March is the time of year to go looking for deer sheds
Looking for sheds occupies some people’s time in March. “You know where a big buck is when you find a nice shed,” I’ve heard.
So instead of telling you what I think, I’ll just quote a friend that is the most active shed hunter I know. Doesn’t even have a dog trained to shed hunt, he just hunts sheds a lot. To give you an idea, since the close of fishing season earlier this month, he has spent most of or part of ten days in the woods shed hunting. That’s before this past weekend.
“All that finding a shed tells you is where a buck was spending his time between the end of December through February on the day he shed them,” he says.
I’ve heard him tell many people many times. “Sure, if you find the same sheds of the same buck for several years in a row, you’ll know that the buck is alive if you’re specifically hunting that buck.”
He continues: “But often where they lose their antlers and where they spend their summers and falls are not the same spot. And in most of Wisconsin, deer don’t live long enough to collect antlers until they are five or six years old. This isn’t Iowa or Kanas.”
Shed hunting has become big in the past ten years. It doesn’t matter what sports convention you go to, there will be at least one seminar on training your dog to hunt sheds. Which is more productive than just walking through the woods hunting by sight. Even my friend will tell you that.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “When I hunt sheds with my buddy who trained his lab for it, he finds a lot more sheds than I do.”
Taking a rest at Pheasant Fest a few years ago, we sat down in the back of a forum area to chat with some fellow dog guys we knew when a well-known dog trainer sauntered up and started shooting the breeze with us.
He was going to present later in the afternoon. Some of us were planning on watching him talk. The chairs started filling up and another wellknown trainer took the stage to teach everyone how to train their dogs to hunt sheds.
Our conversation continued about what we were going on about. Someone made a comment that, “90 percent of the people that buy his dogs don’t train them for what they bought them for, much less hunting sheds,” the pro in the group told us as he waved to his friend on the stage. “But they are going to buy the antler pieces and other s*& $ he’ll show them. “They might even buy some treats like he talked about, and even give it a try tomorrow, and it won’t go worth a s#%! cuz they never actually trained their dog to do anything they ever commanded it to. Then they’ll go to sleep and Monday morning the alarm clock will ring and all the bull everyone deals with every day of their lives starts again and that antler piece gets lost by Friday. Kind of like me talking about taking up fly fishing every year. I think I’ve bought four fly rods and I’ve never used one.”
“We were jawing on earlier,” he said as he nodded towards his fellow pro on the stage, “that we’d do more good teaching people how to train their dogs to sit, whoa, come and heel but no one is interested in that nor will they admit their dogs doesn’t follow commands unless they have their finger on a button.
“So he’ll talk about teaching a dog to retrieve antlers and I’ll talk about how to fix issues. There are about a hundred hunters in this crowd, five will actually teach their dog to hunt antlers and they will have a lot of fun with the dog, so I guess it’s worth it.”
Which is I why my shed hunting buddy hasn’t trained his dogs to hunt sheds. “I work too much to teach these chow hounds anything besides where the food bowl is,” he told me.
“I find enough sheds without a dog,” he went on. “Cloudy days are best, the antlers glisten on cloudy days and they are easier to see. On sunny days everything that is wet or froze glistens and that is a lot of stuff. So bad weather days are great for shed hunting. What else are you going to do in March?”
THROUGH A
DECOY’S
E
YE
CHUCK K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
