This has been the craziest shed antler hunting season I have ever experienced and that’s saying something since I found my first horn 30 years ago. There are several reasons for this being such a poor season in terms of finding horns. First, the obvious reason is the lack of snow. Some bucks will start dropping their horns in January and those horns usually get preserved in snow as typical winter storms bury them until meltdown. In a usual year we often get a huge meltdown in March and I always refer to that as the “shed rut” in that it is the best time to find multiple sheds. Of course, this is anything but a typical winter.

So what does that mean? Well, the lack of snow means that my competition has access to those shed antlers sooner than usual. Mice, chipmunks and squirrels are the biggest consumers of antlers around here. If you travel north a ways you can also add porcupines to that list. How long those exposed horns last when the ground heats up is all dependent on exactly where they hit the ground. If a horn falls in a thick grassy set aside field, it might even be there next year. If a horn falls at the base of an old hickory tree full of squirrels, the horn might not be there two weeks from now. 

The lack of winter is also a factor in bucks still using their horns. I have never seen so many bucks still carrying their horns this late into the season and that is another side effect of the lack of winter. Trail cameras back this claim up. On a recent shed hunt, I was pounding the woods and fields only to find out later that three deer walked in front of a trail camera and all three bucks still had their horns.  

All that aside, even when conditions are great, it’s still hard finding horns. I always say that a successful shed hunter needs two things: good boots and a hard head (a/k/a being stubborn). I’m not sure if that’s technically three things but you get my point. With all things being equal, a hard head is probably the best attribute to have. 

So if it seems like I have just been going on and on and on and on, I guess I have. But this story is just like a shed hunt in that nothing happens forever and then, BOOM! 

The pictures above are from my most recent two days of shed hunting. Using a walking pace versus time conversion I had over eight miles of walking each day. Both days I didn’t find the horns until the very end of the walk. Now there could be something to be said about the great exercise that I got and certainly I got plenty of that and fresh air, but finding those two sheds was worth the walk. See, I really do have a hard head. 

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