I don't really want to hear about it right now.

Yeah. They squirrel them away, so to speak. Not just bury, but for sure that's one way. Why?

Bury/stash/etc. So yep.

Apparently, they are really bad at finding them again. They locate the nuts by smell during the winter and quite frequently unearth another squirrel's stash. So I suppose squirrels are the original hippies (what goes around, comes around).
I had great fun in our old house, watching the squirls carrying away some sunflower seeds I had put out for them in the dead of winter. One particular squirl would fill his cheek-pouches with seeds, rush away and dig in a corner, then rush straight back for another lot. He was so funny, with his bulging cheeks. The others just sat and ate them, but he was obsessive about squirreling them away.
In the new house, they just come at the dead of night (well, probably early morning) and wreck the tomatoes growing on the porch.

Not 'nuts' but 'spruce cones.' And not 'bury' but 'drop down my downspouts so they overflow in the first heavy spring rain and I have to get up on the ladder and clear the muck out of the eavestroughs while getting soaked to the skin.' For the winter.

But I love the little bastards.

Yeah, they bury nuts for the winter. But does the winter ever send a thank-you note?

Susurration is right: they don't remember where they've buried them; they just dig in likely burying places when they want a nosh.

Chipmunks are better.

Well, I was thinking that they don't bury them for the winter. They bury them for the summer, because that's when the least amount of nuts are around. So maybe they don't eat them as much in winter - like they slow their consumption, but not to hibernation levels.

I've seen a ton of them this summer digging & munching away, that's why I thought about it.

Unless they are eating something else?

You raise an interesting point, and I've been reading around, and I think you're right. Squirrels eat cached nuts as they're found and as needed. I guess the "for the winter" part may have come as a work-ethic fable, sort of like the ant and the grasshopper: save now, like the squirrel, so you can make it through the metaphorical winter. Or, it may stem from the misunderstanding of watching squirrel behavior. Nuts ripen in the fall, so that would be when squirrels would be seen gathering them and taking them away to bury. One might assume that it was the winter-only food because of the timing. But in reality, squirrels will eat them whenever they're found and use them more as a continual food source.

Eating -- During their first seven weeks they will nurse milk, and then they will eat nuts, acorns, wheat, fruit, bird's eggs, and mushrooms. Sometimes they will also eat leaves, berries, seeds, oak buds, and corn as well as insects, moths, bird eggs and nestling birds. What they eat depends on the time of year. For example, nuts and acorns are typically eaten during the fall. A squirrel needs about two pounds of food a week. If it can't find it, it will move. When they leave their nests in the summer, young squirrels sometimes need to move to new homes in less crowded woods. The old squirrels drive them away.

Squirrels will typically gather and save nuts and acorns during the last week of autumn, however, they don't eat most of them.

Thanks, Meeks. :)