I'm with Pastorjim and Gutoneforme - run em year round but only 3 are concentrated on deer right now and I stay out of main hunting areas and the sanctuaries except one which is for harvest of city deer(some nice dumb bucks)...catch em on the fringes with this much time to go you'll eventually see nearly every deer somewhere around. Move a couple cams in later to pattern but get a lot more cautious about scent and amount of intrusion(# of checks and time of day). I leave my cam at camp alone for 2 weeks at a time minimum from here on out though.
Since most trail cams only have a year or two for some cams of warranty better get the bugs worked out while you can. Setting up cams at mineral sites and checking them once a month is not doing any harm to your hunting 5 of my 6 mineral sites i can drive my truck right up to them and since i am on the farms every day most if not all the deer see my truck or tractor all the time. Maybe if i was not killing deer i see on trailcams I would change things but...not so much. Bright red blob trail cams set up on trails will alter deer activity for sure and i have stopped using them on trails and have stepped up with blackflash cams for hot trails/funnels that the bucks travel every year during the rut and even they need to be set up as scent free on the down wind side of the trails just like my stands. The red stoplight cams i have left end up 9-13 feet up pointed down at the subject and a few still get picked off by deer from time to time so there good to put in areas that i dont hunt much or not at all maybe they will even push a good deer towards my other stand areas.
i have 2 cameras as well,I change around every 2 weeks but I dont leave them out year round, I use them mainly for new property to try and see whats there and to get some kind of pattern , usually put out around April and pull in September
I have my cameras out all year round. The difference being that I almost never check them during the spring/summer unless I am out in the woods for some other reason like putting in a food plot. I hunt a couple small tracts so I try to leave the woods as undisturbed as possible. Another reason is that because I hunt small tracts I rarely see a buck form any kind of pattern. Most of them are cruising from other timber through mine during the rut. And the last and most important reason is that I seem to get poison ivy if I so much as come within 50 yards of any woods.
Ditto! Id much rather have the deer relate "full strength" human scent to me walking around during the off season rather have them get smart to the scent killers/coverups in relation to seeing you while scouting! Just my 2 cents and seems to work well for me!
