Horn Pay Day

Horn hunting.

Maybe you think it’s when a hunter goes looking just for horns and not necessarily the meat. You can call it that, but often around here it applies to finding the shed antlers of deer, elk, and moose. The bucks and bulls drop their antlers every winter, regrowing them in the spring. Those sheds are valuable.

Unfortunately, that means in spring (and often too early in spring) especially if the weather is good, people will go out horn hunting. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like horn hunting myself. I *don’t* like guys rutting up our muddy roads. I *don’t* like guys trespassing either.

Usually right about then, we’re very busy and since we don’t get weekends off to go hunting, I suppose there’s an element of jealousy there too. Often we know the culprits who trespass. We just don’t have the time to look for them, photograph them in the act, report them and prosecute them. My sense of justice feels like if they’re trespassing on us, and making money off of sheds they’ve collected on our land, that the least they could do would be to give us a cut! Haha. I know. Life’s not fair.

All of this pity party is to share that we sold what sheds we had on hand. On the left is Daniel’s pile, on the right is mine and Vernon’s. I think Daniel’s is from one year, mine is a couple of years. We don’t do too bad. Often we find them around haystacks or in the field.

One antler buyer had this list on his website, and I included it for reference. Price is per pound. Elk sheds are listed below.

Brown Select	$13.00
Brown Ordinary	$11.00
Hard White	$9.00
Good Damage	$3.00
Chalk	$1.00
Bad Damaged	$.25

These are prices for deer.

Brown Select	$12.00
Brown Ordinary	$9.00
Hard White	$6.00
Good Damage	$3.00
Chalk	$1.00
Bad Damaged	$.25

You get better prices if you have a matched set or they’re unusual in some way.

You can see why I started training Bravo to find antlers! The trouble is… once you’ve picked up an antler, your scent is on the antler and the more you reuse it to train with, the more of your scent is on it. If I spot one in the wild and get him on it, boy, I sure praise him when he picks it up!

What are they used for? Some are sent to Asian markets, some are used in furniture from chairs to chandeliers, and many are used as dog chews. Bravo has a couple in the yard, right now… If you’d like to learn more, here’s a good article from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

Find me here!

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