FOREST RIVER, N.D. – If this was a baseball game, the regular starters would have been absent, only to be replaced by three rookie fill-ins who came off the bench to take their place.
It wasn’t a baseball game, though; it was a “shed hunt,” a search for antlers that whitetail bucks shed every winter on a prime piece of hunting land along the Forest River near the border of Grand Forks and Walsh counties.
Most years, brothers Philip Schanilec of Apple Valley, Minnesota, and Ben Schanilec of Minto, North Dakota, along with spouses and friends, scour this family property early in the spring looking for antlers that bucks lose when hormone levels drop after the rut, or mating season.
It’s a social occasion that’s typically followed by a wild game feed put on by Brian Schanilec of Forest River, the brothers’ dad. Brian, an avid hunter known for his cooking prowess, owns Forest River Bean Co., and several hunting properties in the area.
In recent years, though, family commitments sometimes have taken priority over shed hunting for the two Schanilec brothers.
“I haven’t been up there in probably three years now for shed hunting, but my brother has taken friends out,” Philip Schanilec said in a phone interview. “Living in the cities now with two kids, it’s a grind to make the trip, but we’ll get back up there one day.
“It’s fun stuff.”
First-time shed hunter
Among the newbies in the field on this brisk March day was Kelly Schanilec, the boys’ mother. While new to shed hunting, it didn’t take her long to catch on to the program.
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She definitely had a good eye, once she got the hang of what to look for. Think of blocking out everything on the landscape that doesn’t look like an antler and you get the idea.
Find the first one, Kelly says, and the others become easier to spot.
“I love being outside doing these kinds of things,” she said. “It can be a great family experience.”
While Brian Schanilec was the host of this shed-hunting excursion, which provided an opportunity to tromp through rows of mixed conifers and a deer-attracting food plot, he prefers to showcase his culinary talents rather than his antler-spotting prowess during his sons’ springtime shed hunts.
Ben lives nearby, but a new baby and other family commitments kept him away on this Saturday shed-hunting excursion.
“This is their annual deal but none of them can make it,” Brian said. “It’s a two-, three-hour deal, and then afterwards, we have a little meal at my house with two or three different types of wild game.
“That’s kind of our tradition.”
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Getting started
According to Ben Schanilec, the tradition of looking for antler sheds on the 177-acre site began about 2012. A 20-acre (or so) food plot on the hunting property can attract more than 100 deer at times, Ben says, which got him and his brother thinking.
“I don’t know how we got the idea,” he said in an interview. “We were just thinking there might be a lot of sheds out there in the spring. I think whenever the snow came off that year – it was probably March or April – we went out there, found a bunch and since then, we’ve done it pretty much every year.
“It’s something fun to do if the weather’s nice.”
Prime shed hunting time begins when about 90% of the snow is gone and before vegetation turns green, the brothers say. The antlers become more difficult to spot after green-up.
“I think the longer you wait, like if you did it in the summer, it would be harder to find them, and then the sun can really bleach the color of the antlers,” Ben Schanilec said. “And then, I don’t know what kind of rodents chew on antlers, but if you had a really nice shed, like from a nice buck, you’d rather not have the chewing on it.”
Another key is focusing on wintering areas, places where the deer spend a majority of their time and are most likely to drop their antlers.
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“Our first year shed hunting, we went to every corner of the property, climbing over logs, under logs and getting scraped up,” Philip said. “Based off of how much effort we were putting in vs. what we were finding, we found the most efficient thing to do is chase the feeding areas.”
Besides being the most productive, they’re also the most accessible, he says.
“We’ve had a little routine going where we start with the food plot, then we go to the tree rows around the food plot, then we go toward the feeders that are in the trees and then we do the evergreens up in the meadows,” Philip said. “You want to look for areas where they spend most of their time. If you’re finding a trail that they traverse once a day for two minutes, the likelihood of them dropping a shed on that trail is probably pretty small.”
They’ll find 25 to 30 sheds on a good day in years with higher deer numbers. More recently, 15 to 20 would be a good day, the brothers say.
“If you wanted to look under every log in the property, you could spend a whole month out there,” Philip said. “Our group size is usually anywhere from as small as two to as big as probably six or seven, and we’ll spend anywhere from an hour and a half to five hours out there, depending on what the weather is like and how much fun we’re having and all that kind of stuff.”
The brothers have a knack for picking those perfect spring days with little wind and a high temperature of 49 degrees or so, Brian Schanilec says.
“They somehow figure that out, and they kind of make a social occasion out of it,” he said.
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Finding shed antlers also saves on tire repairs when replanting his food plots, Brian says.
“I’ve popped tires before” by driving over antlers, he said.
Tougher winters with deeper snow, which force the deer to congregate in smaller areas, often provide the best shed hunting opportunities – or worst tire-popping risks – once the snow melts.
“This year was a very mild winter, so I saw deer spread out all over here all winter,” Brian said.
That’s apparent by the abundance of feed, such as brassicas, still in the ground in the food plot.
“They weren’t even in our property because there was still a lot of corn in the ground, and on top there wasn’t much snow,” Brian said. “So they didn’t need to come.”
Productive hunt
Philip Schanilec couldn’t make the trip for last weekend’s shed hunt, but he still got involved by putting together a map, highlighting spots where the brothers have had their best luck finding antlers over the years.
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The shed hunters found 14 sheds during their two-hour excursion. Not bad for a trio of rookies.
“Some people do the shed hunting experience to gain knowledge of certain deer on their property,” Philip said. “We moreso do it as a time to be outdoors. It’s getting a little bit warmer out, you get to be outside after a cold winter and it gets you excited for deer season already, starting in February or March.”
In keeping with tradition, the elk Brian prepared for a post-shed hunt feast was spectacular. And if the day was any indication, the Schanilec brothers will have a new shed-hunting partner in years to come.
That would be their mom.
“This was so much fun,” Kelly Schanilec said. “I want to go again.”
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