She antler dogs

[Msbobcat]

Anyone on here she'd hunt with dogs? I know it's done a lot off horseback in south Texas but always wondered how it would be in the northwest and do people she'd hunt for elk antlers?

[Mike Leonard]

Elk antler sheds are the big ticket item out west. People cover the ground because there is so much Forest Service and Federal public land. You are beginning to see more people training up dogs to hunt and bring in sheds.

It can be a great family outing to get the kids involved in helping find the sheds, and also they can make a little spending money being outside away from the video games.

One problem that can happen in areas that have heavy concentrations of late wintering and spring bunched elk. People come in on ATV and drive all over the place and if the ground is still wet or muddy you can suffer a lot of erosions because of it. Some get very greedy over the sheds and I have even heard of fights over a shed or people taking them away from kids. Pretty silly stuff!

I don't mess with them but we do a lot of riding thru elk and deer country while hunting or working cows and occasionally we find a nice one. I picked up a matched pair of 7 point elk sheds a few years ago only a few yards apart. I gave them to a young boy who was saving up for his first bow to start hunting.

[Tanner Peyton]

A while back I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with a lazy, un athletic bird dog. We became quite the pair and he learned to do many things. One of which was to fetch me an antler should he happen to come across one. As pup his chew toys were antlers and we would play games where I would hide it from him an he would go look for his toy (antler) on command. Now by my standards of today this dog would have been a cull, but back then he was the bomb. He would ride on the motor cycle, get me a pop out of the cooler, decoy coyotes, chase muskrat and beaver, and of course hunt all birds, everything from turkey and goose to teal and quail. Anyhow, when we were out hunting he wouldnt actively look for sheds but rather bring them to me should he happen to bump into one. I think it might take a pretty stout dog to pack back an elk shed. Some of them are pretty heavy. I've always wondered if a hound could be taugh to bay up sheds and use that great nose they have to find umm.