Shed Hunting Tips That Actually Help (part 2)
Let’s continue the positive vibe here to kick off part 2 and keep talking about what strategies really do work well for finding sheds.
Winter Time Calories
As I mentioned in part 1: food and habitat can be interchangeable as the top priority for narrowing down where to begin searching for sheds. In Iowa this falls to third on the list because the majority of the state’s surface area is a food source. This of course can seem overwhelming when narrowing down where sheds will be located, but if a food source is paired well with suitable winter habitat, this is the kind of spot that can hold quite a few sheds. The main food source I recommend looking near is corn. Even though this plant is non-native to North America it still serves as a deer’s preferred carbohydrate in the winter months. The best option is a standing cornfield, followed by a picked cornfield. After that option I suggest looking near soybean fields, and finally near a somewhat green food source like alfalfa or a brassica plot. So take note of any of these food options that are located very close to good winter bedding.
The Tip That Almost Never Helps. Almost.
A tip that I have heard and read countless times on repeat is “Be sure to check fence crossings and creek crossings.” While I have found some sheds in these locations, and so has my friend Caleb, it is still a very low odds tip. For the dozens if not hundreds of miles of fence lines and creek bottoms we have walked, we have found very few sheds that have jarred loose from a leaping buck at these crossing points. That being said we have found some so definitely don’t plan your shed hunt around these features, but it’s never a bad idea to check along them when it makes sense (high traffic funnels, very close proximity to great food and bedding, high or long jump requirement for crossing).
This shed was found while leaving a favorite shed hunting spot. The stark contrast of the white color on the inside of the shed made the antler pop on this overcast day. Had it been a sunny day I may have missed out on my best shed ever.
Gear Tip: On full days of shed hunting I prefer to take a backpack along to carry water, food, basic first aid gear and hopefully a pile of sheds. My favorite hunting pack is the KUIU Pro 5500. Now this size would be overkill for whitetail shed hunting, but its removable frame is the most comfortable I’ve ever worn, and fits with smaller bags that can be ordered on the KUIU online store. My Medic assembles the absolute best first aid kits and I take select items from the MyFAK kit in my smaller in the field kit.
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize
By the end of each shed season my eyes are dialed in for recognizing antlers. In fact one time I spotted a deadhead in a tree line from about 150 yards away while driving down the highway (at 55 mph I’m sure *ahem*). I was keyed in on the color and outline of an antler, but at the beginning of each shed season I am always concerned that I won’t recognize a shed as sharply with my eyes having an offseason away from spotting sheds. Of course this challenge will always exist, but there are some ways to help your eyes recognize the difference between a branchler and an antler. The first thing to do is be sure to walk with the sun at your back. Sunny days are beautiful but they are some of the worst conditions for finding sheds. The glare of the sun will wash out the finer details of the landscape which can cause you to overlook a shed. Obviously if you are able to spend your shed hunting time on overcast days that is the best for seeing the color contrasts of bone colored antlers on the landscape. Better yet is if there is a light mist which causes the antlers to glisten and stand out even more.
High Ground = Dry Ground = Good Bedding
The 2022 shed season was bonkers for me and Caleb. Combined we found about 30 sheds on just one farm. The best part about this crazy success was the fact that it was our first year shed hunting there, we could only dream of the success we could have there if we had a full year to plan our next season of searching, well our chance for this came and went in the 2023 season and I think we found a combined total of 4 old sheds and 1 broken off end of a mainbeam. So what happened? Well, a couple of changes from 2022 to 23 were obvious: crop rotation, and other shed hunters beat us to the best spots (but they only found a couple). But these still didn’t account for such a steep decline in our finds. Finally, Caleb made a great observation- we had a lot of snow and rain when shed season was just getting started, and the spots we were counting on to hold a lot of sheds again were much soggier than the previous season. So although in normal conditions these areas were preferred for bedding, in these wet conditions the deer sought out other areas that provided dry bedding close to food sources. Once we added this factor into our shed hunting plans I was able to find close to the same number of sheds I had found the season before, and Caleb even surpassed his 2022 shed count.
Stay tuned for the next part in this series.