Retrievers and other dogs make great shed hunters when adequately trained.
Deer hunters who didn’t get the chance to collect that trophy buck’s antlers while they were still attached to his head this past deer season still have a chance to get them now that deer season is over and he is done with them.
Hunting shed antlers may seem like a futile effort to some, but many veteran hunters swear that the information they learn from looking for sheds gives them a leg up on a wary buck next season.
According to biologists, bucks lose their antlers in similar fashion to the way they shed velvet once the growing season ends. Photoperiods — the amount of sunlight during a 24-hour period — regulate most deer activity, and shedding velvet, rutting behavior and shedding antlers are all the result. After the rut, the appropriate photoperiod will reduce production of testosterone in a buck’s body, causing the antler pedicles to weaken and the antlers to drop.
Most of the time, this happens around 60 days after the rut, leaving most bucks in North Carolina without headgear by the middle of February, after duck season is over and before you start thinking earnestly about turkeys.
So here’s a suggestion. Looking for sheds accomplishes several things. First, it gets you back in the woods while last year’s deer sign clues is relatively fresh and you don’t have to fear spooking a trophy buck by rummaging around in his bedroom. Finding a shed provides you with clues you can’t get from trail cameras or even first-hand sightings. It also confirms that statistically speaking, that big boy is likely to be around next season because he didn’t get killed before New Year’s Day. It’s a good scouting tool, but using just your eyes and boots to find sheds is hard work with little reward.
Michael Lutes owns and operates Everything Shed Dog, a website (www.everythingsheddog.com) dedicated to training dogs to find and retrieve shed deer antlers. Who even knew dogs could be trained to sniff out sheds? According to Lutes, it’s becoming a widely popular sport that’s even branching out into field trial-type competitions.
“A dog’s nose is a hundred times better than a human’s,” said Lutes. “A dog can smell an antler and the scent that comes off the antler, specifically where the antler meets the head of the deer — it’s just loaded with scent. The amount of antler you can find and range you can cover with a dog is far superior to what human eyeballs can do. Dogs provide a much valued resource in being able to find sheds.”
Lutes said that practically any breed of dog can be trained to hunt sheds, but typically the better dogs are of the hunting dog/retriever variety. In addition to Labrador retrievers and other bird dogs, he had seen German shepherds, and even mixed breeds do well.
“When we talk about the breeds of the dogs and the best way to start one, any dog has the ability to scent out and find antlers,” Lutes said. “Many times, Labs and retrieving dogs in general are the most-popular breeds for shed hunting because those owners are the folks into being outdoors, duck hunting, pheasant hunting or whatever. The main thing, the main driver for a dog to be successful at shed hunting is they need the desire to retrieve.”
He said training a dog to sniff sheds is very similar to teaching a waterfowl dog to blind retrieve a duck. There’s no falling duck to see; training is simply a matter of getting the dog to recognize the scent, then turning him loose to go find it.
“The first step is to make it a game. Take an antler out, something the dog can manage, and play fetch with it,” he said. “Step two is upgrading your antler size a bit, and then introduce the scent on it, so now they’re starting to associate that antler and that scent with the game. Step 3 is to transfer that scent onto an antler and start hiding it progressively further and further out in the field, in a real environment. Eventually, it becomes a blind retrieve, and they’re doing it all by scent.”
Lutes said he is often questioned whether training a dog to hunt sheds will impede other training the dog may have, such as birding or tracking wounded deer. His answer is a resounding no.
“Training to hunt sheds doesn’t exclude your dog from being a bird dog, pheasant dog or a duck dog. Shed hunting, deer tracking, hunting for birds, whatever it may be,” he said, “those activities are all under the same umbrella, and one dog can certainly do all three of them. It doesn’t harm the training in those other areas. It adds to them.”
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