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Relocating cams

Do you mostly use the same cam sets to catch old bucks or do you continually mix it up?

  • Yes

    Votes: 7 100.0%

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
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    7
B

Boll Weevil

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The traditional vs. cell cam thread got me thinking about something I might be guilty of. Dad, bro and recently laid out a new plan for cam placement that includes both types of camera: cell in spots that are hard to get into undetected and traditional in locations that we drive by. During the summer we historically ran cams at mineral sites to get a census on fawn recruitment and identifiable bucks; same spots year after year. CWD rules say we can't place mineral anymore but deer still use the existing so we stuck with'em.

Here's the "guilty of" part: setting cams in pretty much the same spots every year (and maybe even the same tree). I'm becoming a believer more and more that over the years older bucks may begin avoiding them. Whether because of latent human scent or the barely audible click, I'm starting to think we almost have to mix it up every once in awhile to keep them from catching on. Oddly enough we KILL a lot of old bucks from the same stands, but we may not have as many pics as we used to.

Do you use the same cam sets year after year and see old bucks or do you continually mix it up?
 
Compromise Shrug GIF


I have a couple I put on established spots from a census perspective and use a couple more that I shift around to varying locations. Actually just ordered another today to add into the mix for that purpose. I won't make a special trip to move them during the season obviously. I just snag em if I'm out that way and feel I'd like to see a new spot for awhile.
 
Yes some spots are just great spots and the mature bucks will continue to visit them. The only constant I have found for catching mature bucks is do not check them often. Basically the longer I stay away the more mature deer photos I get. Mine usually will avoid an area if I have visited for at least a week. Although small and medium bucks may come back the same day
 
I have traditional scrapes I've been camera monitoring for more than 10 years. Keep getting mature bucks there too. In fact, traditional scrapes are the BEST location to get mature bucks. But I won't place a cam where I can't drive an ATV right to the camera and work it from the ATV. For whatever reason, our local deer do not react negatively to where an ATV has driven through the woods, but they DEFINITELY quickly learn to avoid any camera I walk to. And with the ATV approach, I'll get mature bucks on those cams the day I visit them, only hours after.

That said, I move cams not on traditional scrapes A LOT. Running 6-8 cams from the beginning of August to mid-January, I will end up using 40-60 camera locations. I generally visit cameras weekly and will move a couple every check. If I'm not getting a lot of pictures in that location in the last week, I move the camera. I like to be experimental with a couple of cams, always trying new set-ups in new locations.
 
TheLBLman said:
Regarding mature bucks on scrapes:

Black Flash.
Click to expand...
Or don't put a cam there. I would never place a visible flash cam on a traditional scrape. Heck, I don't use ANY visible flash cams (although you can get away with them over food plots and fields)
 
BSK said:
Or don't put a cam there. I would never place a visible flash cam on a traditional scrape. Heck, I don't use ANY visible flash cams (although you can get away with them over food plots and fields)
Click to expand...
Agree.

To be clear,
many new cam users seem to be unaware that "red" or "infrared" cams are actually visible!
You have to pay extra for truly invisible black flash.

I do use some infrared cams on large plots & fields, mainly because I don't care if the visible flash somewhat "herds" the deer to avoid being closely in front of it, and they cost less both at the time of purchase and with better battery life over time.

Deer in fields just don't seem to be spooked by visible infrared like deer at a scrape.
Deer on salt licks are somewhere in between.
Deer on trails are just the most unpredictable, and can quickly start going around a cam,
either due to visible flash, or just seeing the cam.

As I replace older cams, all new ones are true black flash.
 
I've been running the numbers for a client's photo census. The club has "official" cams (all black-flash) they have positioned on feeders to collect census data. However, a few members place their own cameras on these feeders as well. Some are "infra-red" (i.e. visible). I can see the big flash in the pictures I'm looking at from these other cams and the deer often bolt away from them. Because these visible flash cams are on feeders, the deer eventually come back (food is a huge motivator). But if those visible flash cams were on scrapes, many of those spooked deer would never come back to that scrape. There are plenty of other scrapes to visit.
 
To some degree, I just like to know which bucks are on the farm and get some level of confidence just knowing we have old deer to hunt in any given year. I care less about exactly where and more that they're just in the neighborhood...that's enough for me. Every since we went to targeting 5.5+ bucks only, it's gotten more and more challenging to nail down that inventory.

This year we're mixing it more than we have in the recent past. 6 cell cams in the sneaky spots we don't want to go into, 20 or some in the places we can drive to.
 
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Salt/mineral licks in summer - traditional setups. Beans in summer - mix it up, wherever the browse pressure directs me to. Scrapes - mix it up as I follow the buck sign each year. I mainly use backflash but the nearly instant red glow of Reveal X Tactacam IR cams is impressive to say the least. It does not "light up" the area and you better be looking right at it the instant it "blinks" if you plan on seeing it. I changed some batteries after dark recently and walked in front of the camera a few times to fine tune alignment and was very impressed with the brevity of the visible red light as it was taking my pic.
 
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Speaking of infra-red flash . . . . .

One of the first non-white (traditional) flash cams to come to market (many years ago) was the Cuddeback "NO-Flash". It was also one of the earlier digital cams on the commercial marketplace.
BSK and I both got sucker-punched by these.

The flash was very visible and of long duration.
It typically sent deer running!
And the nighttime pics were so blurry they were typically worthless.

What's more, the entire unit was a piece of poorly engineered junk.
The batteries were bad about just falling out, and if they stayed in,
good luck getting 3 weeks of battery life.
Was also HUGE in size and I believe retailed for @ $400 (and that was @ 20 yrs ago!).

Right now is the "good ole days" of trail cams 🙂
They were not so good over 20 yrs ago.
 
First infra-red cam I ever tried I set on video. First video it took contained a half second of a doe in front of the camera until she exploded away from the camera, leaves flying everywhere!
 
TheLBLman said:
Was also HUGE in size and I believe retailed for @ $400 (and that was @ 20 yrs ago!).
Click to expand...
First true trail-camera was the TrailMaster 1500. In the early 90s it cost $1,200! I had one, but it cost more than a couple of truck payments AND a couple of months rent at the time.

TheLBLman said:
Right now is the "good ole days" of trail cams 🙂
They were not so good over 20 yrs ago.
Click to expand...
I still can't believe how good the cams are now. Watching videos in HD with full sound is just amazing. And for $190. Just doesn't get better than that.
 
Mostly use the same cam sets year after year, but do make adjustments and have had to stop the use of mineral sites since CWD rules. One in particular on a scrapeline that I have run a cam on for nearly 20 years.
 
BSK said:
I have traditional scrapes I've been camera monitoring for more than 10 years. Keep getting mature bucks there too. In fact, traditional scrapes are the BEST location to get mature bucks. But I won't place a cam where I can't drive an ATV right to the camera and work it from the ATV. For whatever reason, our local deer do not react negatively to where an ATV has driven through the woods, but they DEFINITELY quickly learn to avoid any camera I walk to. And with the ATV approach, I'll get mature bucks on those cams the day I visit them, only hours after.

That said, I move cams not on traditional scrapes A LOT. Running 6-8 cams from the beginning of August to mid-January, I will end up using 40-60 camera locations. I generally visit cameras weekly and will move a couple every check. If I'm not getting a lot of pictures in that location in the last week, I move the camera. I like to be experimental with a couple of cams, always trying new set-ups in new locations.
Click to expand...

Good idea. I am guessing this has to do with lack of ground scent.
 
BSK said:
I'm assuming so, or the type of ground scent. A vehicle having driven through, no alarm bells go off in the deer's head. Human traffic scent, alarm bells are going off full volume!
Click to expand...

I like this. I know this is why deer avoid my cams after I check them is the scent. I am thinking of installing more cams on T posts that way I can drive right to them. Great idea.
 

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