I need a shed hunting dog

[mulie03]

I'm sure somebody has one. Maybe a bloodhound or retriever mix would work good. I don't even know if you train a dog to find and retrieve antlers without chewing them up first.

 

[Brotherwolf]

I think Deer and Deer Hunting magazine ran an article about shed hunting with dogs, been a while back.
I've heard about people using them to find sheds, I think it would take some time and good training and a dog with a good nose. You ever hold a shed to a dog before? the base of the antler must smell real good to them, my dog goes nuts when I bring them home.!

 

[Shag]

Yeah, I understand fox and coyote might go out of their way to urinate on them, which in itself would get a dog's attention. Even my wife's cats show quite an interest in them. If you consider they spend the entire fall exuding scent from their forehead glands and rubbing pitch and scent into them they oughtta smell like something to a dog. Then there's that little ring of flesh that remains on the underside of the burr, which would be another distinctive odor to a dog. I wouldn't think you would be able to buy a dog that was good at finding sheds.....who the heck would ever part with one??

 

[Canus latrans]

I've got two labs, a yellow and a black. They are learning to recognize a shed and retrieve it. Almost daily I take them out, separately, to find the shed. After I feel that it has my scent or their scent on it, I rinse it off and try to start over. They must be able to find the shed without any scent. I really feel that they need to just recognize what I am looking for. This is their first month of work and I haven't decided who is doing the better job. However, the yellow lab has retrieved the shed under a foot of water. By being tossed in the water, I feel that they are learning how to better recognize the shed. The black will sometimes stop and chew a little. The yellow brings it back straight to me.
This will be their first year and I hope to be able to report some successes.

 

[d trees]

While doing research on Draathars also called German wirehairs I found a website where a guy trained one specifically for sheds and he had a pile of em it was somewhere in the Midwest cant remember the site though ,d