What are the odds of finding a match set? Research shows shed antlers are often not far apart

Springfield — Shed antler hunting season is at its peak in Illinois and many other popular whitetail states, and even after the peak there are always sheds to find – typically random, unmatched sets of antlers.

Any needed motivation to continue hunting in late winter and early spring comes from Lindsay Thomas, Jr., chief communications officer with the National Deer Association, who recently shared a report that looks into the likelihood of finding a match set of antlers.

There is actual data that suggests sets of matching antlers usually aren’t that far apart, though actually finding a matched pair can certainly be difficult.

Thomas points to a study led by Brian Peterson of the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Peterson, a wildlife biologist and coordinator of the online masters program at UNK, and co-researcher Casey Schoenebeck examined distances between matched sets of sheds they found from 2010 to 2022. They used meters (1 meter equals 3.2 feet) in their study.

“Every February, March, and April for those 13 years, they thoroughly searched 38 properties ranging from 40 to 950 acres,” Thomas said. “Some shed antlers are obviously matches due to being dropped very close together. To confirm matches dropped far apart, the team looked for symmetry in a specific set of characteristics.”

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Peterson’s findings:

• The UNK collection includes 142 matched pairs of shed antlers – the team knows the distances between their drop locations for 113 of those pairs.

• Out of 113 matched pairs, the greatest distance between a matched set was 1,144 meters, while the closest was under 1 meter.

• Most of them were found very close to each other, with half (56) of the pairs lying up to 10 meters apart. Another 27 pairs were found 10 to 100 meters apart.

• Only seven matched pairs separated by more than 500 meters.

• Out of 1,059 total shed antlers collected and evaluated, 775 of them were singles without a match.

• Counting the 142 matched pairs as one deer each, the research team only found a matched set for 13% of the bucks that contributed antlers to their collection.

• Most yearling sets, 71%, fell within 10 meters of each other. Of the older bucks, 41% landed at this close range.

“There’s a lot of unmatched antlers out there that will likely never be found, whether they are accessible on the property you are searching or not,” Peterson told Thomas.