How To Find Sheds On Your Next Shed Hunt

My addiction began when I was a freshman in high school. I was hunting turkeys on a property I wasn't terribly familiar with. I had hiked in and set up underneath a large bull pine before first light. With daylight approaching, turkeys began to gobble in the distance.

It quickly became apparent that they hadn't read the script as they flew down with the first few rays of sunlight and followed their hens in the opposite direction. As I sat there contemplating my poor luck and trying to put together a new game plan, I happened to look a few yards to my right and noticed an antler lying on top of the pine needles. It clearly wasn't pretty. With two tines chewed nearly to the main beam and bleached white from the sun, it would have belonged to a respectable four-point.

Something clicked. Or maybe snapped, depending on how you look at it, considering I completely forgot about the turkeys and spent most of the rest of that day and every spring since, looking for shed antlers. In the years since finding that first ugly shed, I've found a good number of antlers. So many in fact that I have boxes in the basement and garage spilling over with dropped bone. Here are a few things I keep in mind when introducing new people to shed hunting:

Find the food

Whether they're in food plots, last year's agricultural crops, or deep hidden meadows, deer and elk are going to spend a lot of time feeding in the winter and early spring. Finding where the animals are spending the majority of their time will certainly go a long way towards helping you find where they're losing their head gear. Bucks and bulls will spend a significant amount of time moving around, shaking loose their antlers and dropping them where they're easy to pick up while feeding.

Find the sun

Not so unlike humans, deer and elk are creatures of comfort when they can be. During the cooler months, they will often spend a good amount of time soaking up the sun on south facing exposures. Track down these sunny openings and you're very likely to find where these animals are spending their time and hopefully dropping their antlers.

Find where the animals crossing

Fence and creek crossings are where I find a good amount of my sheds early in the season. Bucks who have antlers starting to loosen up will often shake or jar their antlers loose when they jump over low spots in fences or where they're crossing creeks.

Slow down

When I first started shed hunting, I was so eager to start finding antlers that I went through the woods like a man on fire. I figured the more ground I covered quickly, the more likely I was to find bone before anyone else.

While shed hunting is definitely an equation of time spent in the field plus miles spent hiking, if you're not taking your time, you're more likely to miss antlers that you would otherwise be strapping to your pack.

Focus on the little things

I spent a good deal of my first few years shed hunting looking for whole antlers. I assumed that they would just drop where they would be easy to spot, pick up, and take home. Wrong! As soon as I started focusing on looking for the little things; bases sticking through the snow, tines poking out of the pine needles, I started to find more antlers.

Take your kids with you shed hunting! Here's a story about doing just that.

Find their bedroom

Much like 1 and 2, you should be focusing on where the animals are spending the most time. Everybody sleeps somewhere and if you can find where the bucks are bedding, you're going to find more antlers. I've found several pairs of antlers lying to either side of fresh beds in the early spring.

Let your glass do the walking

When you can, use a good set of optics to cover more ground. The less calories you burn and the less boot leather you wear off, the longer you can stay in the field. Even walking fields, I like to have a good set of binoculars with me. Nobody likes walking 200 yards to find out those "tines" sticking up are really just the tips of a sun bleached pine branch.

Grid search

Especially helpful when you're looking for the match to an antler you've just picked up, walking a grid allows you to make sure you're covering as much ground as possible. As an alternative to working a grid, I'll often walk in bigger and bigger circles starting from the point where I found the first antler. Animals tend to lose both sides within just a couple hundred yards of one another.

Train your bird dog

More and more is being written about training and utilizing shed hunting dogs. My bird dog doubles as a shed dog in the spring. Not only is he able to sniff out antlers I would otherwise have missed, it helps keep him in shape during the off-season. Two birds, one stone! I'll take it.

Take a friend

While I typically like to hunt alone, I love shed hunting with friends and family. Not having to worry about being quiet, it's a great way to get out in the woods and spend some quality time with a spouse, a child or a good friend. With two sets of eyes and two different perspectives, you're doubling your chances of picking up more sheds.

Dress for the conditions

If you're not comfortable, you won't have fun. Weather during the early months of the year can change in a hurry and the nice sunshine you started your hike in can quickly turn to frigid rain or blowing snow.

Learn how to choose the correct binoculars here.

Not only will you be miserable on your hike back out, but it can be dangerous as well. Finding antlers isn't worth the risk of injury or sickness.

Utilize those cameras

Now isn't the time to yank your cameras. They should be pulling double duty. Pay attention to new pictures as you're likely to start seeing right when the bucks start to drop their antlers. This will give you a good idea of when to start searching.

We all like to be in the woods, but if you go out too early (before they start dropping) you're more likely to get discouraged and give up too soon.

Watch out!

Don't forget to look up occasionally. Bucks will sometimes rub their loose antlers on trees and brush to try and help get them off their heads. This means they could be hung up in branches of small trees or have fallen into the middle of bushes as well. Not paying attention to these things would be a mistake.

Cover new ground

Now is a great time to try and gain access and scout new property. If you aren't finding sheds on the property you typically hunt, knock on some doors or check out new tracts of BLM land.

Read about shed hunting the Sun River WMA here.

Without having to worry about bumping animals you're trying to hunt, late winter and early spring shed hunting is a great opportunity to test the waters on new areas. Finding antlers on new or unfamiliar property is always a treat as it helps to form next fall's game plan.

Have fun!

This is probably the most important thing of all. Do your best to have fun while looking for antlers. The more fun you have, the longer you'll stay in the field and the more likely you are to keep getting back out there.