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The evils of trail cameras

cotty16

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
I've been running 2 trail cameras on the private property I hunt for 3 years now. This year, they've been out since June so I could gauge antler growth and, obviously, movements.

In the past I've had at least 2 shooters on the property to pursue per year. A "hit list", if you will. This year I have yet to get a suitable shooter on camera at this property. Plenty of "up and comers", but nothing worth a tag this year.

Because of this, I have given up hope on this place for the year. I realize the camera can't catch every deer, but at some point during the antler growing season you'd think I'd get at least one target buck. It's times like this I wish I wasn't running cameras. While on stand there I've only seen one shooter and it was on the other property. I know they don't know property lines, but he has not surfaced since that sighting and he was nowhere near shooting range then.

Cameras can be great, but they can ruin a season as well. Hypothetically, if I were not running cams and still be going out on this property with high hopes because I know what it can produce and it just looks like a solid piece of land. But, knowing nothing has been on cam it is driving me nuts and my confidence level of seeing a shooter is next to zero.

Sorry for the ramble. Just thought I'd throw it out there and see what you guys have to say.
 

Ohiobowhunter1

Junior Member
296
49
Columbus
This is one of the reasons I stopped runnning cams, I don't want to name them... I liked to look at sign and determine what is using the area. Gas and corn prices helped make that choice too!
 

ImpalaSSpeed96

Junior Member
561
60
NJ
I can agree on some level. In Ohio though, unless you're dead set on something 150 or better, my hopes are always high. Try hunting a state where you're lucky if you have a 130 in a 100 square mile radius...
 

Curran

Senior Member
Supporting Member
7,971
172
Central Ohio
I know what ya mean Cotty. I only ran a camera on one place this summer, and it's been pulled since September. I did get a few shooters, but never bothered to put the camera back out at any other spots I hunt. Just kinda got tired to always worrying about the thing, or hunting because of it. Sometimes I think that not knowing what's in the woods I'm hunting, is better than knowing what is in the woods I'm hunting. That sounded like a deep thought rotflmao
 

brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
247
Mike, I quit cameras! Having had BECs all over the property I primarily hunt nearly drove me insane. I'd have pics of bucks at every stand I wasn't in, I knew in real time that most of the activity is in the middle of the night - at least after shooting hours... I just wound up feeling like I knew every deer on the dang farm, and I knew when knew ones showed up, which would likely come as a surprise to most people how often new deer come through. It took a lot of the fun out of hunting for me. Having said all that, it also led me to hunt when the cameras told me to instead of when my gut told me to, and that never worked! Additionally, I put too much faith in them. Like you, I thought if it wasn't on camera it wasn't on the farm. I got over that thought relatively quick though...but the nagging voice in my head was still there saying "theres no hope". Swantucky got that way too. I told him he needed to forget about when his BECs were showing him deer and just hunt. He or Hunter went hunting and watched a dandy buck walk right around behind the camera!
You can't put to much faith in what they are telling you. I only have one in the field now, and it isn't to pattern or watch anything really. It's just there because I had it in the truck the other day when I drove back to set up a stand for Mason so I hung the cam. I saw 6 this morning, one dandy buck, and none of them went in front of the camera. I have seen more big bucks on my farm this year than I have in years, and don't have a picture of any of them - aside from one!
If you feel it's a good property, forget what the cam says and go hunt it! If they have been there before they are there now. Hunting spots are like fishing holes, and I'm sure you have a spot or two that ALWAYS holds a good largemouth. :)
 

Lundy

Member
1,307
127
A game camera can only confirm what it takes picture off. It can not confirm the existence or lack of existence of something that doesn't walk into it's cone of coverage.

I know we all set the cameras in locations to capture the most traffic possible however if you have one camera with a 15'x60 detection zone in one 10 acre woodlot you are covering .002 percent of the total square footage

I get to see a lot of the same deer over and over again on the cams, but I also get to see deer I've never seen before when I actually hunt.
 

hickslawns

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
39,721
248
Ohio
It seems you just about need to be constantly moving cams to catch the deer by surprise if you want pictures or repeat pictures. Doing so seems to do nothing more than alert the deer to your presence. This year I put a camera each on two properties. I put them in high traffic areas just to confirm what I had seen in the past. Property A: Yep. No activity in the form of bucks until mid-late October. Property B: small bucks. Better bucks had been seen but avoided the camera. On two other properties I ran a limited amount of cameras. Pictures were steady at first, then tapered off. I would rotate the cameras 90 or 180 degrees on the same tree and pick up pictures for a couple nights then watch them go blank. They are there Mike. They just have learned about the cameras.
 

finelyshedded

You know what!!!
Supporting Member
31,856
260
SW Ohio
Mike brings up a valid point. Wireless cams are the way to go if you can afford them but like many I just don't want to spend the extra green to run several.

I agree with Lundy that just because you don't catch them in front of your camera it doesn't mean they are not there. It does play with your head though.

Like Phil said at which I also agree with, I'm sure many of us including myself, no matter how scent cautious we try to be I'm sure we've changed deer movements dramatically in some instances. Any mature buck will not tolerate our intrusion for long.

I do really enjoy running cams though but will definitely change the way I mount them at eye level(for theft reasons and deer detection reasons) and not visit them any sooner than 3 weeks in the future.
 

CJD3

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
14,630
201
NE Ohio
Like others, I TOO have had the highs and lows of seeing a ball dragger show up on a regular basis (1-4am) and never see him durring a season in day light.
I kept thinking that I would get a chance shot but it never happened.

All-in-all though, the enjoyment I get seeing what shows up from year round running of cameras keeps me switching the cards. Watching the fawns grow through out the year, the ocasional funny shot animals give us at feeding stations or the rare timing of a snapshot worthy of a outdoor mag.
Don't give up Cotty. Better to see a booner at night and hope for a chance encounter durring season than to never see anything but coons and tree rats with no hope at all.
He diden't get that big and last this long being dumb.
 

mrex

*Supporting member*
439
79
This topic has been discussed a lot at my house this fall. The past 2 seasons, I’ve killed 2 bucks that combined net typical score over 300,” and I did it in a combined total of less than 4 hours on stand. Both bucks were woodlands deer. No way to observe them other than trail cameras...and no way in hell I kill them without trail camera recon…and lots of it.

I agree that trail cameras don’t catch everything that’s there, (Plot Watchers do during the daytime). However, nothing puts a spring in my step more than checking a cam and viewing a photo of a buck I’d like to kill…and just as Mike has described, it’s just as deflating to run a camera in an area and not get at least 1 photo of a deer you’d like to hunt.

Like me, my boys put a lot of stock into the reconnaissance gained from trail cameras. My youngest son has a basketball commitment 6 days a week. Sunday is his only day to hunt. The buck he had targeted was killed by another hunter last week. Yesterday, much to my displeasure, he spent the day moving trail cameras into new areas instead of sitting in a tree. I tried to convince him that this time of year, anything can happen anywhere at anytime...you just need to be out there!

I believe that you shouldn't abandon a good place based solely on what the cameras catch. My oldest son was hunting an inside corner a few weeks ago within shooting distance of this scrape.




This buck and 2 others chased does and fought with each other all around him for over an hour…and the camera took one photo of one doe. My son said, “Dad, this was one of the most exciting hunts of my life, but if all we knew was what the camera told us, we would have thought it was a slow morning at that spot.”
 

Gordo

Senior Member
5,515
121
Athens County
Ill say i put alot of stock in what my cams are showing.

If im not getting a picture of a shooter that is killable its hard to go out and assume one is going to show up out of no where.

Ive also had them hinder me before, due to only having 1 or 2 properties i seriously ran cams and hunted on.

This year, i made it a point to stretch my resources out farther and ran cams on more properties that i have access to.

It made a hell of a difference.

I filled my buck tag early, but have kept running cams on 6 different properties.

From those 6 properties, my cameras are telling me that there are 3 mature deer that are 'shooters' and killable right now!

Ive never had that before this year, but i also had never put in the extra time, work, and resources.

Im very fortunate to know plenty of folks who give me free reign of there land, and im learning thats a huge advantage. The more properties, the more cams running, the better your chances.

When you think about it, its pretty simple math, and makes sense.

As for cams picking up and every moment, thats just not possible. But they will tell you whats frequenting the area, and that should be enough.

Hey mike, was this the buck your son was targeting? Rumor has it that the buck was takin from your kneck of the woods, and when i saw the picture i found it hard to believe that you wouldnt know of this deers existence.

----wont let me post the pic, will try again in a minute-------
 

brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
247
I over slept for the first time in weeks today! I'm feeling sick about it. Apparetly when I crawled in bed I simply forgot to set the alarm. You would think after weeks of getting up at 445 everyday I would have just woke up... I DIDN'T. I have a cam up at the stand...and I'm gonna be sick when I check it I'm sure. I HATE TRAIL CAMS!

The picture below was the final straw for me with trailcams. I had hunted this one buck since the day he showed up on the farm (halloween). I spent everyday hunting this deer and managed to see him a time or two. I had spent 12 hours days in very uncomfortable treestands, really put my time in. Sean (BEC) came up to go over to my neighbor's place to just hunt...no recon, no concern, just hunt, maybe shoot a doe. While we were getting our gear loaded my phone buzzed with this picture. Needless to say it was this picture. The stand I had been hunting so hard is ten yards from the camera. We changed our plans. I put Sean in another good stand. 20 minutes after daylight he texted me that he had shot "my" deer. This was about his second trip to the woods that year, and was the third time he'd shot a dandy off my farm in about four hunts. Total time hunting; about three hours.
 

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Although I agree to a certain point if you hunted during the rut any your chances of seeing what you hoped for are as high as ever. Trail cams can be a blessing to show you what's hanging around but remember, if it's set to trigger on movement that's a pretty small area that he HAS to walk into to get caught. Kinda like a coyote stepping into a foot hold trap. Also, just because you get pics during the summer doesn't mean they're still hanging around. We had our best buck caught on cam this year get shot by the neighbor, the week before we made it down to hunt. Talk about suck!! Anyways, it's OHIO......the big bucks are behind every tree from what some say!! Don't get discouraged!
 

brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
Supporting Member
24,834
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Same buck, before he was shot. I had spent 12 hours in the stand (where this pic was taken), the next day I stayed until close to 1pm before my back and lack of sleep (still worked nights and the pizza shop then) sent me home. Shortly after I got home, my dang phone buzzed again... 25 yds, broadside.
 

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brock ratcliff

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Another reason I hate trail cams...
Like the buck I showed above, I spent over 100 hours trying to kill this one. I had him nailed down better than I ever thought possible. Problem was he was nocturnal as heck. I figured I'd put the time in and kill him, even if it was in January. This deer would show himself once the weather turned bad. I hung this cam on a hunch, told Sean I'd get him where I put this cam and got pics of him almost daily. Incidentally, this set up is 100 yards behind a nighbors farm house! I lost count of the number of all day sits I put in this thicket, saw tons of bucks, just not the one I wanted. The day before gun season I woke up to the sound of rain. I was just worn out anyway, and decided I'd stay in bed. I didn't have the cameras sending to my phone that year. About 1100am I headed up to the farm to take down the BECs before gun season. When I pulled the card from the base, I could have cried.

I watched this deer go into a thicket during the bonus gun week and ran him right down Sean's gun barrel.

I HATE TRAIL CAMS!
 

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brock ratcliff

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Here is proof you just never know what is running around. I had just one BEC on the farm back then, but I never got a pic of this buck. I saw this deer on Friday, Nov 3. Shortly after he went by chaing a doe, I killed a 130" 8 .... because 130 is good enough for me! Sean came up to hunt on November 5. A half hour after sunrise he killed "the big one". We never had a single picture of him, and only one sighting.
 

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brock ratcliff

Dignitary Member
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Mike, it isn't a possibility, it's a guarantee! I've never hung a GOOD trail cam in any area and not collected pics of good shooter deer. I will say though, it is a little more difficult to get pics of deer with these cheaper cams. I don't know what you are using of course, but from my limited experience the difference is night and day. I've watched deer walk right by these wildgame cams and not had their pic taken. Heck, with BECs, I've taken pics of deer 50+ yards away when set up properly.

They are there buddy. Use your head, it's always worked before!