Walking through the woods looking for dropped whitetail deer antlers – “shed hunting” – can provide a unique day of excitement for you and your canine companion. A high-priced dog with a pedigree full of famous ancestors is not necessary to make a good shed hunting dog. All it takes is a dog that can recognize a bone by sight and smell, knows how to retrieve and likes to run in the forest and fields.

Shed antlers can be found at any time of the year, but the best time to locate them is during late winter or early spring. Once they hit the ground, they begin deteriorating with the help of rodents, and summer undergrowth can cover them in a thick mat of green.

Focusing on areas that bucks use during the late winter can increase your odds of finding more sheds. If you can locate a food source with thick cover and the warmth of a south-facing hillside close by, it’s a very good place to start looking. Check nearby obstacles, too. Heavy brush could tug on a tine, or the impact of jumping a fence could cause an already-loosening rack to be left behind.

Everyone can get involved in shed hunting, regardless of age, size and experience. Shed hunting can be as simple as a leisurely walk through the woods or fields, or it can be a more physically demanding backpack over steep terrain and through thick habitat.

Incorporating the family dog in the search can greatly increase the success of finding sheds. A leftover bone from the dinner table is no different than one dropped off the head of a whitetail deer. In canine rationale, if it looks like a bone, smells like a bone and tastes like a bone, it must be a bone. As long as it leads to a game of fetch, its origin does not matter.

The efficiency of your rack-retrieving Rover can be increased by using an antler to play fetch in the yard for few weeks. This will help him make the transition from squeaky toy to deer antler and will reinforce what he’s looking for in the woods. Make sure to grind down the points on the tines to avoid injuries while he adjusts to picking up this new oddly-shaped toy.

Once he is proficient at retrieving the thrown antler, simulate actual shed-hunting conditions by hiding the antler in grass or leaves. Guide him toward the area and let him use his nose to locate the shed. It won’t take him long to get the idea that this is a lot of fun, and when you hit the woods he could amaze you with his antler-finding abilities.

As winter comes to a close, check your province or state’s regulations regarding the collection of shed antlers, load up the kids and family dog and head to the woods to share the excitement of shed hunting. With any luck it will be hard to tell if you, the children or the tail-wagging dog has a bigger ear-to-ear grin after finding a few of nature’s hidden treasures.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Fun Retriever Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.