Research out of University of California-Berkeley shines light on the burgeoning outdoor pursuit and hints at how antler gathering might change under new regulations favoring Wyoming residents.
by Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile
Take a white male westerner who likes nature and exercise and makes pretty good money.
There’s a good chance he travels to partake in one of his favorite springtime pursuits. And he’s pretty darn good at it, snagging an average of 45 antlers annually if he’s the type who hits the road. He’s generally not one to sell the treasures he finds — at least not many of them.
Statistically speaking, those are some of the core elements of the prototypical shed antler hunter in western Wyoming.
Shed antler gathering, which has grown evermore popular, is a scantly-regulated activity that’s relatively poorly understood and generally lacking in academic inquiry. University of California-Berkeley PhD candidate Sam Maher, who’s studying the costs and benefits of living with migratory animals, saw an opening. In 2023 she began the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Antler Study, a two-year survey supported by the Buffalo Bill Center of the West and National Geographic.
Preliminary results are now available.
Some of the findings surprised Maher, who studies under UC-Berkeley professor and seasonal Wyoming resident Arthur Middleton.
“The data didn’t really support this narrative about the out-of-state people being these crazy profit-driven folks,” Maher told WyoFile. “Profit-seeking behavior played a smaller role than I anticipated.”
The perception of out-of-state professionals flooding Wyoming every spring partly prompted new policies that put non-residents at a disadvantage. Starting in May, Wyoming residents will have a one-week head start on finding the elk, deer and moose antlers waiting for the taking on public land. Non-residents will also need a $21.50 conservation stamp. The changes emanated from the Wyoming Legislature, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission is scheduled to review the revised regulations at its Cheyenne meeting on Tuesday.
Maher’s research suggests that the pending rule change will significantly impact the springtime antler rush, decreasing pressure on public land. Her survey, targeting the regulated Pinedale and Jackson antler-gathering areas and unregulated Cody area, netted 170 complete responses. Of the horn hunters drawn to those areas, their place of residence was roughly split down the middle with 52% identifying as Wyoming residents and 48% as non-residents.
Notably, the survey suggests that Wyoming residents with newly heightened interest may fill the void during the week non-residents are excluded.
“We asked people if they had changed their behavior, to reflect this increase in the popularity of the sport,” Maher said. “A lot of in-state residents, about half of them, said they shed hunted either in different places, or less. And so when you take the out-of-state folks out of the equation, it could be that a lot of those [residents] will come back to places they used to go.”
The GYE Antler Study also paints a socioeconomic profile of the typical shed hunter.
The average age for both residents and non-residents was in the 30s. More than 97% of respondents identified as white. For non-residents, 91% of participants were men. Women were more inclined to partake among Wyoming folks, constituting 23% of the in-state crowd. Wyoming resident shed hunters were generally wealthier and better educated than their out-of-state counterparts.
The survey also explored motivations. Non-residents were slightly more profit-driven, with 23% of respondents agreeing that money was a draw. Some 14% of resident shed hunters made the same statement. When it comes to actually selling antlers, around half of both residents and non-residents reported they’d turned sheds into cash — an average of $2,238 in the biggest year.
No matter the zip code, antler hunters were largely motivated by spending time in nature with family and friends and getting exercise.
Non-residents were both better at antler hunting and better at boasting of their finds on social media. Out-of-state survey respondents found an average of 45 antlers in the past season, more than doubling residents’ average 20-antler haul.
Roughly 80% of both residents and non-residents perceived that shed hunting had grown more popular since the COVID-19 pandemic. The figure was a whopping 95% when judging popularity over the last 10 years.
That boom in the pursuit has led to mistrust and conflict, the survey showed. About 45% of both residents and non-residents reported having been in a conflict or known someone who had a conflict with another shed hunter. And more than 40% of both cohorts perceived that most shed hunters engaged in illegal activities to gain a competitive advantage.
Perhaps the biggest split that Maher detected between in-state and out-of-state shed hunters was their perceptions of the new Wyoming regulations: the one-week resident head start and requirement for non-residents to carry a conservation stamp. More than 81% of Wyoming residents approved, while just 22% of non-residents favored the change.
Review Maher’s full survey results here.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
