Why Shed Hunting Leads to Success in the Fall

Shed hunting has not only become one of my favorite things to do in the off-season, but it has many benefits besides aimlessly walking miles around in the woods. There is so much you can learn as a whitetail hunter from shed hunting.

Identifying Buck Bedding

Locating bedding areas and bedding points are crucial to locating sheds, but also crucial in understanding where certain bucks like to bed and spend their time. Why is this important? It’s imperative to have this knowledge in preparation for the upcoming season to know where to hang your sets according to these bedding areas. Not only will you want to be sure that your wind will not blowing into the bedding area, but you'll also need to be confident that deer will not  see you getting to your stand setups while bedding. These two factors can vitally impact your hunting of a particular buck.

Heavily Used Trails

Following and finding heavily used trails has landed me a lot of sheds over the years, but also plays an important role in planning for your fall hunts. I usually mark these good trails on my onX Hunt app and then will hang cell cameras on them come closer to season to identify which ones yield the best travel for bucks. Being able to hang a set on these trails to catch a buck coming from the bedding to food — or simply cruising nearby — can really pay off when the rut is approaching. 

Be sure to never count out the most well-used creek crossings and fence crossings. If you think about it, these particular crossings may be the easiest — or only — route for deer to cross and travel. In 2020, I found one of my largest sheds to date on a particular fence crossing going into an alfalfa field. It was the lowest spot in the fence and made for easy travel. That coming fall, I hung a camera on that crossing and caught the same buck utilizing that crossing regularly. Once he started to daylight, I did a hang-and-hunt and killed that buck on my first sit at that fence crossing. If I wouldn’t have paid attention to the sign during shed season, I may have completely overlooked this spot and never arrowed that buck.

Locating Rut Sign

Shed season is the best time locate rut sign from the previous fall, as the sign is still fresh and noticeable. This is when I usually do most of my rut scouting for the upcoming fall. Locating rub lines, general areas where there are a lot of rubs, locating scrape lines and large community scrapes is extremely important. I will take photos of these findings and add them to my onX Hunt app to have a visual and location of these hot areas for the coming fall. The closer to rut it gets, I will then start focusing my bowhunting time and move cell cameras to these areas.

The Antlers Themselves

So what do the antlers you find really tell you? Well, in a word — a lot! Not only will they provide information on where a particular buck may feed, travel, and bed, but they also tell you what bucks survived the season. A lot of times I will have bucks completely disappear altogether at some point in time during the season, which leads me to believe they have gotten killed. To my surprise, many times I've found antlers from those bucks, which gave me direct knowledge that the buck is still alive and well.

I have also found sheds from bucks I never knew existed. This just goes to show you that sometimes cameras don’t catch everything. Additionally, you now know that a particular buck winters on that area, which can be good information for late-season hunts in the coming year. Some of the properties I hunt will have a buck all summer, but then will never be seen again after its velvet comes off. Shed hunting multiple properties in the same given area has allowed me to learn where a lot of these bucks move off to and spend their fall and winter.

Depending when a particular buck sheds their antlers can also tell you a lot about that deer itself. I have followed some bucks for multiple years, and some will shed their antlers the first week of January each year. Others have held until mid-March every year. Each deer is different and it’s very interesting to learn the shedding pattern of an individual buck. When deer are under a lot of stress — harsh winters, injuries, etc. — these can all lead to shedding at different times, which can teach you a lot about the overall health of the deer.

Last but not least, one of my favorite aspects of shed hunting is finding sheds from bucks I have a lot of history with year after year and building a story with that particular deer. I get a firsthand look at  their antler growth progresses each year and actually get a much better understanding of their true size and age. I have also found it to be very interesting to follow the genetics on a particular property for multiple years. It's always rewarding to finding sheds from a particular buck for several years, and later on down the road finding the sheds and building history with another buck with the same general frame or characteristics as the original one.

In the end, shed hunting is not only extremely fun and rewarding, but can teach you so many things about the deer themselves. Participating will only make you a better hunter by paying attention to the sign and the antlers themselves. Happy hunting!

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