, largest tree diameter at brest height.
Freep mail me if interested.