Several years ago I was hunting from a climber at the nose of a ridge atop our neighbor's farm during the stirrings of search phase, and was caught flat-footed by the sudden appearance of what would have been, then and now, my lifetime buck. Well, as you might imagine, I missed, gloriously and cleanly, at less than 20 yards. Near as I can figure I came to draw and had not noticed that my arrow had slid off the rest and onto the cradle below. So, back home I trudged. After passing through the gate at the corner of our property my foot brushed something under the frost killed grass. It was a shed from a year or two previous, half of what might have been an impressive 8-pt. Salt in the wound, etc. A few weeks later, my son was walking along the same track, and found the perfectly matching other half. Whoever he was, he had indeed been a very nice 8-pt.

It wasn't so much that I found it or that it was a shed antler.It was an antlered skull that found me thanks to our dog, Tucker. As a farmer I also tend to find many of my sheds walking or driving across the fields.(I even found one this Spring as I was walking across a pasture, while Turkey hunting with my oldest daughter, which measured a whopping 4 1/2"! That was the whole length of the spike.)I can get just as excited at finding a shed as if I had just shot the deer. So this Spring when I was backing a piece of equipment out of the shed, I noticed what looked like a short chunk of tree roots on our lawn. Tucker always likes to deposit his latest find from his "scavender hunts" on our lawn so I didn't think too much of it until I got closer and saw that it was actually a partly decayed bleached antlered skull. I could tell that the buck had died while still in velvet somewhere's around the first part of August or so. The left side would have sported about 4 points to the side, while the right had a short main beam that immediatly turned into a swollen 6" droptine. I had only the upper teeth to try and determine the age, which of course is not nearly as accurate as the bottom jaw, but I could see that the teeth were worn quite flat. Weather the buck died of old age, old wounds or a car accident or what, God only knows.

I've tried for years to find matching sheds and have never once been successful I've found absolutely stunning halves but no matter how much I hunt I've never found the match. Wish that I could tell a great success story but I guess that it's not gonna happen.

Two years ago I was going with my in-laws to feed the cows on a clod snowy morning. There were some deer hanging out around the hay stack, does and bucks. One of the non-antlered deer looked a bit larger than the rest of the non-antlered ones and at a distance I didn't make anything of it. They kind of sauntered off down the draw when we pull off the road towards the stack. When we got there mywelf and my brother-in-law ran to the stack and hit the summit to see the deer and we watched a nice big 5x5 just shake the antlers off his head one side at a time with a healthy shake of his head. Was very cool to watch that happen.

Just last week I was mowing a food plot that I have hunted for the past several years. I shed hunted this area a couple times this spring with my hunting buddy, and also a couple times with my nephew, always ending up "skunked". As I was mowing the 100ft wide by 200 ft long site, it came down to the last piece to mow. It ended up only being about a foot wide and 30 ft long since I started from the outside and made my way to the center. On the last 10 ft, my mower hit something hard. As I was watching in front of my tractor, there came flying a broken 4 point main beam. I was able to find two of the tines that broke off, but not all the pieces to fit back together. Funny how i never found it while I was actually looking for it.

Shed hunting is pretty simple for me. It serves as more of an excuse to just get out in the woods and check on the land and deer patterns and do some work and see what's going on for the upcoming season. Regardless however, I have not found a matching set of sheds but then again, I have never really found a large shed... but then again, I'm in Florida.