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He never stops.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen anyone to beat him.\u00a0 He works at his passion year round \u2013 tailoring his own 64 acres of land with food plots, proper woodland cover, and plenty of forage.<\/p>\n
He knows every land owner in three counties, and respectfully knocks on doors throughout the year to introduce himself \u2013 build relationships.\u00a0 He\u2019s the community\u2019s good neighbor.<\/p>\n
And ethical?<\/p>\n
He\u2019s one of the few serious hunters that I personally know who eschews the use of trail cameras. He questions their fairness, and spends the time, personally, to scout during the off-season \u2013 old school.\u00a0 It earns him respect from owners, and it gets him on land where others get turned down, or so he claims.<\/p>\n
And an important element of that off-season scouting is the time he spends looking for discarded antlers\u2026or \u2018sheds\u2019, as they\u2019re called.\u00a0 And when he invited me to go \u2018shed\u2019 hunting with him this past February I can honestly say he was as excited as any other hunter would have been with a twelve-pointer standing twenty yards from his stand on opening day!<\/p>\n
Ben Simon has been hunting sheds for years, is rarely turned down by land owners, and credits finding discarded racks for a lot of his success come the fall hunting season.<\/p>\n
\u201cSheds tell me that there are not only deer on a property, but the genetic makeup of those deer, too,\u201d he claims. \u201cWhen you find big sheds you find good bloodlines that are being passed on during breeding season. That\u2019s all I need to know.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd most farmers allow you to hunt because they don\u2019t want the risk of dropped antlers ruining a tractor tire when they get in the fields come spring.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Some use popular hunting dog breeds to help find horns. (Courtesy of Gun Dog Magazine)<\/p>\n
So on the day that we chose to hunt on his own land he pretty much knew what he wanted to find.\u00a0 Deer generally drop their horns during the month of January and early February in the Midwest, and if they were there in December, chances are they\u2019re still there after the calendar flips.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw a nice nine-point twice during hunting season \u2013 a big tall rack \u2013\u00a0 but never got a really good shot opportunity,\u201d he smiled. \u201cIt was a big deer\u2026I\u2019m guessing he was at least four years old, and if I can find his discarded rack it\u2019ll tell me that he made it through, and how old he really is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shed hunting is a growing sport among both hunters and even non-hunters \u2013 some who like to find and exhibit the antlers without actually killing a deer.<\/p>\n
And timing is everything because there\u2019s competition for finding a set of antlers that you would not expect. Mice and squirrels look for them, too, and eat them as a source of essential minerals like calcium, phosphorus and protein. The process of chewing bones for minerals is called osteophagia, and it helps recycle nutrients in nature\u2019s ecosystem.<\/p>\n
But to a\u00a0 deer hunter there\u2019s a\u00a0 human protein called \u2018adrenalin\u2019, over finding something bigger than you might expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found the left half of a rack two years ago that was non-typical and had eight points, and had a couple of drop tines,\u201d said Ben. \u201cNo one had ever seen that deer, even on camera. So it got everyone excited about a deer that big that was out there someplace, and unaccounted for\u2026an old bruiser.<\/p>\n
On this particular day we found antlers, but they were smaller and immature and not the ones that Ben was expecting to find \u2013 yearling-size, or two years old at best.<\/p>\n
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You wonder, as a hunter\u2026what happened to a particular deer that you encountered during the season without a shot opportunity?\u00a0 Did someone else shoot that deer, or did he just drop his antlers on another property? Deer tend to home in a particular area if they\u2019re not disturbed, but they travel, too. They\u2019re like any living thing, they go where they have the best opportunity to survive.<\/p>\n
How it\u2019s done is not hard at all. You just walk, and some shed hunters actually have dogs \u2013 hunting dog breeds \u2013 that scent and track them down \u2013 Labradors, in particular. But most do it alone, carrying little more than a good pair of binoculars around their neck.<\/p>\n
And where are the best places to hunt?<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, along the woods,\u201d says Ben. \u201cBecause deer tend to rub trees with their horns, so look for \u2018rubs\u2019 and you\u2019re likely to find those horns.\u00a0 And you find them in creeks, where they drink.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you also find them in picked corn fields, where deer feed\u2026sometimes in a pasture field.\u201d<\/p>\n
When shed hunters find a good set of horns, it\u2019s like Christmas.\u00a0 It tells them there\u2019s a big deer out there somewhere, and if he made it this long he\u2019ll likely still be there come next hunting season. And that\u2019s all they need to know.<\/p>\n
What keeps them coming back.<\/p>\n
What makes me want to do it.<\/p>\n
I need to knock on a few doors.<\/p>\n
\u2019Til next time, I\u2019ve enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s a deer hunter in Illinois I want to tell you about.<\/p>\n