I personally think any time is a good time to run cams. Nice to see big tracks, but nothing beats the pictures and videos. I generally take most of the cams down in the dead of winter from December to the end of March just because it’s too hard on the cams, but the whole fleet goes out at the end of March again.
Traffic has been a little slow since green-up. I think suddenly the deer have lots of tender grass options, so they don’t need to camp out on my plots 10 hours a day.
I haven’t seen any antler stubs yet, but I haven’t unloaded cams for 2 weeks. Next week I’ll be up there and I’m hopeful that I can see some antlers and maybe even a fawn, although this is a little early.
Do you have mineral sites established, SKT? IMO, the best camera station is to have a couple of mineral sites. On my property, the 3 mineral sites get daily traffic from almost every deer on the property, so basically it’s like having your deer punching a time clock every day and you get to snap their picture.
I’m a big believer in mineral for our area. I know there’s a lot of debate as to how much good this does, but really to me it’s clear cut. In areas with high natural mineral concentrations in the soil and water, I would agree it’s of marginal use. In my area where there is basically zero calcium and trace elements and the water is acidic, I really believe that it offers a big advantage. I have bucks dosing themselves with Ca and a dozen trace elements every day from May to August. How can that NOT have an impact when there is no other mineral around.
Get the cams out there and get a shot of that big boy! It’ll be driving you crazy until you do.
Grouse
) haha Really deep and wide, and dew marks to boot.
