Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting The problem with trail cams

Something interesting from this week:

I've got a box stand on a property about 5 miles down the road from the house, and it's got two shooting lanes that are cleared out. I put up a camera on the longer lane in early November, and it has turned out thousands of pics of does, spikes, and small rack bucks, but nothing motivating. As, a result, I've not been too fired up about hunting that stand. Haven't even been in it this year. Tuesday night, I swapped the camera over to the other lane, just to see if I was missing something. Camera locations are about 300yds apart.

Got these three bucks over three nights.











Found it amusing that I might have been missing out because a $60 camera was missing out. Cameras can be a double-edged sword.

On another note, is the funky dude (middle buck above) maybe going downhill?

This year's pic:



Last year:





I do think one of his young offspring is showing up too. Main beams look too similar not to be. All pics at the same spot,

Outside the rut, security is job one for the local bucks. I can practically set my watch by the doe and the two kids going through the back yard. But while there is a spike, 8 and two 10’s in the neighborhood, they aren’t here every night like the does and youngsters are. The does and family are the ones working over the neighborhood shrubbery and the bucks are content to eat whatever is back in the woods and only venture out during the breeding season. I don’t even put the camera out after January. Trashing hundreds of doe, fawn, flying squirrel, possum and raccoon pictures is getting laborious.

Trail cams can definitely drive you crazy...good you found the hot spot!

I like them for pre season scouting but they drive me nuts during the season... makes me doubt my every move...lol

Believe I’d be sitting there

I’ve got something like 13-15 cameras out of my 350 acres. It’s easy to forget that one camera only covers a tiny area relatively speaking. Sat the other morning on a long lane thru a creek bottom i had put in a few years ago. Saw 20+ deer. Camera placed on edge of woods about half way down the lane got zero pictures. The deer just didn’t walk in front of the camera but they were all over the area that mornjng

I have decent cameras, and lots of SD cards, along with a card reader...

When I get to where I want to hunt, I pop a new SD card in, and sit down and do a quick review of pics so that I'm fully aware of what's coming in, and when.

Improved intel seems to help.

Double edged for sure.

I’ve sat in a stand and watched deer feed. No where near a camera.

If i didn’t see them, and only went by the camera i would have thought that spot wasn’t any good.

Always wanted to try one of those “plot watcher” cameras ( that take a pic every xx mins) just to see what’s going on.

Especially in a food plot.

I have 3 cell phone cameras out this year. If I totally trusted them I would never have hunted those spots. Both bucks I killed I never had on camera and would not have known they were there.

I don’t have any cameras out partly for that reason but partly because I don’t want to know. Our 16 day gun season is going to end tomorrow at sundown and I’ve hunted all but 3 days even though I killed my buck opening day. I just love to go out and watch this time of the year, never know what I might see and I enjoy the anticipation.

I have a couple good friends who killed really nice bucks this year with their bows. Both of them could tell you to within 15 minutes of what time those bucks were coming by their stands pre rut. It’s legal and okay but to me it just feels a little dishonest. YMMV

Our cams in the piney hills of north LA are really not as useful for patterning and timing deer, more for just seeing some of what’s there. However, when folks start suddenly getting some daytime photos of bucks, it’s time to get your butt in the woods. With the current moon and hunting pressure, my daylight buck pics are mid-day right now.

Bucks don't like having lights flashed at them. Many of them don't let you get but one pic. I have had them out for years. The two I killed this year were out of the same stand and never got a pic.

I got my first camera about 2005 and mounted it over a salt lick. Sure enough, I got picks of some really nice bucks. They were around all summer and then disappeared going into fall. I never saw them again.

That's been pretty much what I've seen since then. While they're good for producing eye candy, I find it's hard to get actionable intelligence out of them. I had this discussion when I was pro-staffing. Guys who had 20 cameras out seemed to find they were highly predictive. Guys like me that had a camera or two out were not going to find them as useful.

Another thing I found: In my location the bucks are very mobile. At any given time I probably have 1-2 mature bucks on the property, but they aren't the same bucks day to day. The buck I see on the camera today may be well over in the next county by sundown tomorrow. There is a constant flow of deer, especially in the fall.

Where I've found good intelligence is putting a camera up so that it surveys a pasture and then setting it up for time lapse ( think the feature is called "trail watch") morning and night. I get to see who is coming into feed on a regular basis. It helps me determine the size and health of my doe herds. I find that highly predictive of how my season will be. I use happy, healthy doe as bait. Where the doe are is where the bucks will be in November.