I've only picked up a few sheds this year, and all of them except 1 little spike whitetail have been incidental finds. This one from a few weeks ago has to be one of my all time favorites though.
So there we are (the wife, BIL, and I), packed into my little 14 ft. boat, trolling shallow crankbaits with 120 ft of line out in 7 ft of water. All of a sudden my wife goes "SHED! Right there!" I thought she saw a shed on the shoreline so I said "where?"
"We just trolled right over it"
"What!?!"
Sure as heck, we pulled lines up, turned around and there she be. I netted it off bottom and handed it off to the wife so she could check out her find. The fishing was good, and I was already pretty sleep deprived, so I kinda forgot about the shed after that.
We ended up fishing till dark, with an hour drive home and fish to clean, boat to put away etc. Needless to say 4:00 was gonna be a rough wake up call for work. One day with little sleep is no biggie. But I was on day three or four at that point.
So morning comes and I hit the snooze button a couple times and then that little devil on my shoulder says, "Hey man, you have like 250 hours of sick leave...just saying..." I let out a groan, try my best to ignore that little devil, and roll out of bed into my clothes, trying to put on deodorant while I'm brushing my teeth. Out the door I go.
I get in the truck, sit down, and am immediately overwhelmed by the smell of straight up turd coming from the back seat. I was dumbfounded. There had to be a turd back there, but how? Why? To compound the problem, I was already running behind with no time to look. My mind was racing all the way to work...
"We're the dogs back there?"
"No"
"Did the BIL have an accident back there and was too afraid to say something? I know he's kinda shy, but surely he'd say something right?"
Now, I've picked up a few funky smelling sheds. One muddy moose paddle was pretty bad for a few months. But it never occurred to me until I got home and started tearing the truck apart that that smell could be that little pronghorn shed I'd so quickly forgotten about. In my mind, I was looking for nothing less than a turd and expecting the dry heaves to come the moment I honed in on it. I was confused, disgusted, mad, and most of all, tired. When I laid eyes on that shed and all the puzzle pieces clicked together, I was hysterical. The neighbors must have thought I was on drugs if they saw me.
So I've decided that fate has left me with no choice. That stinky little pronghorn shed of my wife's is gonna have a place in the garage to air out and provide me with continued amusement for years to come so I don't ever forget the wife's infamous plains lake pronghorn turd shed of 2022.