I’ve got to be honest with you all, I’m really excited about today’s post. Now that the first days of March have dawned, the floodgates have been opened for shed hunting and bone should start being found in bunches! That being said, I know there are tons of people looking for helpful shed hunting tips every day. And while there are plenty of tips available all over the web, it seems like you usually just get one random person’s opinion and a few tips. There seemed to be a need for a more definitive and comprehensive shed hunting resource, so it only seemed right that we should make this available on Wired To Hunt!

So that being said, I reached out to a number of expert shed hunters from across the hunting industry and with their help I was able to put together an incredible array of shed hunting tips! So read on for some super helpful shed hunting insights from the who’s who of the hunting world!

Bill Winke – Midwest Whitetail

“A very experienced shed hunter told me that you find the sheds in the places where the deer spend the most time during the winter.  In winter, it is sometimes hard to tell fresh sign from old sign, especially right after snow melt.  He recommended looking for fresh droppings and lots of them.  A deer can’t hide droppings and the melting snow won’t wash them away.  He really slows down and spends a lot of time in areas with lots of fresh droppings.”

Mark and Terry Drury – Drury Outdoors

“Shed hunting is definitely a numbers game. The more eyes the better chance you have,  the more ground you cover the better. We’d also recommend you use Reconyx cameras to establish when the deer have shed.  The worst thing you could do is hunt too early and push them on to your neighbors where they drop their antlers.”

* Check out the Drury Outdoors facebook page soon to enter a giveaway for an all expense paid shed hunting trip with the Drurys!

Scott Bestul – Field & Stream’s Whitetail 365

“Unless you’ve got a photographic memory (I don’t), find a method for labeling your antlers. This will help you remember the location, date, and score of every horn. Write the information on a piece of masking tape or a small piece of paper and attach it to the antler.

Mix it up: If you’re in an area where you know there should be sheds, but you’re just not finding them, vary your routine. I’ve spotted some of my best sheds after walking hard, then just sitting in one spot for awhile, looking around….Or walking loops or squares in a pattern. Another trick, which I learned hunting morel mushrooms, is to kneel down and scan from a different angle. I don’t know if these changeups just reset my inattentive brain, or if weird light angles are just preventing me from seeing antlers…But I do know they’ve let me spot a shed I was missing before. And yes, I’m usually looking for antlers a whole lot smaller than most guys!

Jason Smith - Whitetail Properties

“Before you start, throw a few sheds on the ground and stare at them, get your eyes accustomed to looking for them.  It’s easy to lose your concentration when shed hunting and walk right past them.  A few years ago I actually stopped right next to one to take a break and didn’t see it until I looked back because I heard one of my fellow shed hunters coming.  It seems crazy but if you don’t train your eyes you can miss them.  When I am walking I identify everything I see on the ground.  I am constantly looking at one item and I say to myself what it is… stump, stick, grass, droppings, snow, ice, acron, walnut, thorn, branch, cedar….I name everything I see and it helps me to look at each and every item on the ground.

When you find one antler the other side is probably close.  I begin walking a circle around the location I found the shed.  If you bring a bright cloth with you, tie it to a branch where the first shed is at so you can keep track of your location in relation to it.  If you are in grass lay it out on top of the grass.  If I still can’t find it I get in a high location and use my binoculars to try to spot the other side.

Feeders help me concentrate sheds in one area.  Deer don’t like to move far from food sources in the winter.  I keep my feeders full after season closes and besides getting great photos, my sheds are always within 3-400 yards of the feeders.”

Kandi and Don Kisky – Whitetail Freaks

“You have to look at the right slopes. 75% of our sheds are found on east and south slopes and food is key.”

Todd Pringnitz – White Knuckle Productions

“Like in most cases when it comes to hunting whitetail deer, I hunt the sign, whether I’m shed hunting or bowhunting.  Like during hunting season, you are hunting deer on a pattern between food and bedding.  You have to locate the primary food sources in your area to locate the likely positions of most of your deer, including bucks after the hunting season.  I continue to use trail cameras to monitor shedding throughout the winter months and don’t start walking until I start to see the my primary shed animals dropping.  Once I know there are sheds to be found, I walk starting from the feeding areas and moving outward toward the bedding areas.  If snow is present, this will make your job easier in determining the primary travel routes.  Re-walk all your best stuff every 10-14 days to find the antlers as they drop.  If you aren’t finding sheds, you aren’t where the deer are.”

Mike Hanback – Remington’s The Buck Stops Here with Mike Hanback

“A rainy day is great—sheds shine and catch your eye. Bones can be tough to see in brown grass lit with harsh sunlight.

The biggest mistake people make is to wander around, looking too far out front and all around. Mark off small grids of land, walk slowly over each grid and look straight down at the ground for sheds.

Wear soft-soled boots. One April day Iowa shed expert Don Kisky stepped on a stick, or so he thought. He dug through the leaves and uncovered a five-point 75-inch shed. With the other antler and an 18-inch spread, that giant would have pushed 170. With his new rack, he would go Boone and Crockett that fall.”

Bryhn Craft - Whitetail Properties

“Looking for shed antlers takes a little practice to become efficient. It’s like when you first started deer hunting. You know what I am talking about, your dad is trying to show you a deer and you just can’t seem to see it until it moves. It was because you were looking for the whole deer. As you learn to look for just parts of the deer, maybe an ear or a leg, or maybe just the tine of the antler, you all the sudden increase your sightings. It is the same with shed hunting. If you walk around just trying to spot a whole antler lying on the ground, you may find a few, but you will be missing a whole bunch more. Try looking for the just the tip of the tines, or just the base of the antler and you will increase your odds of finding more antler significantly. You can always tell if a guy is a good shed hunter if he not only comes back with the big ones, but comes back with the spikes as well.”

Tony Hansen - Realtree.com Contributor

“Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to spot the movement of antlers in the timber on rainy or overcast days? Well it seems to be the same with sheds. Bright sun makes everything glare. I have a much easier time spotting antlers when it’s overcast — not sure why that it is, but it holds true for me. I also have a friend who ‘collects’ sheds by using rubber bungee straps pulled tight across two trees near a feeder or food plot. He picks the most used path of entry or exit and stretches the bungees across about chest-high (he’s about six feet tall). Then when bucks duck under to pass, they brush the straps and often leave sheds behind. It looks kind of goofy but there’s no arguing with the results. He finds a lot of sheds lying right under those straps.”

Jeff Lindsey – Drury Outdoors

“My favorite places to look are on south facing slopes as close as you can get to the last available food source. I also like to look in the grasses on the edge of crop fields that bucks like to lay in and mill around in throughout the night.”

Pete Alfano - Whitetail Properties

“If your crunched for time and want to get in the most effective walking on your boots, I would start with south facing slopes located not far from late winter food sources where I’ve seen deer herding back up in January and February. Another great spot that is over looked is grass water ways or areas in fields that are the first to be exposed from melting snow.”

In addition to all of these great tips, I’ve listed all of our prior shed hunting articles below for you to reference! We’ve got some great posts that include tips from Joe Shead, the author of the one and only shed hunting book, Mike Hunsucker and Matt White of Heartland Bowhunter and much more. Between the expert tips above and the strategies you can learn about in the articles below, you truly will be ready to make 2011 your best shed season ever!

Shed Hunting Tips From Expert Shed Hunter and Author, Joe Shead

Shed Hunting Tips From Heartland Bowhunter

Book/DVD Review: Shed Hunting – A Guide To Finding Whitetail Deer Antlers

Shed Hunting 101 Webinar from Deer & Deer Hunting

Let Shed Hunting Season Begin – 5 Tips For More Sheds

3 Easy Tools To Increase Your Shed Count in 2011

Out In The Open – Matt White

Have any other shed hunting tips that folks should know about? Share them in the comments!

While we’re all still buried in snow across the Midwest,  I figured now was a good time to take a second look at shed hunting strategies and offer some new ideas for the month of March! Today on my Bowhunting.com blog I posted a new article taking a look at “3 Easy Tools To Increase Your Shed Count in 2011.” In my post I explore how trail cameras, attractants/supplemental feed and “shed knocking devices”  can significantly improve your shed hunting success this spring. So follow the link below to check it out and if you know of any other helpful tools for shed hunting, feel free to share here or on my bowhunting.com blog!

3 Easy Tools To Increase Your Shed Count In 2011

And if you haven’t already seen it, check out my previous shed hunting tips post on Bowhunting.com as well!

Let Shed Hunting Season Begin!

Now that most of us are through deer hunting, the next season on most of our calendars is dedicated to shed hunting! The search for fallen antlers is an increasingly popular activity and I’ve certainly fallen prey to the allure of finding bonus bone on the forest floor myself! Although the peak of shed hunting is typically February and March, there are already sheds to be found as early as January, so to kick off shed hunting season we wanted to bring to your attention a great resource for those just getting into this pastime. Deer & Deer Hunting just recently released a completely free online webinar titled “Shed Hunting 101″ by Joe Shead, in which the basics of how, when and where to find sheds is covered. Follow the link below to watch this great online course from a true shed hunting expert, Joe Shead and hopefully in a few months you’ll have a living room floor looking like the one pictured above!

D&DH Shed Hunting 101 Online Course

Nine years ago I set foot into my first pasture with aspirations of finding a treasure.  The treasure was a shed antler.  That amazing thing that came into existence 8 months prior would hold my attention like a diamond would to a woman and still does to this day.  Shed antlers are the journals of whitetail deer.  They show the progression of a young buck to a mature monarch and everything in between.  A shed antler will tell you how aggressive a buck is or if he sustained an injury in the past. A shed will document the existence of that giant you thought you saw for a second during the season.  It will bring you closer to the animal that you chased for months during the season and could never get close to.  These amazing treasures will push many whitetail addicts to spend countless hours afield with numb legs and growling stomachs.  Logical thinking tells you that they are nothing more than calcium formed into a unique shape, but anyone reading this article will ignore logical thinking.  I also choose to ignore this notion.  Anything that steals my attention like a shed antler does is something special.  Something that deserves to be saved from slowly decaying back into the earth.

Over the last nine years I have come to a realization which has more than doubled my shed count each year.  This simple fact that I chose to ignore for years is that whitetail deer are not reclusive.  There is a perception that they are because when we are out and about during the day they are just that, reclusive.  What people don’t realize is that when the sun sets these reclusive animals head to the open for the best things in their life, food, water, and socializing.  I find more than half of my sheds out in open crop fields and pastures in the exact places that bucks go to spend their nights.  With short days in the winter months, a day can be broken down to find that it is dark for over 12 hours in the winter and bucks will spend most of this not in a thick bedding area but in the open, feeding and interacting with other deer.  After adjusting my hiking routes to include these open fields I jumped from finding about 25 sheds a season to 60+ every year.

After having this awakening and boosting my shed numbers I came to another realization.  Walking open fields is BORING!  Walking back and forth across wheat stubble is not a fun thing to do and will wear on a guy after awhile.  That being said, maximizing your time in these fields is key to success before burnout.  One of the most important things in this aspect is scouting late winter.  Finding the buck groups and watching which fields they are using is extremely important.  It’s amazing how bucks will religiously use a certain field when there is one identical to it right next to it or maybe even closer to their bedding area.  Knowing that the bucks have been in these fields will give you the confidence to spend the time combing the field.  Another key to success out in the open has to do with the weather.  Extremely bright sunny days will wear on the eyes after awhile.  It also produces very hard shadows and glares off bright objects.  This combination can make for extremely hard circumstances especially when in milo and corn stubble.  Obviously no one has the time to wait for a cloudy day so if it’s sunny help yourself out and put the sun at your back.  By planning your walk prior to getting started you can succeed in having the sun at your back the entire walk.  You can also try and go mid-day when the sun is straight up which will prevent any long shadows. Cloudy days take care of the shadows and glares and are ideal in my opinion.   These rules also apply in the timber.

Another thing I came to realize is no field is flat.  Not even here in Kansas.  Every field is filled with small elevation changes and even a change of six inches can hide even the biggest sheds if lying tines down.  For this reason no field can be effectively be glassed from the road.  I have frequently scanned a field and saw nothing only to find a decent shed not a hundred yards from where I last glassed.  One more key element is walking slow.  This can be extremely difficulty if you are like me and regularly have two brothers walking with you.  Needless to say competition is always present between brothers no matter what the case.  If you find yourself walking too fast then you have a couple options.  Option 1, leave your brothers at home.  While effective this isn’t as much fun.  We solved our speed walking problem by designating who gets the plunder from each walk prior to starting so no one cares who finds what.  It can really help having extra eyes with you especially when grid walking open fields, which will reduce the amount of trips it takes to cover the field.

So to all the fellow shed addicts out there, I hope that you spend a little extra time out in the open this spring and hopefully find a treasure staring up out of the wheat stubble.

-Matt White, avid bowhunter and member of Heartland Bowhunter

The snow is melting, birds are chirping and the peak of shed hunting season is officially upon us! In my opinion there is no better time to hit the woods in search of fallen bone than these first couple weeks of March. That being said, its also the time of year when we are searching for any piece of info that could give us the edge for finding more sheds and I think I may just have the ticket. Joe Shead, author and creator of the book “Shed Hunting: A Guide to Finding White-tailed Deer Antlers” and the DVD “Go Shed Hunting” was kind enough to send over copies of his book and DVD for me to check out. Boy, am I grateful. These two resources offer a boatload of knowledge and insight into the shed hunting world and I am confident that what I have learned will translate into me finding more sheds than ever before.

The Book

“Shed Hunting” is an easy to read, well paced, info packed book. It begins by discussing the science of antlers, which I found particularly interesting. Did you know that antlers grow faster than cancerous cells?! Antlers are truly an amazing marvel in the animal world. The meat of the reading covers how, where and why your should search certain areas for sheds. It all comes down to finding where sheds are, because no matter how hard you search, you can’t find sheds that aren’t there. I think Joe does a great job explaining why he favors certain areas to find sheds and how he then goes about searching these spots. I particularly enjoyed a section where he gave an example of a piece of land he likes, including a diagram, and then he breaks down in detail how he would pick it apart. This insight has definitely helped me better utilize my time while searching my land. In addition to this core information, the book also covers related topics such as shed hunting dogs, shed hunting organizations and how to shed hunt with buddies.

The DVD

The “Go Shed Hunting” DVD is the perfect companion to the book that Joe has written. This DVD follows Joe throughout an entire season of shed hunting, as he treks across the woods and fields of Wisconsin. Being able to actually see the areas that the sheds were found and how they lay was really helpful and I’m sure it will improve my eye in the woods. Not only did the video show sheds, but also plenty of great scenery and deer. It was an overall enjoyable and educational film, that would definitely be helpful to anyone looking to increase their shed hunting success.

Check out this clip from “Go Shed Hunting” to get a better feel for the DVD.

Final Thoughts

In closing I would say that both the shed hunting book and DVD created by Joe Shead are  terrific resources for the up and coming shed hunter. Full of information and enjoyably written and produced, both resources would get a big thumbs up from me. If you had to choose just one, I would definitely say go with the book. But the DVD is certainly a nice companion. So if you’re looking to up the ante when going after sheds this year I would highly recommend checking out either the Joe’s shed hunting book or DVD. I’m confident that it will make you a better bone collector.

For some more great tips that Joe shared with me recently, check out this post:

Shed Hunting Tips from Expert Shed Hunter Joe Shead

To pick up a copy of “Shed Hunting: A Guide to Finding White-tailed Deer Antlers” or the “Go Shed Hunting” DVD follow these links:

Buy “Shed Hunting: A Guide to Finding White-tailed Deer Antlers”

Buy “Go Shed Hunting” DVD

UPDATE 3/4/2011: As soon as you finish reading these tips, check out our newest shed hunting post on Wired To Hunt, “The Ultimate Shed Hunting Resource – Expert Shed Hunting Tips, Strategies and Suggestions”. We’ve compiled the most comprehensive collection of shed hunting tips ever, from the likes of Mark and Terry Drury, Bill Winke, Mike Hanback, Kandi Kisky, the Whitetail Properties TV team, Scott Bestul of Field & Stream and many more! This is a must read if you want to find the most sheds possible this year!

The Ultimate Shed Hunting Resource – Expert Shed Hunting Tips, Strategies and Suggestions

We’re keeping the shed hunting tips flowing and this time it’s from author Joe Shead.  Joe is the author of “Shed Hunting:  A Guide To Finding White-Tailed Deer Antlers” and creator of the DVD “Go Shed Hunting.” He has also worked as managing editor of Deer & Deer Hunting magazine and written for numerous other publications. So I think it’s safe to say that he is one of the most qualified shed hunting experts in the hunting community! Lucky for us, he was kind enough to offer the Wired To Hunt Nation some great shed hunting tips. So check them out and make sure to share some of your favorite tips too!

Joe Shead’s Shed Hunting Tips

1. Look for southern exposures, such as south-facing hills and the south edge of a forest. The south face receives the most direct sunlight in winter. Deer bed here to soak up radiant heat, much like a cat lying in a window. Direct sunlight also reduces snow depth here first, making it easier for deer to bed, travel and find food.

2. Check under scattered evergreens. Whether it’s a lone cedar in the middle of a fallow field or a handful of scattered pines in a hardwood forest, check under every one, particularly under the south side. Deer are drawn to these odd features on a landscape the same way a fish is drawn to weeds, rocks or logs in an otherwise featureless lake.

3. Walk slower than you think you need to. There are a lot of things on the ground that look like sheds and many other things that can cover up sheds. Sheds look a lot like sticks, brush and cornstalks so your eyes need time to separate the grain from the chaff. Your pace should be dictated by how fast your eyes can thoroughly scan the ground, not how fast you can walk.

4. Look for pieces of an antler. Sometimes you see a deer’s tail twitch or you see a glint of antler before you spot the whole deer. It’s the same way with sheds. Sheds can be buried under snow or grass or may be projecting only part-way from behind sticks or logs. Look for a piece of tine, a round base or the M-shape of an antler lying tines down or a W-shape of an antler lying tines up. Many times that 3-inch piece of antler you see sticking out behind the grass is attached to a much-larger antler.

5. Keep your eyes on the ground. As simple as this sounds, it’s amazing how often you’ll catch yourself looking at deer, birds, rubs or other things above ground level. Last week I watched 2 deer jump up out of their beds and bound uphill. On the way out of that area that night, I spotted a 4-point shed that I had stepped within 3 feet of when I was watching those 2 deer.

For more shed hunting tips, check out a few of our other shed hunting posts!

Shed Hunting Tips From Heartland Bowhunter

My Shed Hunting Post on Bowhunting.com

Shed Hunting 101 Webinar from Deer & Deer Hunting

Book/DVD Review: Shed Hunting: A Guide To Finding White-tailed Deer Antlers