Shed Antlers Help Muzzleloader Hunters Identify Trophy Buck Deer Locations
Editor’s Note: Searching for shed antlers and hunting bucks without a gun when the season is over, so you can hunt them with black powder once deer season starts, will help you compile the most-complete information about the whereabouts of deer. Well-known deer manager and writer, Bob Zaiglin of Houston, Texas, a certified wildlife biologist, has overseen numerous Texas ranches through the years. According to Zaiglin, hunting sheds helps you learn where deer are concentrated on any particular piece of property. The area where you find the most sheds will be the regions where you will discover the most deer. Also muzzleloader hunters can pinpoint the corridors deer are using to enter agricultural fields to feed, water and bed and the places where the deer are hiding from hunting pressure.
By hunting sheds, a sportsman may find a rack that will score very high on Boone and Crockett, and that buck never even may have been seen during hunting season. Once the hunter locates that trophy shed and decides to hunt that deer the next season, he must realize he will have to let numbers of small bucks walk past him – if he's going to try and take that trophy buck. But by knowing a trophy buck is in an area, a hunter can concentrate his hunting time the next season in the general region where he's found the trophy's shed antler. In the West, I find many sheds around watering holes and along fence lines. Often when deer are jumping fences, they'll knock their antlers off. Then a hunter can try to find travel trails between feeding and bedding areas along fences where he locates drops. Although each of these places are easy spots to discover sheds, if you really want to locate the shed antlers of trophy bucks, you must go into the thicker spots to look for them. One of the problems with locating big sheds in heavy cover is that rodents are more abundant in thick areas and will consume those antlers at a rapid rate after the deer have shed them.
Finding a Matched Pair of Sheds:
Although the dream of most shed hunters is to find a matched pair of trophy antlers, very rarely do deer shed both antlers at the same time and in the same place. But one year I actually located five sets of matched antlers. I'm not sure why finding both antlers off the same deer is uncommon, but my best guess is that antler shedding and the casting of antlers is definitely related to nutrition. A deer on a good nutrition level holds his antlers longer than a deer that is nutritionally deprived of good food. One year our ranch provided good nutrition. But after hunting season, the lands I managed went into a drought. Since the deer were somewhat deprived nutritionally, the deer shed their antlers more quickly. At least this guess was the best I had as to why I found more sets of antlers together then.
Locating Dead Trophy Whitetails When Hunting Sheds:
I also discovered in years past some dead trophy deer while hunting sheds. One time, I picked-up both sides of a 14-point buck that scored 176-points non-typical Boone and Crockett. A shed hunter will find these dead deer will include not only deer that may have been wounded during hunting season but also some deer that have died of natural causes. Remember you're hunting sheds after the rut. During the rut in regions with big deer, the trophy bucks generally will be beaten-up badly during mating season. They may have to fight on a daily or a bi-weekly basis, and the bigger, dominant buck must fight more often to prove his dominance. These big old bucks are not invincible. They may develop an infection after being pierced by the antler of a rival. In this weakened condition, they can be attacked and killed by predators like coyotes. A buck can lose as much as 25 percent of his body weight during the rut, which is also the time of the year in many areas of the country when the snowfalls are the heaviest. After deer season in inclement weather, deer will concentrate heavily around food sources. In many regions of the country, farmers and landowners must feed deer so they can survive. In the brush country of south Texas after the rut, the land tends to get dry.
Also some deer, especially trophy deer, simply die of old age, because they have escaped hunting pressure through the years and eventually die of natural causes just like humans do. Too, deer are accident-prone. Sometimes the deer will run into trees and kill themselves or become hung-up on fences and die. Heat and drought both affect deer adversely, and whitetails are susceptible to various parasites and diseases. The main reason you find these dead deer when hunting sheds is because you are in the woods at the time the deer generally die-off. Looking for sheds and studying them will help you have more success when hunting with your CVA muzzleloader gun.