• Help Support TNDeer:

How high up are your cams?

Although I agree that cameras mounted high reduce how often deer notice and possible avoid a camera, the "high mount pointed doward" set-up has real downsides. This set-up produces a "spot on the ground" camera trigger area. Too often, I get pictures of deer--often critical pictures--that are off in the background. The deer would not have walked through the spot on the ground trigger area, hence the downward angle set-up would have missed that deer.

To reduce camera avoidance, I use black-flash cameras positioned low. I'm sure this set-up produce some camera avoidance, but moving cameras frequently will help with that problem.
 
Most of the mature bucks that I have gotten in my pics were in the background, behind other deer that had actually triggered the camera. Mounting the camera up high is a good way to put a camera over an active scrape. We have gotten some really cool pictures that way.

After watching that video though, I am going to try raising my cameras up to around 6 foot high. That should still enable you to get deer in the background. Also, I think I will utilize video mode more. For some reason, I never use the video mode. I don't why. Thanks for posting this Ferg. Very interesting stuff.
 
I mount all of my cameras about 12 ft high and aim them down at an angle. I have had good success doing that. I agree with the guy in the linked video that using video mode tells you so much more than picture mode. I set all of my cameras to record 10 sec or 30 sec videos. The price of SDHC memory cards has come way down, so I typically use 8GB cards to make sure they don't get full before I have a chance to check them. More recently I have bought a couple of 16GB cards that were on sale online. The 16GB cards allow me to set the cameras on 30sec video mode and leave it for a month or two without worrying about the memory card filling up. Very rarely (maybe once a month) a deer will look up and notice the red IR at night because it stays on for the duration of the video. Usually they will stare at it for a bit and go back to eating or licking the Trophy Rock, but occasionally they will see the red IR and bolt. I have never had a video of a deer noticing the camera during the day because of how high it is. I have gotten some great videos since I started using video mode. One think that surprised me is how aggressive does can be when it comes to licking rights at the Trophy Rock. I got several videos of dominant does aggressively kicking younger does and fawns away from the rock. I also got some great videos of really young bucks lightly sparring with bigger bucks in the early season. It was almost like the bigger bucks were trying to teach the little guys how to fight without hurting them. Anyways, my point is that video mode is awesome and you should definitely think about buying some higher capacity memory cards and running some trail cameras on video mode if you haven't tried it yet.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top