Hunting For Antlers On The Forest Floor? There's A Dog For That

A good trainer can teach a dog to find just about anything: cocaine, explosives, cancer — and antlers.

The horns discarded by white-tailed bucks, elk, moose and caribou are the trophies in a small but growing pastime. And if you’re hunting for antlers, it helps to have a hound.

The business of training dogs to find horns has increased with the popularity of the sport, which peaks in late winter and early spring when many hunting seasons have ended.

“Men are gonna hunt something, no matter what it is,” Roger Sigler said.

He would know.

Sigler trains antler-hunting dogs with his wife, Sharon Sigler, and their daughter, Amy Sigler-Muehlebach, at their 65-acre Antler Ridge farm in Smithville.

The trio’s speciality is training curious Labrador puppies to become antler-obsessed adults. They have sold between 25 and 40 dogs per year to people in 34 U.S. states and 4 Canadian provinces, Sharon said.

The Siglers offer dogs in three stages: puppies, intermediate and finished, which cost about $2,000, $3,500 and $6,500, respectively. The Siglers require buyers to travel and spend a night at Antler Ridge so they can learn how to care for and further train the dogs.

Most of their customers are “big-time hunters,” Amy said. They go out and scout the woods, not only to find the annual crop of antler sheds but to get a look at the quality of herds for next season, she said.

Others hunt antlers as an excuse to just spend more time in nature.

“It’s a reason to be outdoors,” said Barbara Keller, a supervisor with the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Competition comes into play, too. Labs and their owners will converge when the North American Shed Hunting Dog Association (NASHDA) hosts its world championships in April.

“It’s kind of a competitive thing, a macho thing, to find more horns than anybody else,” Roger Sigler said.

Recently, a Facebook page appeared for the Northwest Missouri Shed Dog Association, which said it aimed to register with NASHDA and host a qualifying event next summer.

And, of course, there’s a lot of money changing hands over antlers.

Across the country, collectors get together at antler auctions to buy, sell and peruse the merchandise. A recent bone bazaar in Wyoming raised more than $175,000 through selling 11,512 pounds of antlers, with most of the proceeds going to the National Elk Refuge, the Jackson Hole News and Guide reported.

Horns are also sold online through vendors such as ShedOrDead.com, which offers a price list for selling antlers. Mint condition brown mule deer antlers will net you $20 per pound, while older, weatherbeaten “chalk antlers” sell for about 10 percent of that.

Some folks have gone into business selling horns as chew toys for dogs to gnaw on. Others use antlers for decoration — either a rack mounted on a wall or horns crafted to serve as furniture — and still others hunt horns for the sake of hunting horns.

There are some serious collectors out there, such as James “Antler Man” Phillips of Montana. Phillips, 68, said he found his first sheds when he was 10 and now has more than 16,000 antlers.

“I get the same thrill today as I did almost 60 years ago,” he said.

He holds onto his finds and doesn’t sell sheds anymore, but he said he sold enough in the 1980s to help put his daughters through college.

Now, in “Jim’s Horn House,” there are racks in the rafters, halls of horns, sheds on shelves and antlers all around. If you can’t make it to Montana, you can take a tour online.

Phillips prides himself on never buying antlers and on finding and retrieving antlers by himself, on foot. Others, perhaps less obsessed, attend antler auctions or hunt with canine assistance.

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Labrador retrievers are ideal for hunting antlers, and it doesn’t matter what kind they’re taught to look for, Roger Sigler said: “A horn’s a horn.”

He likens the process to a sports team scouting a prospect before a draft. There are certain desirable attributes in an antler dog, such as its social skills, scent discrimination and hunting drive.

That hunting desire is crucial, Sigler said, and so is greed. He looks for slightly selfish puppies that won’t just go after an antler or tennis ball, but will keep their toys away from humans.

“They want to own it,” he said. “The more they want that thing, the better they’re going to be.”

Still, the dogs will eventually let go of the antlers. After all, they want to keep playing fetch.

Sigler has been training antler dogs for 11 years and claims to have invented the sport. Last week, he went through some exercises with Peka, a 3-month-old black Lab, playful and willing to lick as puppies usually are.

Sigler started Peka with the basics, and she listened and waited as he moved around the room, asking her to perform tasks such as keeping eye contact and retrieving a horn.

Peka was rewarded with deer meat when she got it right. She was never shocked or choked or hit.

Outside, Amy brought out her own dog, a 6-year-old yellow Lab named “Sir Lawrence Digger Peachy Feet” that she and everyone else call “Larry.”

She kept the energetic Larry near her while Sharon went out in a pasture near the location of some hidden horns. When Sharon was ready, Amy swept her arm and said “Search!”

Larry had been waiting for this, and he started bounding around the field, looking for an antler. It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for, and he eagerly trotted back to Amy with his jaws clamped around his prize.

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While some will shell out big bucks for a horn-hunting dog, others train their own puppies.

Alex Foster of the Quality Deer Management Assocation, a nonprofit conservation group, considers shed hunting “one of the more enjoyable sports.” Foster said he hunts in northwest Missouri and started walking the woods when he was 8 years old.

“There’s nothing better to do that time of year, as far as being outdoors,” he said.

Foster said he finds about 20 sheds each season.

The past two seasons, Foster has brought along Lady Sage, his chocolate Lab. He said he trained her himself, and the results have been good — Lady Sage has found some antlers he wouldn’t have otherwise.

After he labels his finds with the time and place he found them, Foster decorates his home with the bone he brings back.

“My fiancee says I’m a hoarder,” he said.

She doesn’t seem to mind too much, as Foster’s wedding band will be titanium inlaid with antler.

Will Schmitt: 816-234-4269, @ws_missouri

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