Shed Hunting Attempt #1 of 2017

I love to shed hunt!  I look forward to this season for months and when it is finally here, I take advantage of any chance I get to out, do some walking, and look for some antlers.  For those of you that don't know, male whitetail deer (bucks) shed their antlers ever year around mid January to late February here in Missouri.  They will grow new antlers over the summer to replace the ones they have cast off.  What we have here in Missouri is a small window that allows a person to try and find these antlers that have been shed before prairie grasses, row crops, and forest brush cover up and conceal them from view.  There are many factors working against a shed hunter.  First of all, looking for antlers in the woods is less like looking for a needle in a haystack and more like looking for a specific needle in a stack of needles.  Also, you have rodents to contend with.  The minute those antlers hit the ground, they become a calcium supplement for mice, rats, and whatever critter has the desire to chew them up.  A final factor to consider is deer density.  If you are hunting for antlers in an area with a small deer population, then naturally your chances of finding antlers go down.  I have been fortunate enough to find probably 15-20 antlers in my shed hunting career which is about 10 years old.  Yesterday, I was able to go out on my first hunt.

Like many hunts, it was not productive in terms of antlers found, but most of the time I find something that is incredible and I wasn't even looking for.  For years, I have hoped to find one of these little nature nuggets and yesterday, I finally found one: an owl pellet.

If you don't know what owl pellets are, they are regurgitated remains of something that an owl consumed.  An owl can't digest the bones or fur of the varmints it eats so it vomits those items up but not after its stomach compacts them into a tight wad.  In many cases you can reassemble a complete skeleton of the mouse or vole or whatever it ate.  It's pretty cool.  

In terms of antlers, I found 4.  Two four pointers and two spikes.  Unfortunately, they were still attached to their owners and ran off in the opposite direction.  So if you are a shed hunter, and hunt around the Kansas City area, you might give it a little more time.  With a mild winter like we have had, it looks like bucks are holding onto their antlers a little longer than usual this year.  I will report back if I do any more hunting and if I find that bucks are shedding.