Am I the only one?
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.
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