When you place a trail cam, what is your reasoning of placing it where you did? Placing trail cams and your thought process of where you are going to put it. Hutch
Few different reasons for me. Sometimes on mineral sites, since they usually get good traffic. Sometimes on known trails away from mineral, to see more that happen to not hit them. Sometimes field corner, to cover a lot of ground and multiple trails coming out instead of one missing the others. Tried a few more recently off food or mineral just in areas with sign or places that "should" produce, figured out some from that and got a few to check in a few weeks to see how they pan out. I'll maybe move one to blind where I'm thinking of hunting early season just to see timing/inventory of what to expect first times out. I plan on leaving two out for the whole season in some deeper/thicker spots to see potential for more time and effort maybe next season for more options and not over hunting other spots. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I do it to get a pattern of life on the deer. From that I can have a pretty good idea of what time they will be there. I never count on the exact day.
I generally just want to get an inventory of the property's deer, gender proportions and fawn condition and how often they are around the property...are they living there or passing through. I generally place in easy/fast access areas in travel corridors near food and bedding but generally closer to the food. Field edges or just off field edges in known staging areas. The same places I like to place mineral because the deer like to hit the mineral going to and coming from the food crops.
Wow, what a great and complex question. If really boiled it down where I'm at, I have 3 basic type of cam sets. Inventory, Huntable, and Scenic. Inventory- When I'm really trying to see what's out there I'll set up some sort of camera trap. This entails a prepped site near a well used trail or funnel and some sort of attractant. For deer, that's usually a mineral site (possibly a mock scrape). For wolves, eagles, and other scavengers, it's usually a carcass. I like these sites to be as easily accessible as possible so I can check them more often with less impact. Do to the nature of these kind of sets, I usually have my cameras on a burst of 3-5 photos with a longer pause between triggers. This allows me to get multiple shots of an individual even if they are only there briefly, yet helps keep my card from filling up too fast if something hangs out in front of the camera for 45 minutes. Huntable- These setups are areas that I have, will, or would like to hunt. In the big woods, that means funnels. When I find and area that looks good and has huntable trees, I like to set up a cam to see if anything is actually passing through the area. Unlike the inventory sites, I try and avoid checking these cameras frequently. That means 3-4 weeks preseason. Once the season starts, I try to only check the cameras when walking by them or hunting the spot. Depending on it's exact location compared to my tree, I may pick up the SD card before I climb to my stand or after the hunt, especially if it's in one of my shooting lanes. These cameras I'll set with 1-3 shot bursts and as short of a trigger time as possible. I'm not worried about a deer hanging out in front of it and filling the card, plus I want to see what's following those does! Scenic- This is honestly my favorite use for trail cams, Wildlife Photography. For this I take much more time composing the shot. Setting the camera for the best aesthetic look (rule of thirds, lighting, etc.). The majority of the time I use some sort of water feature for these sets. Often I'll set the camera, make it take a photo, then check it to see how the composure is. It can be hard to find the right spot, there has to be some sort draw and something interesting to see. Again, that's why I gravitate to water. Log crossings, a hard bottomed section of stream, nesting sights, the base of a tree under a merganser nest, a beaver dams, a drumming log, a rock along a shoreline... all have drawing power for various animals. Setting the camera will vary greatly and require a lot of trial and error. Be warned that water, especially a body of water like a lake or pond, can really mess with your sensor when the sun hits it right. But the payoff can be well worth filtering through blank photos. I often think about setting cams much like I would a treestand or blind. I need to be aware of the cameras "shooting lane", watch how I access the area and how others might see it. I also try and point the camera North to avoid false triggers from the sun when possible. I bet that 80% of my trail camera use now has nothing to do with hunting. There are some great cameras out there that take beautiful photos and I find just as much excitement checking my cameras in the off season at some Scenic site than I do mid season for big bucks.
For us we are all about deer. Some locations we may put in hopes to catch other critters going past, like a creek crossing, but the main focus is still deer. Late winter/early spring we put them over mineral sites and often use shelled corn to help draw them in to get an inventory of bucks that made it through season and for the hopes of keeping them hanging around til their antlers fall off. Spring/Summer it's all about mineral sites and the occasional crossing. Once we get to late Summer we start moving them around to get an idea of where these bucks we have been watching grow are living and moving through. We look for bottlenecks and good paths to put the cameras up on and even corners of fields. Just hoping to get those few pics that help clue you in to where they are bedding and traveling to/from.
