How often should you check your trail cam

How often do you guys suggest checking your trail cams? I have one up north so I check that when I get up there about once a month or so but the other one is close to home and I can check it often if I needed to. I just don’t want to be out disturbing it too much.

What is your intent for the camera? If your just ‘taking inventory’ of what is out there, I usually let them go 3-4 weeks. If your watching for specific movement or a change in pattern to base hunt timing/locations off, cameras I set up for that during season I will check weekly. But I do hunt in a farmland area so deer are very accustomed to seeing equipment and people near them, so a trip in to check cameras doesn’t bother them like it would in a more remote area.

Thanks for the reply. Right now the cameras are used for inventory to see what’s out there. They are placed by the stands I sit in.

I’d say at this time of year once a month is plenty. When the season gets closer I check them once a week at the farm. Try to be a scent free when you check the one by your stand and if possible going in when you know the deer aren’t there. If it’s near a bedding area wait until they are out feeding, if in a feeding area go in when they are bedding. Checking them while it is raining is even better to cover your scent and sound.

I have several on my 11 acres at home where I hunt that I check once to twice a week, but I am always working or mowing grass in the area so they are used to me being around. But again, I don’t check them even close to the times when I think there deer will be around.

Rubber boots, rubber gloves, maybe spray down with scent killer before going in to check them. The less you disturb the area the better. Heck if you know that is where you are going to hunt regardless of what the cam shows you don’t check it at all until a week before the season.

I check my cams as often as possible while in the “taking inventory” mode. Which for me is from late winter to about mid-September.

The problem for me is that if I let it go any longer than about 2 weeks, the volume of pics to sort through gets to be overwhelming. So I try to do it as often as I can. I’m currently running 5 cams and #6 is ready to deploy, so on the occasions where it’s 1 month between checking cams, I have thousands of pics to sort through.

When I’m down to trying to figure out movement patterns closer to the season, I check every week or even more often if my father can go out and check the cams for me. In a lot of cases, I’ll put up a cam to watch a specific area for travel patterns and find out within a few days that I’m in the wrong place, so it’s better to know this sooner rather than later.

As Sticker says, minimizing scent and disturbance is important at this time. Personally, I like to do this work at mid day when the deer are less likely to be up and on the move and therefore run into me and be spooked, but whatever you can do to minimize disturbance.

Grouse

Thanks for the tips, this is my first year with the cameras so trying to learn as much as possible and avoid as many mistakes as I can. The one camera up north is 3.5hrs away so it doesn’t get checked too often and is more remote. The one around home is behind the inlaws house so the deer are used to people around so that may help minimize spooking them as much going to check it more often.

Stanley wrote:

The one camera up north is 3.5hrs away so it doesn’t get checked too often and is more remote.

For this camera, make sure you have fresh batteries in it when the weather starts getting cooler this fall.

My cameras all chug along just fine on a set of batteries all spring and summer. Then the weather turns cooler in Sept/Oct and WHAM! They start dying ever night it goes near freezing. The battery level indicators aren’t really that accurate because the cameras go from about 80% battery life to stone dead the first time it goes below freezing.

So to avoid a lot of frustration with a camera you can’t check very often, make sure the batteries are fresh. Nothing worse than showing up expecting a card full of great pics and then finding that the cam went dead 2 days after your previous visit. Been there, done that.

Grouse