I have a 1 yo vizsla and she is doing great with bird training and retrieving. She finds and hold steady until shot and retrieves, pretty much what i want out of a bird dog. Ive also been working with her on blood trails which she found her first deer this season after I shot a buck and he ran 75-80 yds. She found him no problem after about 5 min. So far she as took to any training I've working with her on. A few weeks ago we started working on hand signals to retrieve, she doing good but I think she can improve and or the trainer (me) could be better.

She's a sponge when it comes to training right now, so my question is have any of you attempted to train a bird dog on shed antler training? Do you think its a good idea? Do you think it will affect her bird drive? Ive been watching and reading up on it and it looks like most guys use labs for this. But after watching some videos of the dog bone guy it looks similar to bird training as far as them searching and using their nose to find something. I think the hard part for my dog would be to retrieve something that she didn't she fall or thats not a bird. Just wanted to see what you thoughts were on this subject.

No thoughts

If I was going to do it I'd start by hiding sheds around the yard or even house and lead her into finding one. When she finds one praise the heck out of her. Make it a game and make it fun for her. I bet pretty soon she'd be hunting up sheds on her own.

I would also use a cue like "let's find the sheds" or something like that. She'll eventually figure out it means it's time to look for sheds.

I don't think it will hurt her bird drive at all.

That's just my thoughts but I have no experience training a bird dog to find sheds.

Good luck

Bump.

I've got nothing to contribute but am also interested in this with my Lab. Living in TX now but considering moving somewhere with more big game and doing some shed hunting in the off time.

Cheers

We have a pile of uninteresting sheds at the lease. My pup loves going and getting them and chewing the crud out of them. I will pick them up and go put them in a pile in another spot but she always finds them. Hoping next spring will be fun.

I've heard about, & read a little about shed-dogs. I have a buddy with 400 acres of high fence that would hire services to find sheds at the right time of year. He has tons of game cam pic's & loves to match & save the WT sheds...including a bunch of axis as a bonus.

I know you can hire a dog to find a deer, but for shed hunting, looks like a day of fun & profit for a shed-dog owner(?)