At only 3 ½ months, Mandi has mastered the art of backyard antler retrieval.

With shed antler hunting growing in popularity many whitetail hunters are finding the pursuit of these sought after “bones” a great way to get more late winter / early spring exercise while spending more time in the deer woods. My problem is that when I’m in the woods I am way too focused on other deer sign (rubs, scrapes, tracks, trails, beds, droppings and travel patterns) and how it applies to actual hunting to look intently for a discarded shed. To complicate matters my wife gets suspicious when I go shed hunting every day and never bring any antlers home.

Sometime last spring, I decided that I need to upgrade my shed hunting capabilities. After careful consideration I decided that I need to take the bold step of acquiring a canine retriever to help me locate shed antlers. After convincing my girls and their mom that they wanted a new puppy, we decided as a family that we wanted a golden retriever pup. I answered a local ad and before you know it the man on the phone was offering to deliver the last remaining pup from a batch of 11 to my door for only $50. He told me his employer owned both parents and they had all the papers and stuff that serious dog enthusiasts like to have. I wasn’t too worried about papers, I just wanted a dog that could find shed antlers for me and so after checking with a few credible doggy sources, I agreed to buy the pup.

When the man arrived, even with my untrained eye the puppy looked much more like a Yellow Lab than it did a Golden Retriever. He once again assured me it was a Golden Retriever just like the ad said so I opted to pay the $50 and take the 8 week old pup anyway. After much discussion, my daughters decided to name her Mandi.

The Lab pup is always eager to please her owner and will fetch deer antlers all day long if asked to do so.

If Mandi was going to fulfill my expectations her first play toy had to be a shed antler. I took the right side of a small 3-point shed antler, ground down and rounded off the tips of each point to prevent injury to Mandi and introduced the antler to the pup. It was an instant hit. The Lab pup took to deer antlers like a duck takes to water. That first night she slept with the antler lying immediately in front of her with her right paw resting on it to prevent anyone or anything from taking it. I quickly concluded that Mandi and I were going to get along just fine.

A short time later, after a trip to the vet for our initial puppy visit we concluded, with the help of many experts who choose to volunteer their opinions, that this indeed was a golden retriever, a golden Labrador retriever! Oh well, we were already attached to “Mandi” and I already knew with a little work she could make a great shed antler retriever. I am not a dog expert but I reasoned that with a little common sense training we could develop Mandi into a fine children’s pet by day and a whitetail deer antler hunting maniac by night.

Again, (I repeat things to emphasize their importance to the overall storyline) I am not a dog expert but I understand the concept of positive reinforcement for a job well done and negative reinforcement for disobedience. (In other words, you only need to be smarter than what you’re working with and I figured I could easily develop a physiological edge over the puppy). Using very basic methods, within a few weeks we had Mandi following a vast array of simple voice commands. No, sit, kennel and hunt’em up prompted Mandi to execute specific tasks which were then rewarded with a doggie treat. Disobedient acts like biting, jumping on people, running across the street and peeing on the floor were immediately punished with brisk slap’s to the mouth, slight boot to the rear or getting a nose full of warm dog pee accompanied by the strong verbal command “no.”

Mandi, 12 weeks old, pauses for a break after her rigorous 20-minute daily antler retrieval session.

“Hunt’em up” quickly turned into my favorite command. Hunt’em up was the command I used to direct Mandi to find the shed antler that had been tossed into the back yard and to bring it to me. At the tender age of just 14 weeks, Mandi was learning to love our daily game of fetch. When she saw that I had “her” deer antler in my hand she would instinctively lead me to the back yard where I would toss the antler some distance away and she would retrieve it enthusiastically. Mandi learned to drop the antler at my feet and then sit or lay down to receive her doggie treat and belly rub.

Since we were having so much fun I soon began incorporating “blind retrieves” into our daily routine. With a blind retrieve, I toss a very visible object like a bright pink fury toy some distance away when Mandi is not looking. Then using a hand signal combined with a verbal command of “hunt’em up” to direct Mandi to the object hat I wish for her to retrieve. I am slowly getting Mandi to understand that she needs to investigate the general area I’ve motioned towards and most of the time she sees the toy and retrieves it resulting in a doggie treat and belly rub. No retrieve, no treat. In the near future I plan to remove the visible object from this training session and replace it with a less visible object like Mandi’s antler. I am amazed at the progress Mandi has made in a relatively short period of time and am encouraged about the future. However there are certainly plenty of failures in this stage of her training and I expect it may take several months or longer to perfect it.

The sharp points of this small whitetail antler were removed, giving Mandi a safe fetch toy.

In the future I plan to move our training sessions from the backyard to the woods and Mandi will again be challenged to live up to her owner’s expectations. It will be in interesting test for a young dog. All of the new sights sounds and smells will be a huge distraction for the young antler dog but I am confident that with some patients and repeated trips to the woods Mandi will learn to hunt for shed antlers.

Summary:

While it is still too early to tell, early indications are that Mandi has the potential to fulfill the needs of this whitetail shed antler hunting fanatic and it is with much anticipation that I look forward to next February, March and April. Searching for shed deer antlers is a great way to extend your hunting season and it gives you an opportunity to learn more about the beloved whitetail deer. Shed hunting with man’s best friend will give me an opportunity to do more intensive post season scouting and learn everything I can about the deer in my area while Mandi does the detailed work of looking for bones. With any luck my wife might even stop wondering what I do all day long.