Am I the only one?

[Barry D]

This years shed antler hunting has been the worst in my 30 years of searching. Obviously the warm winter had a lot to do with it, and maybe a bit of bad luck.
Heres my stats for the year.
I walked 13 different parcels of land. Most were on lands I have had success on in previous years.
My tracks App says I walked total of 84 km's.
I found a total of 16 antlers.
Thats 5.25 km's per antler of bush whacking. Thats my worst average per antler ever.
Only one fresh whitetail and two fresh elk.
I spent 6 hours walking an area where I have found 40-60 mule deer antlers in the past, and never found a single fresh one, and only one old spiker. Just crazy.
I would have never bet that the only fresh whitetail I found was on Dec 28th 2023.
My conclusion is that the last warm and almost snowless winter in central Alberta, had the animals spread across the landscape and therefore antlers hard to find. I also think I just had some bad luck with all the droppings I found, but no antlers. With no one else posting much for their shed hunting successes this year, I think it is the same for almost all shed hunters. This was defiantly not the year to be a rookie shed hunter.
My last outing was the best with finding four elk. two old small ones, and one big 6 X 6 matching set that would score about 275 on the head. It was a great way to end the season. I wee bit of redemption.

[dshaw]

I agree, Its been a very hard year for sure for all reasons you stated. I also think that the number of tags given out in some zones has populations and quality way down. Lots of areas that usually have mule deer for us to find after the season had nothing for quality or much quantity.

[DirtShooter]

Haven't found any this year either and last year the same quarter I walked out with 10 in one day.

[Battle Rat]

My last two years were like you described so I didn't spend much time looking this year.
The deer numbers are quite low indicating that all the extra doe tags has taken a toll.

[gman1978]

Loading up on elk sheds but the deer are down a bit especially the mature mule deer sheds.

[slough shark]

Not sure what zone you were in but the zone I hunt in east central Alberta I’d be very optimistic in saying the mule deer population was 25% what it was 15 years ago. It was probably a fair bit lower than that, the oldest buck I saw was probably 3 1/2 and I think 2 of them that old. I know the weather wasn’t the best and was fairly warm but I’ve hunted there for 20 years and had a lot of success, it was plain and simply dismal, the population was almost collapsed, entire sections of land where there historically had been dozens of deer every year had 0 or maybe a couple.