Shed Hunting Archives

21 02, 2025

Shed Hunters Find Less Than 40% of Antlers

Clay Hanback2025-02-21T10:41:14-05:00February 21st, 2025|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Shed Hunting, sportsman channel|0 Comments

The Deer Lab at Auburn University has a 430-acre high-fenced research facility. All the deer inside the fence are well known and documented. During the 7-year-period from 2012 to 2018, biologists and grad students were inside the facility daily, working, doing research, taking samples and looking around. They found only 284 of 747 (39%) of antlers they knew were shed by the bucks during that period. They analyzed the antlers they found, and determined from their records that the average age of the bucks that cast them was 5½ years. For the antlers that they never found, the average age of the bucks was 3½. Bottom line: Obviously, the larger antlers of older bucks are easiest to see and pick up. [...]

10 02, 2025

How Shed Antlers Tell the Health of Bucks

Clay Hanback2025-02-10T09:33:34-05:00February 10th, 2025|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Hunting News, Shed Hunting|1 Comment

According to experts with the National Deer Association, when you pick up a shed antler with a base that is flat or level with the burr of an antler, or hollowed out deeper up inside the shed, you can determine that buck was under stress two months or so back during peak of breeding. Conversely, a shed with a protrusion of white bone that sticks out below the antler burr was in good health with normal testosterone levels during the rut. This article goes on to say that any buck might suffer from an injury, a disease like EHD, or some other mishap that could cause stress during the rut, and (researchers note) some “unhealthy” shed antlers every year. But [...]

29 01, 2025

Deer Season is Over: Learn from Last Year’s Mistakes

Clay Hanback2025-01-26T12:32:20-05:00January 29th, 2025|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Hunting News, Shed Hunting, sportsman channel, whitetail deer|0 Comments

Trail Camera[MP:04][TP:071F][IMEI:868032061698167] Sitting here thinking back about what went right and what went wrong last deer season, which was a challenging one for me and the Big Deer TV team. The best memories are of the few days when I shot a buck on TV, but actually I will learn the most by replaying and analyzing all those tough and lean days and weeks when I didn’t get a deer. How did I mess up? What could I have done differently? Lots to chew on. Lesson 1: Scout More and Better A buddy in October and said, “Hey man, I got permission to hunt a new farm, you in?” “Let’s go!” I roared and off we went for a [...]

26 01, 2025

Update: Should You Eat a Deer with CWD?

Clay Hanback2025-01-26T12:13:45-05:00January 26th, 2025|Big Deer TV, BigDeer, CWD, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Hunting News, Shed Hunting, sportsman channel, whitetail deer|Comments Off on Update: Should You Eat a Deer with CWD?

Deer hunters have been wondering, and some have been worrying about it, for many years. Here's the latest on Chronic Wasting Disease: In a recent experiment at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana, scientists tried to contaminate “human cerebral organiods,” or tissues that closely resemble human brain tissue, with injections of Chronic Wasting Disease, which has been documented to infect deer in 35 states and 5 Canadian provinces. For a week the researchers exposed the imitation brain tissues to high concentrations of CWD from 3 different sources. Good news, in ongoing testing, no infection! Yet another scientific finding that CWD does not jump from an infected animal to a human. BUT does this mean it is okay to eat a deer [...]

21 01, 2025

Giant Indiana Jestes Buck, 209 7/8 Inches NT

Clay Hanback2025-01-21T15:35:54-05:00January 21st, 2025|Big Deer Stories, Big Deer TV, BigDeer, Bowhunting, Deer Hunting, Deer Management, Hunting News, Shed Hunting, whitetail deer|1 Comment

Great guest blog on one of the coolest deer from the 2024 season from Big Deer field reporter Dean Weimer. On the evening of October 4, 2023, Danny Jestes watched a couple of does and a small buck feed in an open grass field for the better part of an hour. Then, as if shot out of a cannon, all three deer skedaddled into a nearby thicket. At the edge of the woods stood what Jestes assumed was the reason for their abrupt exit. “When I turned and looked over at the edge of the woods, there stood a magnificent buck with all kinds of headgear,” he says. “The buck was looking straight toward me.” After a few minutes the [...]