Camera questions?

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Zfrantz
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Camera questions?

Unread postby Zfrantz » Tue Dec 01, 2020 3:34 am

hello all,
this past year i put out some cameras. i check them every couple of months and what not nothing out of the ordinary. the main question I have is frequency of pictures of bucks. When i listen to podcast they talk about trail cam pic like they are seeing the same deer, every day, doing the same thing.

i placed my camera last year after a snow, i followed tracks and placed them along tracks in corridors to different sections of the woods. but it is not my experience that the same deer are using the paths at a daily frequency. i guess my question is should i relocate cameras until i find such data multiple sighting of the bucks in a given week/ month. or is the radio frequency clouded from podcast?

what are your guys experiences with cameras and frequency of sightings?

thanks in advance,

Zack


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Bperdue21
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Re: Camera questions?

Unread postby Bperdue21 » Wed Dec 02, 2020 2:49 am

I don't really know where you live or what kind of terrain you hunt, but I don't get those type of pics from my camera either. If you are hunting around a bunch of farms with maybe a small wood lot or hedgerow or whatever, where that deer has to use the same couple places to bed and going out to the same spots to eat, I can see getting the deer on some sort of schedule. Where I live there are thousands of what I would consider wild acres. Billions of oak trees, maples, hickories, whatever they are eating at the moment. All these trees may hit, none may hit, half may hit. If you get into one of these years where all the trees hit, that deer could basically be anywhere and never even have to move. Or he could stay on the move and always be in food. I use my cameras to mainly inventory what deer are there and how they are using certain terrain features to move. Both bucks I killed this year, I did not recognize as having on camera. I may get the same bucks every day, then maybe once a week, then maybe once every couple weeks, then every day again. They are a wild animal and no matter how much we spend time getting to know them, they are always going to have that wild element. Don't ever get too flustered about what the media personalities are doing. Most of the time it doesn't match up with the real world scenarios we find ourselves in.
Whitetailaddict
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Re: Camera questions?

Unread postby Whitetailaddict » Wed Dec 02, 2020 3:17 am

I don't ever recall getting the same buck doing the same thing over and over on trail cams. I am not expecting this either. The main purpose I use cameras for is to locate a deer that I'm interested in. Once I've done this I try to figure out how to hunt this deer based on past scouting knowledge. I think it may be hard to find a pattern a deer uses every day on heavily hunted areas. If there is light pressure you might be able stumble upon this but it has not been my experience. Trail cams are just another tool but they are not the magic pill. Many things need to come together so although you have a picture you still need to figure out how to kill that deer.
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phade
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Re: Camera questions?

Unread postby phade » Wed Dec 02, 2020 6:23 am

Setting many cams in a small area that bottlenecks the deer's movements will show you they don't do the same thing every day. It might be a similar, but rarely the same day after day for more than a short period of time. The key is though that you can start to tell a story of their movements and made educated guesses on that detail. I killed my 2019 buck based off of this with the buck heading to a food source late in the dark morning (2-4 AM) and often he would loop back by the same cam heading to bed right before, during, or after daybreak. He was cutting it close. Saturday AM, he went to the food source (bean field) and went back to bed in gray light...the last day of regular season (Sunday), I was able to get out, and he did the same thing. I slipped into the stand after he went to the food source and shot him coming back to bed. It wasn't the same every day but when he did go to that food source, he tended to come back the same way. Bingo. Dead deer, and totally planned kill.
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Zfrantz
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Re: Camera questions?

Unread postby Zfrantz » Wed Dec 02, 2020 7:57 am

alright so those are my typical experiences as well. i have a tendency to overthink things ( the engineer in me). and when i listen to these podcast, i am in tribulation when they talk about trail cam pics like theyre repeat offenders! just making sure i wasnt really missing the boat with my cameras.
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<DK>
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Re: Camera questions?

Unread postby <DK> » Thu Dec 03, 2020 11:31 am

Not sure what everyone sees consistently but heres my exp running them in hilly terrain.

I hang my cams about 8-10ft, outside or in the bedding, no bait, 3-4 week average (before moving the cam). I generally get about 1 or maybe 2 appearances of the same mature deer in that time frame. That is spot, wind and deer dependent though. That doesnt mean the deer is not around, he could walk different trails. I have never bombed a bedding area w cams on the exits to find that out. Generally I run 2 cams per property and 1 for just dropping on some fresh sign.

The biggest reasoning I see for catching a good buck in daylight is midday wind shifts.

Im going to stop using them though, iv decided I was a better hunter before increasing my cam usage. I currently only run x5. Some have helped me, others have hurt me. The main thing iv seen is that most of the spots are great as expected and the deer use the area as expected. Some have thrown me a curveball but alot of that has to do with odd wind currents.

Just my .02, im not sure what is good or bad stats.
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Rob loper
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Re: Camera questions?

Unread postby Rob loper » Thu Dec 03, 2020 2:03 pm

Zfrantz wrote:hello all,
this past year i put out some cameras. i check them every couple of months and what not nothing out of the ordinary. the main question I have is frequency of pictures of bucks. When i listen to podcast they talk about trail cam pic like they are seeing the same deer, every day, doing the same thing.

i placed my camera last year after a snow, i followed tracks and placed them along tracks in corridors to different sections of the woods. but it is not my experience that the same deer are using the paths at a daily frequency. i guess my question is should i relocate cameras until i find such data multiple sighting of the bucks in a given week/ month. or is the radio frequency clouded from podcast?

what are your guys experiences with cameras and frequency of sightings?

thanks in advance,

Zack

Im seeing same trends. See a good buck once maybe twice then no more. Plenty of does. So its not the camera. Its 15 foot high facing down anyway.
Im convinced bucks travel and use certain areas within certain areas depending on quite a bit of things.
He might use a certain bedding area. But i think exit and even entry trails can be very sporadic.
Bucks are almost nomadic. Wondering wherever food ,, does , and security is. Some are cowards and some are braver. Some are just dumb but some are smart as a tack.


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