Spin off of the trail cam survey

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Divergent
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Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Divergent » Wed Jul 27, 2016 5:34 am

I recently asked what kind of patterns everyone has found from running trail cameras. I didn't get much in response to the question. So, I have to ask if y'all using any kind of trail camera management system? I use Biggamelogic.com to input camera information and get different statistics. Reconyx and Deer Lab have the same type of management. It can be time consuming entering some of the information, but it has opened my eyes to some of the tendencies of deer. You input what deer and how many appeared. When you enter the date, the local weather information is automatically input. You can name notable deer also and then perform a search later. This site also provides you with a heat map, so you can see which areas on your property are hotter than others. I have a decent memory and can analyze information, but i've missed so many tendencies of the deer. Here are a few snapshots...
Here is a partial view of the heat map and search menu.
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Here is an example of buck and does, mostly does. Does seem to move under most conditions and don't pay much attention to wind.
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Here is an example of one notable buck. Notice how he is caught in front of the camera on more moderate windy days compared to the previous example. You might also notice how he uses an easterly wind most of the time.
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And here is an example of the moon phase from the notable buck. I'm not sure if he showed up on these days because of weather related events or maybe it was some type of circuit.
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Below is a search for rainy day movement. I really like how this management system lets you single out certain criteria.
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Here is a search for windy days. These locations are in bottoms away from wind.
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As you can see it's more than just the time you catch a buck on camera. You can really dial in on a deer when you add in the barometric pressure, wind direction, wind speed, location, time, moon phase and weather condition. Hopefully this has helped open some eyes up to the possibilities in patterning deer. I'm off to play to play some football with the lil guy.


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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Dewey » Wed Jul 27, 2016 5:41 am

That is really cool. I am in the process of breaking down the same data to figure out patterns. This looks so much easier than how I am doing it looking up everything manually and drawing charts.

I am seeing some very obvious patterns on my cell cam and the nice thing is I can enter the data daily to save time.

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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Stanley » Wed Jul 27, 2016 5:53 am

Pretty cool.
You can fool some of the bucks, all of the time, and fool all of the bucks, some of the time, however you certainly can't fool all of the bucks, all of the time.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Divergent » Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:41 am

Dewey wrote:That is really cool. I am in the process of breaking down the same data to figure out patterns. This looks so much easier than how I am doing it looking up everything manually and drawing charts.

I am seeing some very obvious patterns on my cell cam and the nice thing is I can enter the data daily to save time.

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I really would like to invest in a few cell cams. They definitely have their benefits.

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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby <DK> » Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:52 am

I dont have the $ for that type of setup, but i saw a site called DEER LABS, not sure about the info but hope it helps. Man that's a lot of very informative intel! It looks like "Buck Heaven" needs a name change. Killer stuff! Did you check if those 3 day segments (moon day chart) where his appearances spike, whether they are o/h-u/f days? (Saddle / Buck Heaven Chart)
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Divergent » Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:46 pm

Darkknight54 wrote:I dont have the $ for that type of setup, but i saw a site called DEER LABS, not sure about the info but hope it helps. Man that's a lot of very informative intel! It looks like "Buck Heaven" needs a name change. Killer stuff! Did you check if those 3 day segments (moon day chart) where his appearances spike, whether they are o/h-u/f days? (Saddle / Buck Heaven Chart)


I'm really not sure about the overhead/underfoot. I'll have to go back and check.

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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby DaveT1963 » Wed Jul 27, 2016 10:04 pm

I don't keep notes on areas as much as i keep notes on a specific animal. With such low counts of 4 1/2 year old or better bucks seldom do i have an areas that year after year produces what i am after. So i mainly use cameras to conduct inventory until I find a few bucks that year I am pursuing. Then i create a log sheet for each animal and record info for each sighting of camera shot in even excel. Then i can easily sorry, write formulas to compare different factors like lication, wind, time, date, etc and look for patterns on that particular buck. Probably 80% of the time that buck didn't make it fit more then one year.... currently I had two large bucks from last year that I'm working on, one for sensei several years...... so far with all the floods in June I have zero sightings of pics of either one since Feb. So like most years my camera's are out looking for them and new bucks that grew up since last year.

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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby JoeRE » Thu Jul 28, 2016 12:19 am

Man I have found more patterns from cams than I have time to write about right now....in my 2015 hunting journal I talked about some of them in detail.

Bucks using certain bedding locations in certain conditions, pre-rut activity such as hitting primary scrapes and starting to nose around doe groups the same time every year, certain bucks using the same rut cruising routes every year, and then there are all the weather conditions such as barometric pressure, temp, wind, precipitation and moon phase and transit times that I have looked at with mixed results. Conditions like that are very hard to isolate since there are so many of them. There are a few I am pretty confident in though.

I just use a spreadsheet. It is what I am comfortable with since I have thousands of hours on them professionally :lol: The software I have seen is a bit more limited than what a person can do with a spreadsheet.

One limitation to all this though, what you get is only as good as the information you put into it. Bad data is probably worse than no data, because it lies to you. Still fun to look at though for us nerds.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby mainebowhunter » Thu Jul 28, 2016 3:49 am

Annual trail cam patterns will take you a while to figure out. I have been using them hard for 5-6yrs and just starting to see some annual patterns. Problem really is with so few mature deer, it means the next season many of those buck or bucks could gone. So now its trying to find another pattern, that another buck is going to make. And then seeing if he makes it and whether his pattern will be the same the next year. I figure out a lot of patterns on year #2 when the deer is dead. Meaning, I watched him in 2014, did not kill. Hunter kills in 2014. In post season scouting 2014/15, I figured out what he was doing when I was hunting him in 2014...but now he is dead. That pattern is no longer. I really try to see if I can put a annual pattern in areas that are not so specific to one deer, more general patterns that relate to bucks being in a certain area during a certain time.

I spend a lot of my energy trying to understand Sept and Early Oct patterns...annually and during the season. And to add, this season I am running 20-25 cams by the time the season begins. Cams are a big deal to me. I have been out driving the roads this summer...and to date, I have not seen 1 3.5yr old buck in any of the areas that I hunt.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Divergent » Thu Jul 28, 2016 5:05 am

" One limitation to all this though, what you get is only as good as the information you put into it. Bad data is probably worse than no data, because it lies to you. Still fun to look at though for us nerds." -JoeRE

^^The most important thing that I did not cover. I have made this mistake several times and it has cost me a lot of time and hard work. Thanks for bringing that up.

Maine- Licking branches and a mock scrape seem to be the ticket at this time of year for me. The preorbital scent is great for getting them in front of the camera.

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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby mainebowhunter » Thu Jul 28, 2016 5:19 am

Divergent wrote:" One limitation to all this though, what you get is only as good as the information you put into it. Bad data is probably worse than no data, because it lies to you. Still fun to look at though for us nerds." -JoeRE

^^The most important thing that I did not cover. I have made this mistake several times and it has cost me a lot of time and hard work. Thanks for bringing that up.

Maine- Licking branches and a mock scrape seem to be the ticket at this time of year for me. The preorbital scent is great for getting them in front of the camera.

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Apples and acorns are the ticket here. Then from year to year, which food sources do they prefer? And then I use that data to form an annual pattern when that food source produces.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby phade » Fri Jul 29, 2016 7:38 am

None of the "statistical tools" out there are looking at what they should be doing.

They should be streamlining the way photos are imported - not a single one can take a feed of some sort (either directly or indirectly) to log incoming cell/data camera shots. It requires manual intervention even for regular trail cameras - which relies on humans and that often leads to bad data sets, which has been commented on. Garbage in = Garbage out as the saying goes.

That's not to say they are poor or not helpful. If someone can use them properly, they are certainly good tools for additional insight. It just takes a lot of time when you are running more than a handful of cameras to clean out photos you are not going to use and ones you will.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby phade » Fri Jul 29, 2016 7:41 am

Divergent wrote:
Dewey wrote:That is really cool. I am in the process of breaking down the same data to figure out patterns. This looks so much easier than how I am doing it looking up everything manually and drawing charts.

I am seeing some very obvious patterns on my cell cam and the nice thing is I can enter the data daily to save time.

[ Post made via iPhone ] Image


I really would like to invest in a few cell cams. They definitely have their benefits.

[ Post made via iPhone ] Image


PM me about cell/data cams.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby phade » Fri Jul 29, 2016 7:45 am

DaveT1963 wrote:I don't keep notes on areas as much as i keep notes on a specific animal. With such low counts of 4 1/2 year old or better bucks seldom do i have an areas that year after year produces what i am after. So i mainly use cameras to conduct inventory until I find a few bucks that year I am pursuing. Then i create a log sheet for each animal and record info for each sighting of camera shot in even excel. Then i can easily sorry, write formulas to compare different factors like lication, wind, time, date, etc and look for patterns on that particular buck. Probably 80% of the time that buck didn't make it fit more then one year.... currently I had two large bucks from last year that I'm working on, one for sensei several years...... so far with all the floods in June I have zero sightings of pics of either one since Feb. So like most years my camera's are out looking for them and new bucks that grew up since last year.

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Log a spot next chance you have. I usually do the same with older bucks, but I had access to a few years of data of a camera covering a perennial scrape smack in the middle of a doe bedding area. It was amazing. You could go months without a buck showing up and then in late October, the first bucks start opening that same scrape up. That same pattern repeated for three years and the same window of peak activity of bucks (and mature bucks at that) occurred each year - Nov 4 to 8. A very clear spike that was reliable based on the image collection being 365 days a year, and it was the same dates each year. It was eye opening for me.

The only bitter end to that was we got the wind we needed on Nov 4 and a friend shot into the backstraps of one of the two target bucks and lived to see another day. The trail cameras get full credit on that set-up.
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Re: Spin off of the trail cam survey

Unread postby Divergent » Fri Jul 29, 2016 1:34 pm

phade wrote:None of the "statistical tools" out there are looking at what they should be doing.

They should be streamlining the way photos are imported - not a single one can take a feed of some sort (either directly or indirectly) to log incoming cell/data camera shots. It requires manual intervention even for regular trail cameras - which relies on humans and that often leads to bad data sets, which has been commented on. Garbage in = Garbage out as the saying goes.

That's not to say they are poor or not helpful. If someone can use them properly, they are certainly good tools for additional insight. It just takes a lot of time when you are running more than a handful of cameras to clean out photos you are not going to use and ones you will.


I couldn't agree more with the streamlining process.


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