Anyone out there do post-season scouting with their dog? I bring my GSD bitch home in late March and I would like to train her to find shed deer antlers. Any pointers or suggestions?

I to would love to train my dogs to find sheds.

My best advice would be to show the dog a few of them, let her have it to play with for a bit on the way to the woods, and then take her directly into the woods and walk her to an area where you have had someone else put one hidden. Especially a pup, just walk slow in the area until she finds it, and then do that a few times. From then on she ought to find them if they are there, easy enough. That is how we have always started hound
pups to doing their business, plant the bait & walk slow, lots of praise. Next thing you know they are finding their own things, rabbits, squirrels, deer sheds. Sheds don't run away, so there is no trick to it that the young dog needs to learn from watching an older dog.

My pup has brought me two sheds (last years) while walking in the woods below our house and I heaped tons of praise on him for them. They were rodent chewed, scraggly looking things but they were sheds and he brought them out of the brush with him to show me what he found. Am looking forward to going out for this year's sheds, later this year. Since we all ready play scent games, I'm planning to take antlers from this year's deer (my hubby hunts <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ) as well as one of last year's sheds and let my pup smell and play with them. Then, I'll "hide" them (seal in plastic bags and store in the truck) and we will go out in the woods and play "find it". One advantage to having antlers in hand when we start, will be that we will ALWAYS have a positive search result. If we find nada in the woods, I'll throw the ones we bring (with dog in position to NOT see this part) and then he can go find them and be all proud of himself - even if we DO keep "finding" the same ones! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> (And someone earlier said that sheds don't run away! LOL!)