Early Shed Season: Extra Miles for the Piles

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Early Shed Season: Extra Miles for the Piles

By Kent Boucher

Once the curtain falls on deer and pheasant season, I consider taking advantage of my last few small game opportunities, but my heart really belongs to the antlered critters, and I know they will soon be antlerless. Honestly, I love shed season about as much as I love deer season simply because shed hunting grants me access to more deer. During a regular deer season, you only get to take home one to three sets of antlers. During shed season though, that number is technically limitless. When the calendar flips to February, I’ve already been out looking for that Iowa ivory. If you want to get started as early as I do, you will have to accept the reality of early season shed hunting. The miles will be many, and the antlers will be few.

Accept The Odds
Through my years of shed antler obsession, I have read nearly every shed article, and listened to just as many podcasts discussing shed season, and almost all of them contain the same information on repeat varying only in the formatting. But, every now and then a real gem of information will be shared that goes beyond the general practices all shed hunters should understand. One such gem was a description of the timeline for when antlers begin dropping. Mark Kenyon of Wired To Hunt was the first person I heard reference the normal bell curve distribution of data to describe when antlers typically drop each year, and I have found that description to not only be accurate, but useful as well. So dust off your knowledge of probability and statistics, or Google a normal bell curve distribution of data, and follow along with this application based on my experience here in Iowa. I believe the first standard deviation (68% of antlers dropping) from the average date (let’s go with March 15th) when most antlers shed, to be within the range of the first week of March to the first week of April. The second standard deviation which includes 95% of all shed antlers would start with February 15th and end around April 15th. Finally, our third standard deviation which includes 99.7% of all shed antlers would tack on a start date around the beginning of February and wrap up around the end of April.

Of course I don’t possess enough quantitative data to be this mathematically precise, but I have walked hundreds of miles and picked up dozens of antlers through the years and my experiences certainly seem to match this timeline. Now I know this is a hunting and fishing magazine, and most of us read to escape the burden of math and exhausting thinking so I’ll jump to the application of this data. If we know that the early season for shed hunting occurs within the first halves of the second and third standard deviations of the mean antler drop time frame, then all of us early season shed hunters are fighting against the odds of finding sheds because almost 85% of the sheds are still being carried around by the bucks. But 85% isn’t 100% so there are certainly some fresh sheds laying out there with bloody burrs waiting for those who defy the odds to come and collect them. So where are they?

Be The Deer
Bob St. Pierre of Pheasants Forever has mentioned to me the importance of applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs for helping pheasants thrive in our ecosystems, and he makes a great point. Although this classic mechanism was first used to explain the needs we humans must have met in order to thrive, we can certainly apply its insight to other members of our taxonomic kingdom including deer. During the early shed season timeframe deer are enduring their most difficult days of the year. The brutal cold and limited food resources are stressing the deer far more than any other time in the year, and food is the sole focus for each deer. The advantage we have in Iowa is that much of our ag ground (that hasn’t been disturbed with fall discing) contains enough grain litter and plant material to feed the deer for the winter. The downside to having so many food acres is a lack of suitable habitat to shield the deer from the winter weather. Acknowledging these circumstances will steer us Iowa shed hunters in the right direction.

If we can identify the limited terrain features that provide winter food and cover within close proximity. Identifying these key habitat features is only the first step though. Once you are hiking in the correct habitat it’s important to zero in on the most recent deer sign – look for heavy trails, scat, and solitary deer beds (more likely to belong to a buck) these are the most sensible places to find an early shed. Another smart place to look for are patches of ground that aren’t covered in snow. This will usually be a lonely grassy patch surrounded by ice and snow with southern exposure, and it probably represents the warmest area in that immediate area. Bucks will figure this out as well, and there’s a good chance they will spend enough time there to shake an antler loose. Regardless of what deer sign, or even what habitat you find, always ask yourself, “If I was the deer would this location meet my needs?” If the answer is yes, then your odds improve.

Know What’s Been Going On
The earliest shed I’ve found came on the Friday of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. I was squirrel hunting with my good friend Luke Fritch and while he was circling a tree, I stumbled upon a deer carcass that I quickly realized was a shed buck. After I called Luke over to examine my find, I suggested that the buck’s antlers must be nearby to which Luke immediately responded with, “Oh, here they are”. Sure enough both antlers were laying on the ground five yards away from the dead deer, frozen under the snow and ice glaze that fell on New Year’s Day. These antlers had been shed in December and the reason for the very early drop seemed to be tied to the poor health of their now dead owner. This is an often-cited reality about wounded bucks, but I think most shed hunters don’t put enough thought into taking advantage of this reality, so here’s how to apply this principle. You need intel about the bucks in your area. Did you hear about a neighbor who shoulder punched a buck? Did someone tell you they hit a buck with their car and saw it run off? Maybe you saw one limping around during the late season, or maybe you got a picture of a wounded buck on a trail camera- regardless of the situation, if you have intel about where a wounded buck is hanging around, you should begin looking for his sheds first.

Extra Miles
A well-worn shed hunting phrase is “Miles For the Piles”. This is an accurate summation for what a greedy shed hunter should expect each time they set out on their treasure hunt, but during the early shed season the word extra should be added in front of miles, “Extra Miles for the Piles” to portray the most accurate reality for this point in shed season. If you want to find early season sheds, you’re going to have to spend a lot of time walking. In fact, during this portion of shed season I expect to walk 10 miles for every antler I find, and I usually find five deer carcasses between each antler pick up. There’s no way around the simple early season rule that you must cover a lot of deer country before you are rewarded with a shed, but your focus and smile should be growing with each mile because eventually the extra miles will carry you to the shed piles.

In my experience, I have observed that serious shed hunters are some of the most dedicated outdoors people. To be one means you have to possess a strong tolerance for discomfort, the low odds, bitter cold, long hikes, slippery snow and ice keep the fair-weather crowd focused on the TV. But the true shed-heads play against the odds, strap on their arctic gear, and use the logic that is required to find a shed or two before the fair-weather crowd floods the woods.

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