Right now, if all I had to go on were my trail camera photos, I'd be looking for a different place to hunt come Saturday when I get my second buck tag. Granted, I'm only running 3 camera(2 cellular) but they are telling me: #1 I don't have any mature bucks, #2 the bucks I am getting are very young #3 very few does and #4 most pics I'm getting are still at night. So, would you stick it out and see what comes through as the rut heats up, or would you give it a go on some public ground that you haven't even scouted this year, but know it fairly well? That's my dilemma right now. The corn is still in around my property and it doesn't look like it will be out before next week. Very disappointing trail camera results and rifle season starts Saturday. Normally, I'm pretty confident I'll get some good bucks cruising through this weeks, but here we are Nov. 5th and I'm not seeing any new bucks show up at the scrapes(which I found 6 or 7 of last weekend). I'm just undecided. What would you do?
I agree. Just because you don't get pics of a given buck doesn't mean he's not in your area. All a cam does is show what walked past that specific spot. I've watched deer walk right behind my cams, and I said to myself "I would never have known if I didn't see it first hand". All cams do is give a general picture of what's around. jmo
That's true, but I have one cam setup on a community scrape that has been used for years, and the other is setup on a fresh scrape I found last weekend. I would think that at some point, if I had a big buck in the area he would check out that community scrape. There's a stud of a buck that saw right behind the house and have had a few pics of him, but it's been over 6 weeks since I've gotten a pic of him. I killed the second biggest buck I had on cam back in September. I've always had good bucks using my property. Sometimes they don't show up until late October to early November, but it's getting pretty late as the the seeking / chase phase is getting ready to kick off. Granted I typically have ran more cameras so I got a better picture of what bucks were using my property.
Honestly - it depends. Every property is a little different in terms of size, layout, amount of deer, size of deer, etc. I need some sort of history on the farm to really make that sort of judgement call. Some of my properties I know I'll get every buck in the area on trail camera by this time of the year and I rarely if ever see "bonus bucks" come through. That's knowledge gained over years of hunting there and running lots of cameras. Our deer are home bodies for the most part. So if there isn't a deer I want to chase on that farm I don't hunt it. Now some of my other spots are more prone to picking up different deer throughout the fall and are "pass through" type areas. I'll regularly get a couple deer on camera during that rut that I've never seen before and will likely never see again. So even if I don't have a deer on camera I want to shoot, I'll still have confidence hunting there because I know the chances of a bonus buck showing up are real. If you've had good bucks show up in the past I would stick it out and know it's bound to happen again. If not, then I'd be off to public to take your chances there.
I do get all kinds of big buck pictures on camera after I am am done hunting, seems New Years Eve I get pictures of some big fellas.
Other than knowing a big buck is in the " area" , I put NO faith in pics. Been a problem of mine for years. Get a biggie on film and can't resist the temptation of checking the cam again and again. Actually, I'm running less came these days.
If used effectively and one can interpret what they see, cams are an incredible tool...if not, they will do more harm than good. A picture truly is worth a thousand words. I put 100% of my faith in my trail camera's, pre and post rut. I run my camera's every 5 to 10 day's, if I have nothing of significance on it, its obviously in the wrong location and it gets moved. I used to put camera's out and leave them in one spot, in hopes of a buck wondering by and finding my camera, lol. Now I use my camera's to find buck's. I start running them in June-July locating cores. Once the core is located, I use them to locate the bed within the core. Then position more cameras around key environmental factors in anticipation of shifts in the core. I've killed mature bucks on public land, pre rut, the last two year's, by using camera's to identify the core, camera's to identify the bed, camera's to identify the shifts, then slipping in with the right wind, at the right time and put an arrow in them. Trail camera's are the key factor in a new strategy I'm working on, to kill specific bucks on purpose. I'm learning that it's actually much harder to find a mature buck to hunt....than it is to figure him out, setup on him and kill him once he's been found. BUT, I put no faith in my camera's during the random chaos of November. I will even pull most of my camera's out during this time frame...
I use trail cams to try to identify who is still around from previous years but have to always keep in mind the pics are only showing a small percentage of what may be there....some deer only keep to certain areas where i hunt and had i not observed them personally, i would have never known they were there....camera pics are not all inclusive of what theres.... Sent from my SM-G935R4 using Tapatalk
Depends where. NY you can pretty much take your pictures to the bank. If your not seeing them they aren’t there and there isn’t an abundance of mature bucks that show up looking for does( talking east of i81). There are enough does for each buck that they don’t have to travel looking nearly as much. Hence the reason that the rut is so weak compared to most Midwest states. The exception I seen to this is big woods bucks in the Daks and northern NE, as it’s not uncommon for the to spend spring summer and early fall in areas that devoid of deer and they will move looking for does in a much bigger home area then they spent the previous 6 months in. On the ground I hunt in the Midwest, I would put less stock in photos as it way more likely that mature buck will extend his range a little looking for does. For example on the ground I hunt in KS it’s not uncommon to new bucks that we had zero pictures show up in Nov to our farms that hold does consistently, these deer could have just spent the last 11 months three miles away in another bottom. So it really depends on the location even down to a micro level.
That's the thing that's got me. It's a small property that I have been extremely successful on. I've killed 8 bucks off it since 2009. Only 2 years where I haven't killed a 120" plus buck. One of those years I killed a buck on Public land pretty early in the season and never really hunted after that. So, it has absolutely produced good bucks. Now, every buck I have ever killed here, I have gotten trail camera pictures of prior to killing him. There is a 150+ plus buck that I have gotten picture of and seen over the last 3 season, but I haven't gotten a pic of him for over 6 weeks. I spent all last year chasing him, passing up several other chances. He never showed up for me in daylight, but was all over a property about half mile away. In the last 6 weeks, other than the buck I killed, I haven't gotten a picture of a buck that would go above 125", and none older than 3.5 But, the history says there's good bucks using my place every year in the past. Just not this year for some reason. At least not in front of my cams, and not at the two hottest scrapes I found.
