Shed Hunting With Dogs | Deer Shed Hunting Dogs


ShedAntlers.com

Shed antler hunting is a tremendous pastime for whitetail lovers. Many hunters get as much thrill from shed hunting as they do from hunting the animals themselves.

You don’t need help to find antlers that are lying right out in the open. However, when the antlers are hidden in brush or buried in grass, a dog’s sense of smell may be the only hope of finding them.

Bucks regularly drop antlers at fence crossings. In most areas, these are grassy areas where the antlers can easily become covered by grass and disappear.

Roxie, a 3-year-old yellow lab that belongs to Allen Currin sits next to an antler she found in a grass field. This is a big antler, yet it is obvious that without Roxie’s help, it would be hard to find an antler in grass.

Allen Currin and his shed antler dog Roxie with a big shed that the two found during the spring of 2005. Roxie finds antler by relying on her sense of smell, a much better method than relying on sight.

Some dogs are trained to retrieve the antler and others are trained to sit down or lie down next to them once found. Both methods work fine.

Training includes the handler. In order to get the most out of your shed antler dog you need to understand the body language of the dog so you can redirect it when the dog alerts on an antler and then loses the scent.

Last spring, one of my neighbors and his best friend stopped by to put on a shed antler hunting demonstration. Normally, a couple of men picking up antlers that I had planted for them to find would bore me to tears. Surely, my life has not dipped to this level, has it? However, this demonstration was different and I couldn’t wait to see it play out. The main character in the hunt was not a man at all, but a 3-year old yellow lab named Roxie that was specially trained to find shed antlers by scent.

In the back of Allen Currin’s truck was a plastic bag filled with shed antlers, some fresh some old. Allen did his best to keep them away from outside odors so the dog would only be able to smell the antlers and not human scent.

I packed the bag of bones out to an 11-acre CRP field grown waist high in small oak trees and brome grass. It was a tough testing ground. If you have ever lain down in a thick, grassy field, you know what I mean. Very little wind hits your body. If Roxie was going to find these antlers by scent, she was going to have to be pretty darn good at it. Besides, I didn’t hide any of the five antlers in an open spot where the dog could possibly see them. I stuffed them down into the grass.

Allen walked Roxie to the downwind edge of the field and cut her loose. She took off with all the enthusiasm of a 3-year old and began covering ground like a pointer working a quail field. It wasn’t long before her head whipped to the right, her tail started twitching and she turned “birdy”. Roxie found the first two antlers with ease. As she worked her way across the field, she soon found the third antler, but I had to help her find the fourth with a little coaxing. I actually forgot where I hid the fifth, which was a little unnerving to Allen because these were some pretty darn nice antlers. Finally, the dog and I found it at about the same time.

Each time Roxie found an antler she sat down next to it. She wasn’t trained to retrieve or bark, but rather to sit until Allen arrived to give her the reward. “She doesn’t care one bit about these antlers,” Allen told me when he walked up the first find. “What she really loves is this yellow ball right here.”

Allen produced a tennis ball from his jacket pocket and pitched it 100 feet several times for Roxie to chase. It was obvious that she loved that ball. As soon as she saw it, her eyes lit up and when Allen chucked it, she was off in a yellow blur. Three times, he played the game with Roxie heaping heavy praise on her, and then the ball went back in the pocket and Roxie went back to work.

“I wanted a dog that would find the antlers by scent,” Allen said. “If the antlers are visible I can find them myself. I don’t need any help when they are right out in the open. But when they are in CRP grass or buried in brush, that’s when a dog really comes in handy. A long-time friend of mine named Tracy Bowling trains drug inspection dogs and has a system he uses for scent training his dogs. I asked him one time a few years ago if it was possible to train a dog to find antlers by scent and he went and did it. Now he’s working on a second dog for me. The second one will actually retrieve the antlers.

“Tracy’s method is based on a reward system. Roxie lives to play with the tennis ball I carry when we antler hunt and the only time she gets to have it is when she finds an antler. She never gets to play with it at any other time even when we are back home in the yard. It is just three tosses and the ball goes right back into my coat pocket and the dog goes back to work.”

I watched Roxie at play and there was no doubt that she loves the reward better than the antlers. In fact, it is obvious that the reward system works very well to motivate her to find the next antler.

“To appreciate what Roxie can do you really need to watch her in a natural setting where she isn’t hunting planted antlers,” said Allen. “Let me give you an example of a shed hunt we did last spring. My friend Bob Self was walking with me. He yelled that he saw an antler up ahead. We always let the dog find all the antlers we can in order to keep her interested and to improve her abilities through practice. I was getting ready to guide Roxie in that direction when she disappeared.

“Bob yelled, ‘It’s over here. She’s not even close.’ When I got to Roxie, I could see that she was lying down. I couldn’t see an antler but figured there must be one there somewhere. When I got right up to her I saw an antler tine just sticking out of the grass. It was an antler from the previous spring, buried in the grass. I dug it out, let her retrieve the ball and pointed her back toward Bob again. She nearly got to him before she laid down again. This time she was laying right next to a 2 1/2 inch spike antler shed. It is the shortest antler I have every found. I rewarded her and finally she made it to the antler Bob had seen. Roxie found two antlers in a short time that we never would have found.

“That spring Roxie and I found 165 antlers. I found about 100 of them and Roxie found the rest. I wouldn’t have found those antlers without her; they were in spots where I couldn’t see them. She found 40% of the total number of antlers. I never would have found any of them without Roxie – that’s a big deal.”

It is no secret that bucks tend to drop their antlers in grassy areas like field edges, sloughs and CRP fields. Allen told me that he finds a lot of them at fence crossings, as well. These are all areas where grass limits visibility and where a dog that finds antlers by scent is especially valuable.

“Tracy is in the process of training another dog for me,” Allen added. “Lucy will also find antlers by scent but she will bring them to me rather than sitting down next to the antler and waiting.”

Tracy Bowling’s resume will amaze you. His experience in the arena of dog training is unmatched. He has done it all and he is currently one of the largest suppliers of trained law enforcement dogs on the east coast. Having such a knowledgeable person on the phone offered some opportunities to learn more about the scenting ability of dogs. I even went so far as to ask Tracy to offer a few guesses into the scenting ability of deer compared to dogs.

“We don’t know exactly what a dog can smell,” Tracy said. “They can detect scents at levels that are too small for us to measure. Drug smugglers are constantly trying to find things they can wrap their stash in to keep dogs from smelling it. They will even shrink-wrap it, then wrap that package in a layer of rags soaked in diesel fuel and then shrink-wrap again. Yet, if there is enough time for all the odors to soak through the plastic (which they will within a short time) the dog can still pick up the odor of the drugs in the center of the package. They have an amazing ability to separate the signature odor that they are trained to detect from a wide range of very strong odors intended to confuse or cover up those odors. These abilities remain a mystery to everyone who has studied dogs.

“It is truly amazing. For example, we train a lot of tracking dogs for law enforcement; they’re trained to track people. These dogs have the ability to smell ground disturbance odors (freshly turned earth, crushed grass, broken twigs, overturned leaves, etc.) much longer than they can smell human scent. When we hear a story of a dog cold trailing a person several days or even weeks later, you can be sure the dog was trailing that person on ground disturbance odors not human scent.”

I asked Tracy if he thought a deer could also track a person on ground disturbance odors. “I have seen dogs alert on human scent from several hundred yards away and I have seen deer do the same thing. It is likely that deer have similar scenting ability to dogs. So it is likely that a deer could also trail a person on ground disturbance odors.”

That might explain a few things. I have often seen deer trail me down mowed paths and across open fields (where I never rubbed against any underbrush) in spite of the fact that I was wearing rubber boots and Elimitrax booties to eliminate and contain my scent. They acted more curious than spooked. Sure, there could have been some slight human odor making it to the ground, but it is also very possible that those deer were trailing me on the massive ground disturbance odors my relative large feet left behind. My feet are much larger than those of woodland animals, so I’m sure that alone would raise a red flag.

This could also explain why I have seen deer pay less attention to ground scent in areas with cattle than in areas without them. The cattle are constantly disturbing the ground in massive doses so they don’t notice a little disturbance from a human foot.

When we look at a dog’s ability to detect trace odors from among much stronger odors, it begs for a comparison to deer. It has been hard enough to devise tests to determine a dog’s scenting ability and these animals are tame and trained. It is impossible to devise a truly conclusive test of wild whitetails. However, if we continue to assume that they have scenting abilities similar to a dog’s, then it is not a stretch to believe that they can also separate human odor from massive amounts of other odors intended to cover it up. So, maybe you shouldn’t depend too strongly on cover scents to mask human odor, but instead you should focus on eliminating and containing those odors.

“It doesn’t make any sense to train a shed antler dog to rely on sight,” said Tracy Bowling. “People have better sight than a dog and because the dog is so close to the ground, they are at a big disadvantage. With scent, they will find antlers that you could not find yourself, and that makes a shed antler dog worth owning. Their ability to detect the antler depends on wind conditions and humidity. I have seen the distance range all the way from as little as 10 feet to over 100 feet. Bigger antlers and fresher antlers are easier for the dog to smell.”

Tracy trains an average of six shed antler dogs each year and sells them for roughly $6,500 each. This compares favorably to the price a bird hunter would pay for a fully trained and field ready pointer or retriever. “We train the shed antler dogs the same way we train all our detection dogs,” Tracy said. “It is very thorough and starts with basic handling and discipline. Next, we train them to detect the correct odor (we use antlers as old as four years for this). Then we train them to communicate with the handler and finally we bring it all together with the reward system.

“I feel that one of these dogs will improve your results at least the 40% that Allen mentioned,” Tracy added. “It is likely to be higher than that. You won’t cover more ground with a dog than you would otherwise, but you will definitely cover it better.”

For more information on Tracy Bowling’s shed antler dog-training program, contact him at (252) 826-4415, www.ventosakennel.com