Show Notes
The bucks are finally starting to drop those antlers and that means one thing: IT'S SHED SEASON!!!
Whether you are one of those chomping at the bit to get out to find the first bone to hit the ground or you count sheds as a happy accident while post-season scouting, there're no doubt everyone loves to find shed antlers! But what can we REALLY learn from them? Are sheds good for more than just man cave decor?
In this episode of the How to Hunt Deer Podcast, Josh talks with Dwayne Jones of Shed Season about converting shed finds to fall deer hunting strategy. The guys cover some of the best places to look, strategies for concentrating sheds on your ground, and how sheds factor in to next season's deer hunting strategy.
Show Transcript
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Welcome to the How to Hunt Deer podcast, which is brought to you by Tactic Camp. This podcast aims to educate those who are interested in becoming deer hunters, brushing up on a central skills, or maybe just adding a few new tactics to the toolkit. We cover a variety of topics that will help you be more confident and successful in the field while you're hunting deer.
Thank you so much for tuning in this week. We've got a great episode in store for you. I'm talking with Dwayne Jones of Shed Season. We're right here at the end of February. I know a lot of guys are chomping at the bit. Some guys are already out finding sheds. Shed season is finally here. So in this episode, Dwayne and I get into what shed season is, what the guys are hoping to accomplish with shed season, and how you can find more shed antlers this year, how it can be your best shed season.
Yet we even get into the value of shed antlers, are they really that valuable? When it comes to making a plan for hunting next year, we're gonna touch on all those topics. So like I said, great [00:02:00] conversation. Before we jump in though, do have a couple of things for you. Number one, if you have not, please go and subscribe, follow whatever it is they let you do this podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
If you can leave us a review, I would greatly appreciate that. Written reviews are even better. Those reviews actually help people find this show. They factor into the algorithms on things like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. When folks go in and search for podcasts, it will help this podcast pop up a little bit higher in the list.
And also let folks know that hey, people are finding this podcast helpful. Also, G, give us a follow on Instagram, getting ready to start doing some post-season scouting and hopefully gonna be posting some of that up and keeping you guys informed of all my shenanigans there. That's the best way to get ahold of me if you have questions or guests that you would like me to interview.
And it's also the first place where I post up whenever we have. A new episode live Now, I've not done a good job of that the last couple of weeks. I've gotten a little bit behind, but hey, that's okay. Social media is just a necessary evil [00:03:00] when it comes to podcasting, in my opinion. It's a great way to get your stuff out there.
At the same time, it's a huge pain and I oftentimes wonder if it's worth all the issues that come along with it. But anyway, that's beside the point. I hope you guys are getting out. I hope you're doing some post-season scouting. I hope you're doing some shed hunting either now or in the next couple of weeks.
I hope you're planning for next year. I hope you're already planning to make 2023 your best deer hunting season ever. Now, before we jump into today's episode, do just wanna say a quick thanks to our partners. First of all, I wanna talk about OnX. OnX is the newest partner of our show, and man, the OnX Hunt app goes with me wherever I go.
It doesn't matter if I'm postseason scouting or if I'm hunting, or if I'm consulting on a property. OnX is always with me. It's always open and I'm always paying attention to it. The OnX Hunt app is absolutely packed with helpful features. One really saved my tail this week. I was out doing some [00:04:00] scouting on a property that's a very large property.
I've talked about it before. It's about 30,000 acres and I found a spot in a bottom that was a nice little thermal hub. There was some concentrated buck signed down in the bottom. There were acorns left over from the white Oaks from last year, so I knew there was a bumper crop in there. This past fall there is a clear cut just up the hill from the bottom on one side.
On the opposite side of the bottom, there was a finger ridge that kind of led down into the bottom. The DNR has just burned everything up on top of those hills, and I found a great buck bed overlooking this thermal hub. I think this spot is going to be dynamite. I got in there, I got excited. I took a bunch of pictures.
I left and I realized. I didn't mark the spot, I didn't mark where the buck bed was. I didn't mark the tree that I would want to hunt it from. I was in trouble until I remembered that I had my OnX tracker going. So I get home, pull up the track and [00:05:00] sure enough you can tell exactly where the buck bed was cuz I walked up the ridge and I sat right there.
You can tell exactly where a lot of the sign was because I walked circles around the bottom trying to figure it out. So because of that tracker, it's okay that I forgot to mark the spot. Yeah, go check 'em out OnX maps.com or you can find 'em on your preferred app store if you're not already using them and get a seven day free trial.
Next up, hunt worth. They're making awesome, durable camo without the big price tag of some of the other options out there. Really enjoyed using their gear this past fall. It was my first fall hunting out of it and I love the Tarin pattern guys. If you're looking for a pattern that blends in, no matter where you are, that Tarin for me.
Was really the ticket. In fact, I'm looking forward to sticking with it on into Turkey season. I'm gonna pick up Turkey hunting here in the end of March with the Youth Turkey season down here in Georgia, then heading for Wisconsin for their season in April, then doing some more Turkey hunting down here in Georgia in May, hopefully, depending on how successful I am here gonna hop the state [00:06:00] line over into Alabama po possibly hop the state line up into Tennessee or South Carolina, and that tarns gonna go with me everywhere because I've got great confidence in it.
You can find out more about all their gear@huntworthgear.com. Next up tact cam. They are the title sponsor of this show, and now is the time if you are thinking about sharing your hunts with others. If you're thinking about videoing your hunts, now's the time to start really looking into that and I would highly encourage you to check into the tact Cam 6.0 camera.
It's got up to eight x zoom. There's a touchscreen display, which is incredible. It's got image stabilization that is up a another notch from their previous models. Gives you 4K 60 frame per second footage. Obviously one touch operation just like you'd expect from a attack to cam camera. It's waterproof, just like you'd expect from a attack to cam camera.
It also performs really well in low light. And one of my favorite features is that it is remote compatible. Now I've got a remote for my cameras and it is an absolute game changer. So if you're Turkey hunting, you want to have a camera on your [00:07:00] gun, on your blind, and maybe a couple out in the decoy spread, it works great for that.
You click one button on the remote, all the cameras turn on at the same time, but maybe your bow hunting or rifle hunting, maybe you've only got one camera. That remote is still really important to the way that I hunt because I don't wanna reach out and click the camera on and push the button on the end of my stabilizer or on the end of my rifle or shotgun or whatever it is I'm using.
I want that remote right there in my pocket. I push one button. I know my camera turned on. And I know I'm gonna get the shot on film so I can take it home and share it with my family, share it with my buddies, all that good stuff. You should go check 'em out, www.tacticcam.com. Now let's jump in at today's conversation with Dwayne Jones of Shed season.
All right, joining me for this week's episode of the How to Hunt Deer podcast is Mr. Dwayne Jones from shed season. Dwayne, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much. Appreciate you having me on. Always excited to chat with you. Absolutely, man. So glad you could come back on. I think it was right out a year ago that we talked last.
It was exactly [00:08:00] a year ago. Yeah. Was it really? Okay. Yeah. I guess that's about right. You're with Shed season it's about that time again where we gotta start talking about it all. Shed season us here. That's right. That's right. So we met or got connected through our buddy tj, Yep.
Fantastic guy. If people aren't aware of who TJ Eats is man, he's got his hands in a lot of different things, but he's a stellar dude and just one of those people that you want to be around. Yeah, he is man, blessed to know him, honestly. He just, he has an incredible circle of people around him.
Like when we were ATA this year, I really realized that there's a, he hosts a power dinner every year, ata, and it's grown of course over the years. And standing in being, having the privilege of standing in that room of people was just almost overwhelming. Just such a good group of that, TJ's built around him.
Yeah. And he's one of those guys that, that when I see him interact with others or hear the way others talk about him, cuz I've run into several people who've, are in his circle and he's one of those guys that just enriches the lives of people around him, which I'm like, man, I wanna be like TJ when I grow up.
But anyway. Absolutely, Naomi too. [00:09:00] And enough about tj. We finally got to meet in person though this year at a t a. So tell me a little bit about your experience at a t a this year. What you were doing there. You were hanging out with the half rack guys and bouncing all around. Tell me how the show was for you.
Yeah, man, ATA was awesome this year. We, I was there last year as well with half Rack and I think attendance was down a little bit last year. There was still the Covid slump. This year it seemed to me like it was much, better attended. There was a lot of people there.
And then, yeah I came with Half Rack, which TJ also is partner, part owner of, so I came to help in the booth some, but also like with us gearing up for shed season and everything just kicking. Wanted to be there and really just walk around and connect with people. Try to secure partnerships that we'd been working on, but more than anything, just, be out there walking around, shaking hands and meeting people.
So connecting it was awesome. We had such a good time. Had a lot of really great conversations and got to meet some awesome people down there. Yeah, definitely. I look forward to it every year. It's an awesome show. Yeah. This was my first time, man. And [00:10:00] the value of, just being able to shake hands and meet people face to face was like, man, that, that was the value of the time for me.
Yeah, absolutely. We can, business and all that can happen virtually these days. Pretty much everything you need to do can be handled through email, but being able to shake a hand and meet a person face-to-face, there's no replacing that. No. And the networking opportunities down there.
Yeah. Just, I nothing like, anything I've ever seen. So it's awesome. Yep. For sure. For sure. Dwayne, let's jump into let's jump into what we're here to talk about today. We're gonna talk about. shed season. Not only shed season like the brand, but shed season Yeah. Is in what's coming up.
Like we're, yeah, it's time to get boots on the ground, especially, if you've got specific deer that you're watching, if you've got trail cameras out, if you've got, in my opinion, if you're on a chunk of ground that you have some control over, you definitely need to be getting out there and pounding the dirt.
But I'm curious though to hear how your fall was, prior to this year, because I think that may play into how you're gonna approach this shed season.[00:11:00] Yeah. It's it's all good stuff and I love talking about it. So I think at the point when I was on last year we had bought the farm yep.
I'll try to make this a brief summary, but my wife and I had gotten moved to the Carolinas in 2017 for my work. We were there for three years, and so we came back right at the beginning of 2021. . Of course TJ is childhood friend and we reconnected and he had bought the d domain shed season a few years prior.
But of course, like you said, he is got his hands in so many different pies. He just didn't have the time to run it and ask me if I'd be willing to, and I'm of course a hundred percent yes. So we started running it, but I had bought a farm when we moved home. That was been my childhood goal and dream my entire life was to own a chunk of ground.
And I can remember as a kid driving down the road and telling my parents that someday I would own. Up here where we're at in Indiana, excavators everywhere, always tearing out fence rows and piling up a woods and burning it to farm, everything. And I can remember being a young kid and telling 'em like, someday I'm gonna do the opposite of that.
My goal is to buy a chunk of ground and I wanna take all this farm ground and put [00:12:00] it back to habitat and stuff. So wow. Had the opportunity to buy ground when we moved home. And that's another long story, but just an incredible blessing for, me and my family. We bought this farm and when we first bought it, I, of course started running cameras there and there just wasn't much there in the way of age structure.
Habitat's not bad. It's in a really awesome area where we live, you could just tell it'd been really pounded. The oldest deer I had on camera for almost the first year was a two year old, little two year old buck. So we basically decided early on we weren't really gonna hunt it.
I wanted to go in and get some food blots established and, figure out what pockets we wanted to do tempera, sand improvement and do some like warm season grass borders and help just everything. We literally started from scratch and drip this plan and started implementing it.
So that was two full years ago and started building some history and we've co course pulled some deer in and stuff. And so last year I had a handful of three year olds around. That was it. This year though, coming into this summer we had history with several deer. We [00:13:00] had a couple four year olds.
I wasn't sure if I was gonna hunt or not. They're both really good deer, but we really would like to hunt five year olds there. Yep. And obviously I can't hunt a five year old if I shoot 'em when they're four. Yep. So ring cameras still did all the plots, still did all the work. And as season came in, I finally, one day I can remember, and of course we started at this point with the house.
So building a house, I can remember telling my dad, I'm like, you know what? I'm not gonna get tempted. We're just not gonna hunt it just one more year and I think will be where we need to be. And I also knew there's a ton of pressure around me and with us having all the food, I figured if we just stayed out of it completely, that it, we'd have better odds of some of these deer making it through.
So we had two or three, three year olds and two for sure four year olds that I had actually have both their match sets from last year. And somehow by the grace of God, they both lived. Oh wow. Right now we have we've got two, four year olds that made it, that'll be five. And then there was one three year old I actually went in.
I said I didn't hunt it and I didn't, but I did go in one day. It was in [00:14:00] late October, might have been on a Halloween day. Actually, there's a three year old that we had, my, my kids had named Thor. He had a six or seven inch drop sign off of his base and almost looked like a hammer handle and just a stud, like 155 inch three year old, 10 mainframe 10 with this big drop.
So I had a feeling, I knew where he was living and I really have never had the opportunity to try and pattern deer and, you know what I mean? Just to see, I slipped in there one day and I took a nova kilo and did a hanging hunt and I had him come into eight yards and I got to film him bump doze around and watched 'em all evening and stuff.
He lived and both my four year olds lived. And so that's, it's, we've still just been really trying to stay out. This time of year for us, the supplemental feeding is a big part of what we do. You can't feed here or have bait during season, but post season, as soon as season's over or as soon as you're not gonna hunt the property we started getting feed out, so I've been feeding big time since December.
Okay. And they've been fairly [00:15:00] consistent, but we just try to stay out as much as we can. But this year here, like it's been funny shed, season wise, we get so much, so many messages from all over the country and it's been so vastly different everywhere. So here in Indiana, this winter has been way above average warm for the most part, like the past month.
There's been more days in the fifties than in the thirties by far. Yeah. It feels like April. So you know what? The bucks that were there and hitting feed really hard in January when it was colder. I have now, I'll get 'em once every once or twice a week. They're just spread out all over the place.
I'll see 'em a half a mile from my farm one day and the next day they'll be on the feed. So it's gonna make shed season tough. Bec there, there's just so many options for food out there and stuff right now. But that being said they've also held onto 'em longer. I actually just last week, Thor shed one side and then he showed up yesterday with both sides shed out and he was with a shed buck that I didn't recognize.
And then actually tonight, literally 30 minutes before he jumped on here, one of the [00:16:00] four year olds he has a great big ear notch and he came in completely shed out. So in the last two days he's shed out. So they're finally starting to pop. And it's getting to be time now where we're ready. We're ready to slip in there.
It's killing me. You're running shed season and getting all these photos and messages every day, people finding them and not going, but. Played, we played it smart to thank, we waited until the time's right. And they're shedding out now. And so we'll be going in here late this week to trying scoop 'em up and it'll be cool.
Like I haven't gotta spend much time on the farm, Chris. We've tried to keep the pressure off, so I'm anxious to see what the sign looks like and try to read some of that fall sign for this coming year. Yeah. I'm curious about your farm when it comes to, you mentioned that there's a lot of pressure around you.
Yeah. I assume you had a bunch of cameras out this year. Yeah. I hope you did. I did. So when it comes to the pressure around you and your ability to hold, you own, a nice little chunk of ground, but it's not a thousand acres, right? No. So how well were you doing at keeping those, especially those four year olds, [00:17:00] very close or on your property in daylight?
Yeah, so I just own 80 acres. . My dad, I own 80, my dad bought 40. That connects to me. It's not a huge chunk of ground. We're happy to have what we have, but it's not big. And we're surrounded by good habitat, really. We, the 80 we own, I own half and half. It's 40 tillable.
40 wooded. My dad's almost all wooded, but it's all, it's a big finger of woods that connects to the river. So there's a lot of habitat there and a lot of places for deer to go and hide, and it all connects and flows. What's funny is, I would love to say they were there all the time, but they weren't.
Yeah. In fact, the two four year olds, the, actually the one I was positive died. He, I had 'em all summer very regularly up until I had some really good pictures of him when he actually had velvet all hanging off, got one or two pictures, hard horned, and he disappeared. And a mile south of me, the farmer found like eight.
He, when he was cutting beans in October. Found eight dead deer and had him tested and it was ehd. And so I'm like, man he's, I'm gonna [00:18:00] find him somewhere in a creek this winter. Like he's dead for sure. The other four-year-old I would get, I had him very a lot up until November. I coulda definitely killed him.
He was pretty regularly on a couple different scrapes up until the very beginning of November and there was two weeks there where he almost completely disappeared or I'd get 'em, once every two weeks running a dough somewhere. But the three year olds were stayed on my farm, like the bucket I was talking about.
Thor, I would get that deer almost every day, sometimes on literally every camera on the farm. So like we were running seven or eight cell cameras on my farm and most all of 'em on scrapes. And I would sometimes get that deer on every single camera on my farm. Wow. We're holding a family group of doughs.
There's probably six or eight doughs that pretty well live on me. And they held him there. For the most part. He was there all fall and like a hundred percent. I truly believe like the work we've done habitat wise and keeping the pressure off is what saved that deer's life for sure. Yeah. Yeah, man, that's [00:19:00] awesome.
So I, before we jump into shed hunting specifics, I've gotta ask, there's been some development there, right? Like you've been doing habitat stuff for a long time, you've got your own farm, you're putting this stuff into practice, you're seeing the benefits of it. There may be some things coming on the horizon habitat wise concerning you.
What do you got going on? Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Probably 15 years ago I planted very first food plot with one of my best friends. His grandpa owned a bunch of ground in the northern part of our county and was generous enough to let us start tinkering. He had all the equipment and stuff, but I think he was just excited to see us outside doing something and staying outta trouble.
When we, there you go, in our late teens, so we started planting food plots and. Of course immediately saw how big of an impact it made doing that stuff. And so over the years, that's just, we've continued to do it and just build off of experience and, prior knowledge and kind of trial and error.
But the last few years, especially since buying my farm, it has just become like this huge passion to where it seems like any free time I have [00:20:00] at all I'm either reading a book to learn about different trees or different native plants, or I'm watching videos of, whitetail partners or Whitetail Group or Landon Legacy and just trying to consume everything I can to learn.
Definitely not above learning, all the time learn stuff just about every day. But, so we've gone in and we've tried different things with, doing timber sand improvement and, whether that's just filling trees or hacking squirt or girdle or, some hinging in pockets and stuff.
But as I've done more and more of this and seen how much it benefited my farm, , I just man, I've gotta do this. This is what I want to do, this is what I wanna do for a living. So we, my wife and I started an LLC in December called Dream Dirt. And right now we're, shed season is so busy, and as I mentioned, we're in the, we're in the thick of building a house.
We're probably about three fourths of the way through building a house. So I haven't fully kicked off and tried to go out there and do anything yet. But it's on the horizon. Definitely starting to have some conversations around it and structure, how we're gonna [00:21:00] run the business and what all we wanna offer and do.
And it actually sounds may have our first project coming up here in March. We're gonna go to Southern Ohio to a good friends. Property over there and do some prescribed fire and follow up with a little bit of tsi. He has a lot of invasives he wants to get rid of. So yeah, man, dream dirt. That's gonna be really exciting.
It's definitely my passion project and we're just gonna do it part-time for now and wherever somebody needs season need, but I just love it. Yeah, man, that's awesome. I'll, we'll be keeping an eye out, right? To see what absolutely. What comes from that, that, yeah, that whole piece of doing prescribed, prescribed burns.
I'm in the process right now of trying to get the certification on doing prescribed burning. And man, I have noticed working with different landowners when you start mentioning, Hey, I'd like you to set this patch of woods on fire. They get, things get real awkward real quick, yes. It's just so not a normal part.
If you're not in this world, day to day of managing your habitat for wild. , setting things on fire sounds so counterintuitive. Yeah. And what looks pretty to you? To the human eye. The [00:22:00] park where it's big mature timber and flat underneath, and you can see 200 yards. You start telling people I need you to make a mess over here.
I start wait a second. I don't think that I want it to look pretty. It's do you want deer or do you want it to look pretty? You really have to, you really have to make a decision. Yeah. Yeah. And as far as the prescribed fire stuff goes, that's another thing I've tried to learn a lot about too.
Dr. Marcus Lashley put out a course through University of Florida and I just finished that actually and got a certification through that here. Nice. A couple weeks ago. But, and still trying to do a lot of research, but actually speaking of that, I don't know where all it's offered, but my wooded ground was in a program when I bought it.
It's called Classified Forest and Wildlands that's here in Indiana. And basically what it does it more or less is like a promise that you're gonna keep these wildlands or forests. Forests. And, everybody has, you basically have to have a written management plan that you develop with a forester.
And when I bought it, we went over the guy before me was very much like timber production minded. It was [00:23:00] all about how do we make more money and how do we de develop, better mature trees. And my obviously focus is nearly the opposite of that. I'm all wildlands and not so much the forest side.
But trying to keep a little bit of a happy medium. But in that you can do prescribed fire, but it's so uncommon to burn woodlands. Yeah. Here in the Midwest. Yeah. Nobody does it. So I immediately reached out to our state, forester here and told her what I wanted to do and we met, she actually came out and walked through my property and I'd shown her where I set up fire breaks and everything, and had talked to her about it.
And so actually this coming Monday, the 27th, I have a state biologist the one of the head guys for Pheasants forever. And then this Forester, they're all coming to do a walkthrough. And we're actually gonna do, make it like an educational piece where I think we're gonna film it Cool. And maybe like cool produce it.
And I'm, I've got a group of like 10 or 12 buddies that are all gonna come out and we're gonna do this burn together. And so I'm gonna section off my woods in the thirds and we're gonna burn a third of it every year. And dude, I'm so excited about [00:24:00] it. Like how cool. Can't, that's awesome. I cannot wait. So we too, we had, they had gotten a grant a few years before I bought this to remove invasives, and they did, but they're starting to come back a little bit.
And even the Forester, after we sat down and made a plan and talked about it, she was like, you know what, I'm actually like, I don't have anybody that burns woodlands. And she's I'm really excited to see two things. Like number one, what it does to see on invasives if we can control the invasives with fire.
But also she's I can't wait to see how the oaks respond. . Yeah. Because they typically respond really well to fire and there's obviously probably not been fire here in decades. Yeah. So it's excitingly and it can just do, it can do so much for your property. We have turkeys there, but our populations are low.
We have a lot of nest predators and stuff, and so we're trying to get that stuff under control and, make the habitat the best it can be for 'em. Man, that's awesome. Look, I can talk habitat stuff all day. I don't wanna derail the conversation from from what we're really here to talk about though.
And that's shed season. So it's been a year since we talked last time. We've picked up a lot of new listeners to the show since then. [00:25:00] So why don't you give me the rundown first of what shed season is and what you guys are hoping to accomplish with it. Absolutely. So shed season started just to be a community for people to share or consume antler related content.
Obviously shed season has grown in popularity as like deer management and stuff has grown. It's cool to build history with deer and so more and more people are getting into it. And also , there's a lot of non hunters that like to get out and put miles on and think it's cool to pick up antlers, which is really great.
So you can play to both audiences. But, so we, TJ had bought the domain, we started shed season.com started an apparel line I guess as for fun. We enjoyed it, just, throwing designs out there and stuff and kind of taken off. And it just, we've just let it grow organically.
TJ has enough going on, as do I to where it's, it hadn't been our sole focus, but seeing it, it grow and then it comes at this time of year and seeing everybody's excitement around it. Dude, we're just, we're fired up about it. We have a ton of really great partners where brands that, provide materials for our giveaways products for giveaways and stuff [00:26:00] like that.
And then we try to give back, this is all like, we literally handpicked these guys, so I had l paid full price and bought all my first light stuff that I wear, and it's you know what? We're wearing this stuff anyway. I think it's fitting. Let's reach out to First light and see if they wanna partner with us.
And they have. And when we're out shed hunting and stuff, we try to shoot content for them to use. And in return, like I said, they provide products for our giveaways. And it's been awesome. Like truly right now. I sent out, I posted a reel this morning thanking everybody cuz we're getting literally like 50 plus dms a day of people sharing their fines or sharing tips or, what had a bad day, but I'm picking up all the balloons out here.
Stuff like that. But it's truly been great. The community around it is unbelievable. Hey guys, just want to take a quick minute to let you know that the How to Hunt Deer Podcast is brought to you by Tcam makers of the best point of view cameras on the market for hunters and anglers, they're on the cutting edge, making user-friendly cameras to help the everyday outdoorsmen share your hunt with friends and loved ones.
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It was one of those things when I first heard about shed season and kind of the idea and what was gonna happen, I sat back and I was like, man, this thing's gonna explode. Cuz I know, TJ had owned it, owned the domain name for a while. You'd come on, and I think you mentioned last year hey, we're just slow playing it, like we're letting it grow organically.[00:28:00]
Yeah. And I was like, dude, it's gonna, I was thinking like, man, it's yeah. This organic growth is probably gonna be a little bit overwhelming just because the concept is so cool and, for whitetail nuts, man, what's better right now this time of year than walking out and scooping up some antlers, especially if you've got a target buck in mind that you've been watching, that you have been, like yourself hoping that these make it through Right, Absolut.
Absolutely. And you were disciplined, you stayed out, you didn't hunt, you didn't shoot any three year olds or four year olds on your property and Yep. And now to go in and have your hands on those antlers without having to have, shots and taken it here. Yeah, exactly. At three or four years old.
When your goals are a little bit older age class. And I know that's not reality for most people. I personally I hunt primarily public land. We've got a spot of private down in Alabama that's a little bit smaller piece. It's about 35 acres. And for us a four or five year old deer probably is shooting a little high.
We shoot for three, yeah. We get a good three year old on camera, like that's gonna be our target for the year. So that's not reality for everybody, but everybody [00:29:00] can rally around, Hey, what's the buck you've been after? And yeah, can you go get his sheds? Yeah. Where does shed seasons start for you?
Because I know you do some stuff to try to concentrate the sheds on your property. Tell me a little bit about that. And then I've got a controversial topic I wanna run by you mostly because I'm part of a lease now. So I hunt primarily public land for deer this coming year. I'll be on a lease. I heard one of the guys talking about something the other day that I was like, that's a real bad idea.
But I wanna run it past you after you tell me where you start and how you hopefully concentrate the sheds on your ground rather than scattered across on your neighbors. Yeah. Yeah, and I had actually just Mark Kenyon today posted a video talking about 80 20 rule, which applies to a lot of things.
And he was saying he feels like it does shed hunting as well. And I agree a hundred percent, meaning like more than likely you're gonna find, you're gonna find 80% of your sheds in a concentrated area or, yeah. More than likely, like if you, if I take my whole 80 acres, there's gonna be a couple areas where the deer have [00:30:00] really frequented that are gonna be really high odds areas of finding antler versus, randomly for whatever reason in the middle of the woods where there's not really any structure for bedding or anything like that.
So that's, like I mentioned, supplemental feeding. That's one thing that has really helped us, especially on cold winters, which I know up north is getting absolutely hammered. Yep. It's frustrating because they're gonna be hard to get out cause the snow's so deep. But the good thing is if you have food, guess where the sheds are gonna be?
Yep. They're just, they are. That's one thing we do is the plots we plant. I planted a couple acres Nebraska's this year at my farm, and then we had paid, we paid the farmer to leave some corn standing, and I went in and mowed half of it and left half of it standing after we were done hunting.
And this stuff is all literally right together. Like I was just there the other day to put more big tie now and was totally and completely blown away at this sign there. It is and it looks like it turned cattle loose. But that's, our main focus is making sure there's enough food to hold 'em there and know that, that they're gonna frequent that.
For me, I'm gonna check this food sources first and then I'm gonna backtrack and [00:31:00] see, okay, here's where, here's the hub. Now where do these trails all go? Where's the spot where they cross the fence into the neighbors or cross the fence into our wood lot. , and that's what I do.
I start right there at the center where all the food is and we branch out from there. So it's served us pretty well. I think last year on my 80 acres in Indiana, which is, it's not like Iowa, I guess I wanna say. We found nine sheds on my property, which I was tickled to death with for 80 acres.
Both of my four year olds that this year, that were three year olds last year, we found their match sets. So it's worked well for us and that's what we do. Yeah. One other thing, I think you guys do really well and for the guys that are out shed hunting on public land, in my mind, you gotta get out there pretty quick.
You gotta get out there early. Yeah. If gonna beat you to 'em. There's a lot of competition for this right now, but if you control the property, one of the most important things you can do right now is not go out there. Yes. Just give it time and watch your cameras. So I assume you've got a lot of cameras set up [00:32:00] on On these, on the food basically.
Yeah. Watching for these shed antlers. When will you pull the trigger? Are you gonna wait until, just the specific couple of bucks that you're looking for have dropped? Or until you're like, man, okay, they've almost all dropped now we're going in. Yeah. So this year I wanted to wait until those three bucks were shut out.
The two four year olds and that big three year old. And as of tonight I believe they all three are the one four year old. I haven't talked a lot about my son named Ola last year. He he, I haven't been getting 'em real frequently and, but he shut out. Some of my son's birthday is tomorrow, and I remember when this deer shed, because I found his sheds on my son's birthday.
So he, last year, shed the 22nd, he came into big time, had both sides. I got him later in the night leaving with, he shed out. And so I knew they were on me and I went in that next morning and found both of 'em within 50 yards of the feed. And on my son's birthday. So I'm gonna guess typically, for us, it seems as if the [00:33:00] bucks typically shed close to the same time each year.
Yeah. Unless they get shot or injured or something weird happens. If they're healthy, he's, shed last on February 22nd. I'm gonna guess he's gonna shed within five days one way or the other of that. So I'm gonna say right now they're all three shut out and I've noticed some of the little bucks coming in with one side and stuff, so I have both.
Right now the target bucks are shut out and the majority of 'em are shed out. So it's time for us to go in. I'm ready. But yeah, it just depends what you got going on. If you got some big deer and, there's a lot of times there are a lot of properties where we're just specifically waiting until they shut out and then we're going.
Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I wanna run by you and is controversial to. Because the potential impact down here in the south looking for sheds this time of year can be tough just given the woods are just thicker. It's just a different atmosphere. We don't have snow that falls and flattens everything down.
A lot of guys like to use shed traps where they're feeding. Tell me your thoughts on shed traps and [00:34:00] whether or not you think people should be using them. Yeah. I don't love it. I'm, I would say I'm opposed to using 'em. And it seems like anytime I hear somebody talk about shed traps, there's a horror story with it.
Yeah. Almost always. Yep. In my experience when a buck's ready to shut out, they're gun in. And if they're not. And if you force them to shut out, it's generally not good. They're gonna get injured or you're gonna have a buck that gets hung up in your shed trap and hurts themselves and gets injured, or something like that.
I don't know. I think it's silly. I don't think it works. First off, yeah, like I said, if they're ready to fall off, they're gonna fall off. And if they're not. So I would steer people away from using shed traps. Just from, like you say, it, it can result in a lot of negative things as far as deer getting injured or they come off when they're not ready and it, mess up their pedicle and stuff like that.
So I would say don't do it. Yeah, I agree. Man, those it's not worth messing with something. You get an infection right there at the top of the head. It doesn't take much for that buck to die. Yeah, absolutely. For him to not be around. And like you [00:35:00] mentioned, messing up a pedicle man, you've got a beautiful three year old on camera, right?
You've been following 'em all season long. You throw a shed trap out there, you want to go get those sheds. You pick it up like one. In fact, I was looking on Instagram the other day. Somebody was like, Hey, I found this. Shed so pumped. And you can see like a chunk of pedicle. on there and I'm like, ah, I hope he's okay next year.
Yeah. Because that's gonna change his antler growth. Yeah. The following year. Yep. If he breaks off part of his skull plate on there, cuz it wasn't ready and he got hung up in it, more than likely is not gonna be the same next year. Yeah. Yeah. So you might have just taken a deer that you've been watching, you're so excited, you can't wait to get the shed for him and then you basically ruined his potential for next year.
Yeah. Not his potential to be a buck that gets your heart going or his potential to be a nice mature buck or whatever, but just the potential for him to put on maximum antler or the same quality of antler. He may have some big goofy side Yeah. The following year. Yep. Absolutely. Man let's talk a little bit about some of your favorite places.
We I know that you love to put out food and find the [00:36:00] sheds there, but any other spots that you're like, man, these are must check places on your farm that guys can take and walk away and have confidence like, okay. , I know my farm, maybe they got a hundred acres. I know, 20% of this is gonna hold 80% of the sheds.
Yeah. What's that 20%? Where do they need to be looking? Yeah. So obviously I've mentioned food and that definitely is my number one. Like by far almost any of the days that are really memorable for me, where we have gone in and just absolutely crushed it and found a ton of sheds was always every time at a hot food source.
I don't know that it's that way everywhere around the country, but for instance, an example last year here, there, there was a farm that I've shed hunted for a long time and every five or six years they'll plant a cover crop on it. And this, it's probably 150 acre field and it's surrounded by, it's called safety zone.
So there's, we have two reservoirs in my county and I think they're like 12,000 acres of water and probably just as many acres of like tillable and timber ground. So [00:37:00] everything around this is safety zone where it can't be hunted year round period. It, there's campgrounds here and there and everything.
As you can imagine, there's usually a high concentration of deer there. But this farmer had planted 150 acres of tillage radish, and there were patches in there where, I don't know why or how, but they missed the soybeans. So there were soybeans and tillage radish drilled into it. And when we headed out to that farm.
I didn't even know what it was. It's a waste from my house. And when we pulled in the driveway to knock and ask the guy permission, one of my, another TJ was with me, TJ hung, and I was like, dude, we are, we're gonna find, we're gonna find a bunch of sheds. And he said, you think? And I said I promise we will.
So before we got outta this guy's yard, we found two handlers off, two different bucks laying in the guy's yard, right? Under a little no. Yeah. Right under one of his bushes. And we ended up finding 14 sheds that day. And the smallest one was probably 110 inch eight. And like I, this shed right here, I don't know how well you can see it, but, oh man.
Six 70, I think he's a 76 inch, just five point side. Wow. It's my biggest shed I've ever [00:38:00] found was in that field. And we, it just 14 or 15 sheds in one day here is incredible, especially for that many that size. But the absolute reason why we found 'em is cuz all that food was there. So first and foremost, food find the food and you're gonna find them even if it's, if it's not your farm.
If your farm was beans that got cut and the grounds worked, drive around. Find a winter wheat field, find some staining grain, find a cover crop, and that's where the highest concentration of deer are gonna be. But aside from that you probably have heard, everybody's talks about finding, in checking south facing slopes, the wintertime, that's where the sun's gonna be.
That's where they're going to, they're gonna get energy from absorbing sunlight and they like to lay on those south facing slopes and it doesn't take much. Like I found it can be a really small little gradual slope, just a even a little dip. And it's enough to get 'em out of the, that north wind and enough form 'em to have that sun beat down on 'em.
So I definitely always try to hit south facing slopes, even in weird, goofy spots. A lot of times you'll find sheds, obviously you hear a lot of people [00:39:00] talk about fence crossings or creek crossings. I would definitely check those spots. And for me, I, for some reason, I've always tended to go to the edges, like whatever that may be, what might be where the timber meets a field or there's a fence row or there's a grain that meets a grass, something like that.
If you have warm season grass borders or whatever. Obviously deer creatures of edge and it seems like I find a lot, if not the majority of my sheds on some type of edge cover. So a lot of times I'll go, like even my farm, the back, that 30 acre field. More than likely when I go there, I'll just naturally walk the perimeter to the field first before I do anything else to see, if I find 'em on the edges.
So I would say Food South, facing Slopes, crossings, and Edge. This episode is brought to you by the OnX Hunt app. OnX gives you up to date landowner information, color coded public and private land boundaries, and gives you a ton of tools to help you hunt smarter. One tool I'm loving right now is their Optimal Wind feature, which lets you set [00:40:00] the optimal wind for a given location, then tells you in real time whether the wind is good, bad, or just okay for that spot.
You can try it risk free for seven days right now and just download the OnX Hunt app on your preferred app store today. That South facing Slopes pieces is huge. Especially for guys up north. I was actually out on a piece doing some postseason scouting here in Georgia about a week and a half ago, and all in all decent scouting trip.
But I was on my way out and they had clear cut a huge swath of this land a couple of years ago, and there were a bunch of pines that were probably, I don't know, eight feet tall to nine feet tall and in between they had spaced them out quite a bit. It was almost looked like they were managing this spot for quail or something like that.
Yeah. And in between was all of this blue stem grass. It was like one of the really common, one common ones here is that broomed blue stem. Yep. . And that was growing up all in. And when I pulled up to the first south facing slope of that, I looked out and there's three deer [00:41:00] standing there, and they had obviously seen me coming and stood up to check me out a little bit more.
So I stopped at a couple of other spots where it's sloped off to a south facing slope. And that's, I would find deer there every time. Yeah. There'd be a dose in there, bed, looking back at me. Even if you're in the south, man, there's south facing slopes, that's a Oh yeah. That's a big deal this time of year.
No matter where you are, even if you're not absolutely a colder climate. I was always of the opinion of yeah, south Face, south facing slopes are great if you're in Iowa, Indiana. Yep. Illinois, Wisconsin, somewhere up north. But even for the Southern guys, it can be really helpful.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm curious now I've gotta make a confession. I'm a terrible shed hunter. It takes a lot. It takes a lot for me to find a shed. I basically, I'm the guy that has the trip over it. Yeah. The last fed, last shed I found was from probably a hundred inch, eight point, small shed.
Yep. And it was in a burn, and the shed had been basically bleached white. And so I had no choice but to see it, but I still didn't see it until I was about six feet away. [00:42:00] And it takes a lot for me. How do you, how would you advise guys to maybe train their eye to, to find more sheds? Because I think that's an underrated piece of this, because some people just, you've got buddies I'm sure that you're just like, yeah, I'll take 'em with me.
But he's not gonna find anything. He can be walking the same farm as you and you'll find 'em. All right. So what can a guy do to maybe train his eye to be on the lookout for the right thing? Yeah. So the one thing that I think has trained my eye for it more than anything is early on.
Me and one of my best friends that, that shed hunted together a lot, we'd almost always carry an antler with us. And if we were walking to cornfield, we would back and forth, throw it turn around backwards, throw it, find it over and over as we're shed hunting. And it was, it's incredible sometimes how hard they are to find, like there's times where we would throw it and legit have a hard time finding it , but because of that you really train your eye to look for small details.
I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is they're looking for this every time. [00:43:00] Yeah. Yep. And it's not always gonna be this, or even if it is, sometimes it's not gonna look like that. It's gonna be this much of a time or, half of a pedicle or, whatever the case may be. So yeah, I would carry an antler with you and toss the thing, what, whether you're in corner, whether you're in the timber or whatever just throw it over and over occasionally and that will definitely help train your eye to find it and look for small details rather than looking for a 90 inch Chandler.
Yeah. You ever carry that antler out there and then have to leave without it cuz you couldn't find it again. No, I that's, I have not done that. It hadn't been that bad, but there has been times where it took us five or 10 minutes to find the dang thing. Yeah, man. So Auburn University has an enclosure.
It's four or 500 acres or something like that. And I was listening to a podcast the other day and they had over the a number of years, they've got grad students and all kinds of people who are out there. Shed hunting this place. It's high fence. They know exactly what deer are on this property at all times.
Over the years, cu cumulatively, they've only found 39% of the shed [00:44:00] antlers. Yes. I saw that. That's crazy. It is. It blows my mind. Like you would think in a controlled environment you can go scoop up 75%. Yeah. Maybe more. Yeah. Not the case. I would think so, at least. Yeah. I saw they had posted a short clip of that on Instagram, the National Deer Association and yep.
One of, one of the guys from there were talking about that and I was just like, holy cow dude. That is insane. It just goes to show you how many you prob probably walk by. Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned National Deer Association. That's where I'd seen it. I'm doing their deer steward course right now.
The deer steward one. Yeah. Have you done that yet? I haven't, but I did see like the commercial for it and stuff. I actually just talked to my wife about it last week. What do you think so far, man it's fantastic. Is it really? It's really good. Yeah. It's, there's a lot of this stuff, if you're a white till nut, like a lot of it, you're gonna be like, yeah, I've heard this before.
Sure. But there are a lot of little nuggets that like, are in there that it's worth it. Isn't that an $80 course or something? It was they did a [00:45:00] 35% off. They just revamped it. Yeah. They, and it was like 35% off for the first 350 people that signed up. and I think it was 170 bucks Yeah.
Or something like that with the 30, 35% off. Okay. So it's not super cheap, but it's something that's within reach for everybody. That's, yeah. It's definitely worth it. And dude, when I got to the quizzes, that's when I was like, oh, okay. This is a little harder than than I anticipated. I struggled through the first one and I was like, okay, I might need to change the way I'm approaching this, treat it a little more, more like a college course.
Seriously. Rather than it's just something I sit down and watch and then go take the quiz on it or whatever. But yeah. Alright. So we were, we've talked about training the eye, let's talk about days to go. Like the day that I went and I found that, side that in the most recent shed that I found it was a, it was the perfect kind of day to find that specific antler, but it may not have been a good day for shed hunting in the timber.
So there's specific days that you're like, Hey, if I go out on these days, I'm gonna find way more than if I go on this kind of day. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really [00:46:00] good point. So I actually, today I could not go because of work, but I found LA last, yesterday evening two miles from my farm. I found a winter wheat field that's humongous, and it's actually a farm that my, my wife and I Turkey hunt.
She shot her Turkey there two years ago, and there I, there were an unbelievable number of deer in this field. And so I called the guy this morning and asked permission to shed hunt, and he told me I could, and I wish I could have went today. I couldn't because of work, but today was, it rained here all day long.
And so it's super dark gray skies raining. Everything's matted down. And as miserable as that is, like that to me is the perfect day to shed hunt because everything's so dark and gloomy that a shed, especially something like laying in a wheat field, is going to pop no other. obviously, I would say if your schedule's not flexible, just go just when you get a chance, just go.
But if you can be picky, choosy when you go, definitely choose those slight gray skies, [00:47:00] overcast, cloudy, maybe even like drizzly, rainy. It just helps so much, they're just so much more contrast there where they stand out. If you go on a sunny day, try to think about it yet from an approach standpoint of keep the sun to your back.
If, I didn't think about this for the first 10 years, I shed hunted. But o other than the fact that man, when it's sunny, they're so hard to see. There's all those shadows and all those highlights everywhere. They don't stand out, especially in the timber. But if you approach the farm of a way where you think about it before you go in, okay, the sun is, south let's walk this from south to north.
and continue to make loops that way. It will help a ton if the sun's at your back. They're way easier to see when it's sunny than if you're walking into the sun and not thinking about it. So if you have to go on sunny, keep the sun to your back. If you can choose when you go on cloudy days.
Awesome, awesome. I wanna shift the conversation now to something that is, I hear some guys who are like, man, shed season shed hunting is indispensable [00:48:00] for my fall hunting strategy. I talk to other guys that are like, I do not give a rip about shed antlers. I want, I don't care about 'em.
It doesn't play in at all. Where are you at on that, spectrum there of they're super important for your hunting strategy to, not important for my hunting strategy at all. And assuming that they do play in somewhat, like how do you begin to shift from finding sheds and where you found them to constructing a hunting strategy for the following fall?
Yeah, that's a good question. It depends on the deer for me. So like for instance I mentioned the buck, my son called Oof, and how I don't get him much like he, he's definitely not a magnet to the feed. Some of 'em are. Some of 'em are there three times a day, every day period. He is there every, it's like when he is in the area, he'll swing by and hit it and that's it.
And so if I find his shed somewhere, it's gonna mean a lot to, more to me than if I find a buck that's there three times a day because I don't have feed there during hunting [00:49:00] season their patterns are totally different, whereas I don't think his patterns are that different. I think, he just does his thing and when he happens to circle through the area, he hit, he hits the feet.
So if I find his shed now in a bed somewhere, I'm probably gonna take note of where I find that versus. In the feed. So it does depend on the deer, but honestly, I would sway on the side of it doesn't mean much to me. Yeah. This time of year their patterns are so vastly different than they are in hunting season.
That 10, nine times outta 10, where you find a buck shed right now is gonna have no bearing on where they're gonna be next October or November. What it does for me though is, you had touched on this earlier I joke with TJ that in some ways I'd rather find a shed than shoot a buck.
As silly as that sounds. But for me, like these four year olds, if I go in this year, if I had gone in this year and shot 'em, I would've been excited. Sure. Would've been tickled. They were great deer, but the story's over, yeah. That's it. It's bittersweet. They're no longer there.
I don't, wake up in the morning and check my pictures and hope that I got a [00:50:00] picture of one of 'em cuz they're dad versus you go in and find their sheds as a four year old. And get to compare those to last year's sheds and see how they grew and the character characteristics that they kept, and knowing that I'm gonna get to hunt that deer again next year.
Whoa, dude. How crazy is that? Yeah. How cool is it? It's so cool to me. It's fascinating. Yeah. So that is the cool part of finding sheds to me, especially on a farm that I hunt, is just that like having two, three years of sheds in history with a deer that you can see how they developed and how they, I don't know, there's something really cool about it to me.
Yeah. And I think one more value to it, especially with the way you're doing things and you're shooting for that five year old range, right? You can really start to see what you can hope for and expect from your property, right? Like you can, yeah. We've all been there. I, people send me pictures all the time and I do the same thing.
Send a picture to somebody and say, Hey, how old do you think this deer is? And it can be really difficult to tell unless they're on a bait pot. Yeah. Giving you different angles exactly how old that deer is. [00:51:00] When you start to get an idea or how big it is. What does this dear score, right?
Yep. Even if you can get the age, that score can be really tough to figure out. Yep. But if you can see, okay, this was a three-year old, you get done and you find a sheds and you say, okay, this was 135 inch three-year-old. Okay I know what I can expect. Generally the sheds we find from our three year olds are this age range.
Yeah. And to me that's a lot better than guessing off of a trail cam picture. Yeah. Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. When it comes to finding those sheds, something you mentioned really piqued my interest when it comes to this hunting strategy piece because this is a question that I've wondered about quite a bit.
Mostly because in the spring my schedule gets tight and I love to Turkey hunt and so I'm oftentimes trying to cram as much as I can into that February march timeframe so that come April I can really focus on Turkey hunting. So I don't make a lot of time to get out and shed hunt. But if you find a shed depending on where you find it, it may [00:52:00] be real important for your hunting strategy or may not be at all.
Like you said, you find it in a bed. Hugely important. Yeah. Yes. You find it in a terrain feature that they're gonna use the following year or just a commonly used terrain feature on your property. That's really important. Yeah. Do you find it on a pile of big time? That's awesome. But that big time, that'll be best for you.
Yeah. That big time's not gonna be there next. Yeah, next fall, next hunting season yep. Yeah. Really good stuff, man. Anything else that you're like, Hey, this is what I would encourage guys to do, not do. Maybe they should think about this, whatever, when it comes to, guy just says, man I stink at finding sheds.
I just wanna find more. Help me out. Anything else? Yeah. We've touched on most of 'em, but I would say you touched on it at the beginning. Wait until the shed out. That, that'd be number one. I think a lot of people, it's hard for me too, like running shed season, I'm seeing all these pictures everywhere.
People are finding them. Some guys are, have found a hundred already. I saw there's a page from Minnesota that shares a lot with us that they've con they found like 130 sheds already. Oh my gosh. And so I'm like, dude [00:53:00] is killing me. I want to go bad, but because I'm running these cameras, I know my deer are not shut out yet.
If I go right now, when they do shut out, there's a very good chance that they're gonna shut out my neighbors. Cause I go in there and bump 'em in a place that they're comfortable. So wait until, they're shut out. And it, and if it's property, you don't know, you're not running cameras.
Maybe go out in the evening, check the food sources and see, take binoculars, they're spotting scope and see how many doses versus bucks or vice versa. But wait until you know they're shut out or until the date tells you that they should be. Like for here, it's different everywhere.
Of course. For here. I know if we get to that first week of March, pretty safe bet that most bucks are shut out and it's go time, no more waiting. But aside from that, I would say just get out, yeah. Get out there and go up with miles on again, food luckily again, it's gonna be different everywhere Iowa may be get getting tougher, the places that are really popular.
But here, if I go drive around, nine and a half times out of 10, if I knock on a door and say, Hey do you mind if I walk your property and look for deer antler? They're gonna say, sure, go ahead. That's weird. Fir they're gonna [00:54:00] lead with Why do you want those? Exactly. Yeah. Or why, and so you don't run over 'em in your tractor, so Yeah.
Yeah. But yeah, most people are gonna let you go. So go on a drive, right before you go out, go take a drive and see if you can find, like I said, standing grain or cover crop, or. What would it be in the south? Josh? What would be like the hot food source down there?
Oh my goodness. It could be anything. We, there's a lot of baiting that goes on down here. Yeah. We, corn piles are gonna be, yeah. Are gonna be pretty big. And honestly, a lot of it, if you have road pines, if you have any of those rows that are cut, that are, basically bush hog down to the ground the brush on either side of that is gonna be a lot.
The browse on either side of that Yeah. Is gonna be a lot preferred to what's actually inside the cover. And walk those edges. That's, yeah. I guess the one other thing I would say for here, for the Midwest is if you find really good thermal cover, go walk it. Yeah. That would be, I guess I, I missed that earlier.
But next to food would be like, we don't have many pines here. Very few. And when we have 'em, they're few. They're [00:55:00] few and far between. Or it's where if somebody plants a hardwoods here, they will first plant staggered. It'll be pine hardwood. Pine hardwood. Then the pines will shoot up fast and they'll protect the hardwoods until they're mature and then it'll actually kill all the pines.
But when those are young and you have all those, that's basically pines stand and all that thermal cover. That's incredible too. We've gotten into some spots like that where, especially on hard winters, where you go into some of these pine stands and you just absolutely smash it because they're, that's where they're all staying.
Yeah, that's the other thing I would say. Look, go drive around. Look for food, look for thermal cover and just go don't try not to get discouraged. It can be tough. E even, you or I, I, there's days where we'll go and we will walk 13 miles and not find a shed. Yep. It's just part of it.
Yep. And then you're gonna go one day and you're gonna find 14 in two hours, cuz you just found the right food source. Just enjoy being outside and just go at some point you're gonna turn 'em up. Yeah. One of the, one of the best shed hunting trips that I've ever had was literally on my lunch break.
Yeah. I had some phone calls to make, so I was like, I'm gonna [00:56:00] drive, I'm gonna make those calls while I'm on the drive and, maybe I'll make a call or two while I'm out there. I'm gonna take a longer lunch break and gonna take two hours. And in that two hours it was like, phenomenal. Found more sheds in that two hours than any other time.
And it was just, I hid it just I was just on this food source. It was a picked cornfield. I was just there at the right time. But you're right man. Go find those places, even if it's not on your property, find the neighbor down the street. I actually had one farmer tell me he was cool with me doing it.
He was like, yeah, you can go back there and do it. I'd love for these things not to end up in my tractor tire anymore. But you gotta promise me you're gonna find him if you go back there. I was like I don't know . I hate to, I don't know if I can make any promises. I'll do my best. Yeah. I was like I'm gonna try really hard, I promise you, but I can't promise anything.
And he was pretty serious. He's if you're gonna go back there, you better find him. Yep. Oh man. Okay. My bad that's put the pressure on you. Yeah. Yeah. For real. Dwayne what's upcoming for you and for shed season? What can people be looking forward? Yep. So shed, season wise, things are just really ramping up.
This Thursday we're gonna announce the first of four big giveaways. They're gonna be big, [00:57:00] like several thousand dollars each. Wow. We got some unbelievable partners. Like I'll name drop a few, like first Light black Gate that, that's a new cell ca, newer cell camera company. We met them actually at ata, and Ryan is one of the owners.
And dude, they're just like salt of the earth people. Incredible people wanted to develop the best camera on the market and make it afford affordable for people. And I've been running 'em all winter and I think they have so we got some cell cameras we're giving away from them wicked North.
They're gonna do, they're gonna do some stuff with us. Spartan Forge, I know is gonna give away a membership. Each giveaway and then trophy. has a lower lumbar pack that they have come out with. Yep. That is absolutely perfect for shed hunting. We've tested it just a little bit here recently and it's gonna be awesome.
So just tons and tons of stuff. Like truly, they're incredible giveaways. So we've got four of those coming up. First one's gonna be this Thursday. And then we'll have a lot of little pop-up stuff here and there where we're gonna give away some of the apparel and swag. But we just released a whole new line of apparel that's live [00:58:00] on the website.
We developed two, I don't know if you've seen it or not, we developed a little score sheet. It's free on the website. You can download it, you can, edit it on your phone or on your tablet or whatever, or you can print it off and have a little cards and that. They're actually really cool.
So fun little stuff like that. But aside from that, we'll just be pumping out content, whether it's photos or reels or videos and keeping everybody in the loop with what we're doing. So that's shed season. And then, like I said, dream dirt is gonna be coming up here shortly. Won't be long. I've got a. Ear early March trip to Southern Ohio to kick it off.
And I would imagine from there I'll probably be forced to get going with it. I think it's gonna force me to make it happen, so I'm looking forward to that. There you go, man. Hey, the, and that website is shed season.com. That's correct. This shed record T had me cracking up earlier, man. Yeah. Oh yeah. , it's awesome.
It's a squirrel in a shed. Seasoned shirt. Gnawing on an antler, so yeah. That's not what you want. I'll mention quick. TJ reached out to a few of the younger [00:59:00] designers, or, guys that we didn't necessarily know and offered them up an opportunity to sketch some designs and then we would basically handpick the ones we wanted.
And we did three different, three different guys submitted designs for us and dude, they all three knocked it out of the park. So we have some really cool stuff that they've all drawn up for us that are on t-shirts or hoodies or, sweatshirts or whatever. So definitely go check that out on, they would appreciate it.
And so would we. Awesome. So she shed season.com and what is the Instagram handle or Facebook or whatever it is? Shed dot season. Shed dot season. Okay. I knew there was something in there and so I did wanna say it wrong. T man, thank you so much for coming on Dwayne. Appreciate your time. I almost called you TJ there.
Yeah. Got tj. Boy, that'd be something. Yeah, we don't want him to get the big head. Yeah, that's right. We'll so anyway, Dwayne, thanks for your time, man. Appreciate you coming on. We'll have to have you come on again and looking forward to see, looking forward to seeing what else you come up with.
Dude, look, wish you the best with, especially with Dream Dirt. That's absolutely. That could be awesome. We'll be in touch on that, I'm sure. Awesome. All right, buddy, have a good evening. Thanks Josh. You too, [01:00:00] man. That's all for this week's episode. As always. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you dig this show, be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever it is that you get your podcast.
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