Train dog for shed hunting?

Sytes

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 25, 2009
Messages
12,864
Location
Montana
My bloodhound is itching for a purpose and this sounds like a perfect fit. Only down side when his nose kicks into gear, his ears shut down... I have a training collar to break his nasal concentration though sheesh, his nose is stubborn!

An article from field and stream seems to have some very useful info - side note: what the hell did we do before Google??? http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/hunting/2014/02/shed-finding-dog-training-tips

I've not begun and I'm still collecting input. Figure no place like home (HT forum) to see if any here have given this a go. Thoughts? What did you do you would have done differently, etc?
 
I got the black lab for antler hunting, I got him as a pup and he learned super fast! his first year during winter months while training him all he wanted to do is go down on the river with the duck hunters. every time he could hear ducks he would sit and look up instinctively I guess? now that I broke him of that I got into duck hunting! go figure! but chasing head gear is so much fun. good luck with that hound! I picked up a lab/copper hound cross (dog with white chest) thinking his nose would find more sheds. hahaha, I cant train that thing to retrieve anything! super good dog though. he will find a shed and let out that hound yelp and the other dog will go steal it from him and make the retrieve. they do get distracted easily with all the rabbits running around but once that antler smell hits them their noses hit the air and they get after it. the hound was at the base of a tree yelping like crazy and I thought he chased a coon or porky pine up there but ended up being a whitetail shed that was drug up there!! now I always look in trees too. they didnt have any toys while training them. just antlers. anytime they seen an antler they knew it was play time. they always got a ata boy and sometimes a small treat everytime they found one i hid. then i started dragging them acros yard and hiding so they had a scent to follow, after they got that down i wouldn't leave a scent trail id just hide them in a bush to make them sniff the air and not the ground. its great fun to watch.
 
I spent a lot of time playing hide the shed from my Catahoula Cur/Husky and she finally found herself a little Roosevelt shed...



Of course once she had it she didn't really want to share but she finally did.


She just figured it out finally. Sadly she has treed a couple bears and had a few misadventures including catching a porcupine (what a mess!) while looking for sheds as she has similar instincts as a bloodhound. I'll be interested to hear if you can ever break a bloodhound from their natural instincts with a shock collar. I mostly keep her on a leash now which limits her shed finding ability a lot but greatly reduces the excitement of our walks in the forest.
 
breaking instincts is nearly impossible. I'm interested in the blood hound thing too. and joe, that's a beautiful dog!
 
I used to play hide and seek with my dog and sheds all the time. He could always find them buried in the snow. I've never taken him out for the real deal though. I've always wondered if it was the actual shed he could smell or my scent on them from hiding them. But he could always find them so i'd certainly things it'd be pretty easy to train a dog to do such.
 
It's fun shed hunting with dogs! I started training mine by tying a shed to a string and dragging it around for them to chase. Eventually I worked up to hiding them around the yard and letting them find them. If I happen to spot a shed before the dogs, I will always let them pick it up before I touch it. Problem around here is there aren't a lot of sheds like western states, but they still find 'em! The dogs are especially good at finding dead deer...so I always keep an eye on them if they seem interested in something. It is way better having the dog find a shed than me finding a shed. Have fun!
 
I have a 13 week old yellow lab that I'd like to train to find sheds. I asked a dog trainer for ideas on how to go about it. Here's what he suggested. Take an antler that you'll use as a training tool. Let the dog chew on it and get use to its smell but don't just leave it lay around as a chew toy, it's a training tool. Each time you let the dog chew on it and then take it away, you give them a treat. Eventually you work up to hiding the antler and letting them find it. Again, treat them well when they find it. The idea being each time they find the antler, they get a reward. Same goes for when you're out shed hunting, they get a reward for finding a shed. That was his advice anyway, I'll see how well it works.
 
This is awesome! I have sheds laying around though as mentioned, how do you go about removing / keeping human scent from the shed to "properly" get the dog honed in on the shed scent itself? Or would this be something to focus once the dog gets a better targeting sense to the sheds then place more focus on minimizing the human scent element?

Great pictures too!
 
leave them in a bucket of water when not using them. grind up some antler into a fine powder and mix with water to spray on antler before training. or just buy an antler scent. only handle antlers with gloves that are only used for those antlers.
 
I wouldn't care to be tackling the issues you will have training a hound to this task, although inarguably the raw tools of his nose would be amazing. Old horns cast a lot more scent, wet old horns even more. I've always let them play with them as a chew toy and done OK but from a dog training purist perspective the "bring it down only for work" is probably best. How "serious" do you take this hobby would be the key question to answer. I go for fun and want the dog to have fun too, I don't need any more horns...

Any human scent removal techniques will also wash off the antler smell, maybe find an antler and pick it up and store in a sterile environment? But after he finds it one time he will have his own slobber (which hounds have a large supply of!) to zero in on. For instance let a dog pick out a beaver stick pick it up with gloves and toss it onto a beaver house and he will pick that specific stick and fetch it up.

Some people just tend to over think this stuff, just watched a show recommending you only let your puppy drink bottled water... only in America! My puppy likes turds with river water for a chaser...
 

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
110,805
Messages
1,935,061
Members
34,883
Latest member
clamwc
Back
Top