The curious case of shed antlers found in the fall

Shed of the Week for Feb. 22, 2023. photo attached

Tim Wegrzyn sent a curios case of sheds antlers.

Last fall, while trailing an arrowed doe in the southern Kankakee County area, the Grant Park man thought he saw a shed. He dismissed that possibility, thinking he was mistaking a dormant purple coneflower. But it was a “monster shed.”

“I was just as happy and excited to find my first shed,” he emailed.

Usually, shed antlers—white-tailed deer shed their antlers annually, typically in winter—don’t last long. Various animals will gnaw on them, sometimes chewing them down in days or weeks, making a fall find very curious.

“I was surprised as well, because I did find another shed this past fall in the Crete area that was extremely gnawed,” Wegrzyn emailed back. “I just couldn’t believe I found sheds during the fall without actually looking for them. As to around this time of year, I’ve looked and have never found any.”

This should be prime time for sheds.

SOTW, the celebration of shed antlers found around Chicago outdoors, runs when worthy, either Wednesdays in the paper Sun-Times or in the special two-page outdoors section in the Sun-Times Sports Saturday. The online posting here at chicago.suntimes.com/outdoorsgoes up at varied days of the week, depending on what is going on in the wide world of the outdoors.

To make submissions, email ([email protected]) or contact me on Facebook (Dale Bowman), Twitter (@BowmanOutside) or Instagram (@BowmanOutside).