Sheds are not little building used for storage. No. At deer camp, the vernacular totally changes. Words don’t mean what you think.

Sheds (n.) discarded horns that fall off the deer’s head. This happens sometime between the ‘rut’ and the end of deer season.

Looking for sheds is pretty similar to searching for a needle in a hay stack.

**Note** Easter egg hunts as children were just acts of training to look for sheds as adults.

On my first shed hunt, my most profound thought was:

Looking for sheds, I can empathize with the Israelites that wandered around in the desert. There was nothing out there, not even sheds. 

After wandering around 10,000 acres in the heat of the sun on a hot day in early spring, I finally learned something about shed hunting.

Follow the trails…scat trails, hoof prints trailing through the sand,,,any kind of trail will help to find the illustrious shed. They’ll probably be hiding under a bush or at the base of a tree with weird scratches on the bark. And walking. Lots of walking. Calluses, corns, bunions, and blisters. If its a foot malady, you’ll probably experience at least one…but on the bright side, you’ll get in your steps on shed hunting day.

Honestly, my shed hunting experience ended up pretty sweet. I’d walked all over staring at the ground while searching for the aforementioned trails. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Hubby found one. He walked to the truck and pitched it in while I still stared at the hardened earth beneath my feet. I heard the words I’d yearned to hear all day. “Let’s go.”

Hooray! It was time to celebrate, which consisted of collapsing on the couch or bed in the RV with the a/c turned up as high as it would go and drinking something ice cold. Two words stopped me in my tracks.

“What’s that?”

Under a little bush was an exact identical match to the horn my husband just found. Hmmm…pretty sure he pitched it there instead of in the truck so I’d have my first shed find.

It might be my first shed hunt, but I wasn’t born yesterday…but what a sweet sentiment, kinda like when grandma yells out the location of where all the Easter eggs are hidden.

And kind of like Easter eggs, sheds don’t have any good use after they’re found other than laying on flat surfaces so visitors can raise their eyebrows and squint their eyes and curl up their top lip when they ask where the rest of the deer is.

They should really add shed hunting to team building exercises. Right after they go snipe hunting.

Stay tuned for even more exciting things from deer camp just waiting to be confessed.

The Trophy Wife