Antler hunting dogs?

[slimngrizzly]

Anyone ever trained one for finding sheds? What breed did you get? Was it from a background of antler dogs or just a bird background that you taught to like antlers? Any other comments?

I have labs now which are great house and bird dogs but they hate having antlers even in thier mouth! Like its too hard or something... but I never trained them for sheds either. I was just curious if anyone else has tried?

Thanks!

[harvey lee]

Never heard of this.

[redhooks]

I know that some people have trained their dogs to find antlers and I thought I heard there are some details in a book by local antler hunter about it? I play fetch with my with an old antler in hopes that they will be able to home in on if they stumble on it in the woods.I've also heard that you can plant them in teh woods and then a walk your dog by and give tehm a hunt command to see if they can find it buit you should leave the antlers out in eth woods for a couple days so your human oder wears off.

This spring we found this moose shed and my dog was the first on the scene, although I'm not sure she would have stuck around if I wasn't right behind her.

redhooks

[BDR]

Never trained my GSP for this but, several times he has locked up on point to antlers. One time he locked up tight and there was a perfectly bleached full skeleton of a big 10 pointer. Made for a great European mount that hangs on my wall.

[redhooks]

I just did a quick websearch and came up with multiple site w/ good info on training dogs to find antlers, I'm hoping to multitask this fall while grouse hunting.

redhooks

[slimngrizzly]

Thanks guys.

I guess I know there are a few breeders out there who deal specificaly in "antler finding dogs", and I know dogs can sniff out sheds. Im just curious, do you suppose a guy would have to dish out the cash to get one with it "in the blood"? Ive just always believed a person could teach a good lab to do anything with proper time and training. But finding sheds, not roosters, may be a challenge for a pooch thats got birds only in the DNA.

What do you think? What would you do?