Shed hunting
 

My best friend owns quite a few acres (about a hundred) and in the backyard about 100 yards directly behind the house, is a small field with woods surrounding it. She feeds the deer there with a container of corn set out every other day,and I see nothing but does and button bucks come to it during the day time. I am at her house a lot and this weekend I had the idea to take a long walk around the property and look for sheds. My friend said there are bucks that come to the feeder but only when it starts to get dark. So far I have searched many of the main deer trails, and found no antlers yet. I can't believe it. I looked in every bedding area and on every creek crossing and deer trail going through low hanging brush, and have not found a single antler. I'm planning to go back there and search as much as I can.

I've seen all the posts you guys made with the pics and all the sheds you found, looks like everyone else is having a lot more luck than me. You guys out west are lucky with all those sheds you find.

How are the people in PA doing?

RE: Shed hunting
 

Im gonna be heading out in about an hour to do some shed hunting. Ive yet to find a shed this year. Actually, Ive yet to find a shed since I started shed hunting lol. Hopefuly my luck will change this year.

RE: Shed hunting
 

found one side of an 8pt this weekend in South Eastern PA... but still seeing bucks w/ their headgear.

RE: Shed hunting
 

I found 4 so far, but that was only in one day. I let my game cameras do most of my shed hunting for me. They really help to tell you when/where a buck dropped its antlers. I had pics of a buck walking down a trail towards my camera and he had just shed his antler. I went back and walked up the trail he was comming from and within a few minutes there it was starring at me just laying on top of the snow. It is tough here in PA but some of the best places to look are around pines. The deer really seem to herd up around x-mas trees and large stands of pines in the winter as it provides them a good shelter from the snow. If you can find a large stand of pines with some deadfalls in it you have got it made.

Finding sheds takes alot of time and IMO is harder than scouting out a buck to shoot. You gotta think, if you have a dozen bucks on your property that is only 24 total sheds on the whole property and thats saying they all dropped them on that property. Its kinda like finding a needle in a haystack.

RE: Shed hunting
 

Check out the fence lines pretty well, nothing else that'll jar off an antler like jumping a fence.

RE: Shed hunting
 

i have the exact same problem

RE: Shed hunting
 

Isn't it funny so they can hide their horns so well? :D

All kidding aside, they can be very difficult to locate and spot even in the best areas. You just have to slowly pick your way through the cover the bucks are spending most of their time in. Best of luck to ya.

RE: Shed hunting
 

A lot of times shed hunting seems to be feast or famine, at least for me. I've had good outings and bad outings. This past weekend I spent about 3 hours out with my two labs and covered several miles of deer trails and came up empty. Not that I have trained shed dogs but there's always a chance they might pick something up. Then Sunday I went out alone and focused on glassing wheat fields. Within a couple hours I had found 4. All were spotted from a long distance using good binos glassing wheat fields. During this outing I also saw 30+ deer and several bucks carrying antlers. In my opinion expecting to have good results just covering 100 acres may be a little lofty. Your best bet will be keying in on the feeding areas, and hopefully these are open fields that you can scan with binoculars. I have found a number of sheds in tall grass and in the woods, but you can cover a lot more ground glassing the big feed fields.

RE: Shed hunting
 

We cover a large area. It takes a lot of land to find sheds in numberssince the deer don't always winter/feed in the same areas every yearin my area. 100 acres isn't much. Try toget permissionfor theland bordering the 100 acres. The more the better!!

Tim

RE: Shed hunting
 

It is tough to find sheds in general. My buddy and I went out on Monday, and found 6 in about a 500 acre woods. It took us three hours of searching, funny thing is my buddy found 3 in the last 20 mins, within a 60 yd. circle.

Shane