i am looking for a way to mange trail cam pics and videos. i only have 1 cam right now. i'm working on gettin a couple more. the main property is 150 acres have two under 5 i dont hunt much. i have a couple pic of nice bucks. and i want to try and map their movments.
There are no real "movement tracking" programs that I have seen. Having a Master's Degree in GIS and Remote Sensing it eats at me knowing there are no programs on the market for that too. I have a pretty solid one in my mind but I am not a computer programmer so I cant build it. First thing you need is WAY more cameras. Impossible to track their actually movement with just one camera. You can keep track of how often they visit that one spot but outside of that not much can be done. What you could do and what I have done in the past is make an Excel table. I have done it two different ways. Dates shooters showed up during daylight and Times during the day shooter have shown up. I did this using my pictures from the last 4 years. So basically I have an idea of what days during the fall I get my most daylight shooter pictures (best days to hunt) and I also get best time during the day for movement. The time graph I only do spot specific. But the best days graph is for all my spots combined.
. I am working on getting more cams. Thank you. I will do that for the one spot till I get more. Only been at this place for a year. And been hunt for 2 lol.
I use huntforce and really like it. It's not going to map their movements per say but if you get enough cameras going, it will make it easier to track their patterns. I share my account with another guy in the club so between us we have quite a few camera locations set up. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk
I use DeerLab and I like it. They are constantly updating it and adding new features. They respond quickly to feedback. Its a really neat way to track movements and come up with a plan to hunt specific bucks based on the data from the cameras. It also gives advanced weather information from that day based on where your camera was located. I.e moon phase, wind directions/speed, barometric pressure and more.
Here is another program that I have used, similar to DEERLAB. Both are good. I have used a few others in the past, one that I really liked was BUCKSPY but they just seemed to go out of business, no more support and it won't work on my new PC. http://wise.huntersclub.com/index.html
When someone says "track movement" I take it as being able to use past movement to predict future movement. Do any of these programs you guys have actually do that? I am unaware of any that have the power to be able to do that. You would need all the trails mapped out, bedding mapped out, food sources mapped out. Then you would need some kind of a DEM or terrain model and pull in the current and predicted weather for the location. With all those inputs along with previous time and date stamps from pictures you might be able to do a little prediction on future movement if you have the right algorithm written. But you are also dealing with an animal that can have habits and patterns changed pretty easy by external forces. From my understanding of the programs on the market today they help you manage photos more than anything. They might associate some weather info with photos. But I think the original question asked if there was a program that would map out movement not manage pictures.
In my hunting experience, which is 30 years or so, I have noticed deer will use the same paths for the most part. But they are grazing animals, meaning they will wander and graze where the food is. You can pattern them, but to actually predict when and where they will be, I think, is quite impossible. the same deer may show up pretty consistently, but its almost impossible to say he will do the same exact thing every day. For 150 acres, it would take quite a few cameras to catch the same buck consistently on his day to day movements. That would require a lot of time in the woods spreading scent around and the bigger smarter bucks would surly catch on and avoid where you travel the most. Again, they are grazing animals and graze where food is available. Then comes the rut and throws their patterns all out of whack.. lol I found it quite possible to "pattern" bucks, but to track their every move and predict their next move, would be quite a feat. I place a camera at my food plots and basically log the hours they come to feed and the direction they come from and the direction they leave off in. From there I can look on google earth and determine where they are possibly bedding down in and their possible grazing areas. I try not, by any means, go in the areas they bed down. That is a sure way to run the bigger smarter buck out. to recap, I pattern bucks, not really track them. Hope this helped. My .02 cents.
I agree it would take what DVO says. It would take a lot of cameras and oter sources. I have seen research useing telemetry and now GPS collars to track movement. Interesting. Given how deer move in my area I feel these programs give me adequate movement information. I see a buck at a camera and observe weather conditions at that time to give me a better idea of when he might be there again. But deer around here don't always, actually rarely, travel point A to point B consistently. They can move over just slightly and with the cover one might not know they were there. I have gotten lucky a few times and had the same buck on different cams over a mile apart on the same night. But there was no pattern as it never repeated. So I use the camera and programs to scout for a shooter and then move cams around to find a good daytime spot to hunt. The DNR has 80 cams on a grid where I hunt to monitor elk and deer. I wonder if there would be a way to see if they have anything showing a pattern?
