Here in Western New York, hunting for “drops,” or whitetail shed antlers, starts as soon as the snow starts to fall off the hills and fields.
Back then, “shed hunting” was only for a handful of us avid whitetail deer hunters. But shed hunting has evolved into a family event these days as couples and families search the fields and forests for drops.
Since shed hunting is a sport in itself, it is now far more competitive.
Since bucks would drop their antlers there while grazing on stubble and recently exposed plant materials at winter melt, cold, windswept fields were always a great area to start hunting for shed antlers back in the day.
When hunting in a meadow, shed antlers are usually more easily seen from a distance than when peering around trees and brush in more wooded locations. I also came across several almost melted snowmobile paths.
The race to locate drops has never been more intense.
Over the previous few years, I have observed other shed hunters on ATV’s grid-searching fields back and forth clearly seeking for drops. Some even place bins on their equipment to store their discoveries.
Over the previous few years, I have seen other shed hunters on ATV’s grid-searching fields back and forth clearly seeking for drops. Some even set boxes on their equipment to house their discoveries.
All in search of deer antlers.
But even back years ago, before shed hunting gained such popularity and competitiveness, gathering shed antlers was difficult.
Finding any shed is great; but, it is rare to find one with five points. Four points on one side of course denotes that an eight-pointer made it through the hunting season.
Usually, sheds make the necessary and last trip to the garage.
There they stay in excellent company with others, or perhaps carried to deer camp as conversation starters, or the smaller ones finish up as dog chews.
Usually as winter deepens, researchers have found that bucks lose their antlers when their hormone levels decrease. While some preserve antlers until almost April, some lose them as early as late November; we have found them around Thanksgiving.
Most bucks on my winter trail cameras, meanwhile, seem to shed their antlers between January and early February. Sure, some can still be carrying in March; but, one runs the danger of having the nicest fields and woods chosen over by other shed hunters first if a shed hunter waits too long so that every buck is antler free.
Moreover, shed hunters are not all of the two-legged type. For health and their own bone development, squirrels, rats, and porcupines all like eating antlers to get nutrients including calcium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, and others.
As searches on websites like Ebay readily show, big shed antlers are valuable. Prices have increased significantly when compared to the past when a matching set of large sheds was really reasonably affordable. Not now.
Like everything else, drops—especially big ones—are getting increasingly costly to buy.
Over all my years of searching for sheds, I have only come across a few matched pairs; most of them were dropped by the buck near by. After discarding the other, many bucks carry one antler for days. And they are sometimes dispersed throughout several fields. And it is where we locate them.
A few years back, an eight-pointer named Buck shed an antler at the end of muzzleloader season. The buck appeared to shake his head as I watched, almost like a wet dog does occasionally, and the antler sailed across the evening sky most likely twenty feet and landed in the snow.
The deer fled carrying the one antler left. The next day, I had a terrible problem locating it in that big windswept field among the cut corn stubble.
Searching where deer, particularly bucks, were feeding back in January will help you find discarded antlers most effectively.
Good sites would be any agricultural field, including winter wheat or maize, and of course late food plots including turnips or rape. Great sites are still crabapple and wild apple trees with fruit as well as any oak stands that generated acorns last year.