Trail Cams – When do you put yours out?

Time for another season! I’m ready for the next trip up to my property to refresh the mineral licks and put the trail cams out. Hopefully get them out there this coming weekend if the weather is good.

I’m curious, when does everybody out there put out their trail cams for the year? Assuming, of course, you’re not running them year-round.

I take mine in for the winter. Since my property can become snowbound due to a long driveway, I don’t want cams out there getting killed by the cold weather. Using standard batteries, my cams seem to last about 45 days in the cold where during the summer I can use one set of batteries from April to about September before I have to replace them.

And to be honest, I don’t really see the point of leaving them out all winter. I’ve been leaving my cameras up until about the 2nd week in December. That allows me to get an idea of which deer made it through the hunting season and generally keep an eye on things. Then I take the cams in before the real cold hits.

When does everyone out there put their cams out?

Grouse

I put the mineral out usually in April sometime…

Then I Don’t come back to put the cameras up until about July. That’s when I can start to decipher what bucks are worth looking at. End of July I can start to tell WHOS WHO.

From April till June, there isnt a ton for me to learn vs. the effort of working the cameras.

I really enjoy running them from July through January.

At home I leave the cams out all year because it’s right there and I can check them often. Mostly just want to see what’s using the plots through the winter and catch any yotes that might be around.

At the farm I get them out on my first spring trip, end of Feb or early March. I then run them until that last weekend of muzzy.

I usually hold off till about early/mid July and set them in high percentage areas catching them going out to feed (agricultural area). By that time the bucks are getting enough growth I can start taking inventory and getting an idea for what is out there. About labor day I’ll start moving some around to help monitor for sign of changing patterns as fall progresses. Most of them get pulled right before gun season so they don’t wander off with any ‘lost’ hunters who don’t understand what a line fence means, then back out on winter travel routes till early feb. Or so to assess what survived.

If you have any wild apples, these are dynamite on our property for getting pics of just about every deer in the area. Every time that camera gets 2-3 times the pictures of all the other cameras.

From a strictly “buck watching” point of view, I agree it doesn’t make sense until the early summer.

But personally, I can’t resist! What I found out about trail cams is that I just plain find it fun and entertaining to see what’s walking around out there. It’s almost become a hobby in itself. Just last year in addition to deer, I caught bears, coyotes, bobcats, coons, what looks like a mink or otter, turkey, and several other “what the…” pics.

I’ve found it especially fun to see when the fawns first show up. And then I’m holding my breath with every chip pull hoping that they KEEP showing up. Last year I was almost distraught when a doe and fawn, Mama and JR were turning up regularly and then they suddenly didn’t show up for over a week, but I was getting pictures of what I thought was Mama. Turned out it must have been a different doe. Whew! JR, I thought we lost ya.

Because my property is landlocked, so far I haven’t caught any trespassers, but I’ll have a camera watching the “camp” starting this year just to keep an eye on anyone coming and going.

Grouse

I agree Grouse, it’s as addicting as food plotting. I can’t wait to get up early saturday morning and go collect the cards to see what has happened the last week.

It’s also a good way to do a population count on your property. See how healthy the does and fawns are, find out if the does carried twins or just singles to determine how the winter was on them. Lots and lots of good uses for spring and summer pictures.

Spring turkey season is coming up and you can bet I will have cams located to find and track that big long beard.

24/7/365 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Turkeys Ducks Geese Bobcats ………..

I’m going to start putting some out this weekend when I set some salt blocks out.

I will be putting out a few in NE this weekend on a scouting trip. Will then change out in a couple weeks but might run one or two for the summer there.

As long as I was up on a recon trip to the property to look at the new food plots, I put my cameras out last Saturday and refreshed all the mineral sites with new powder mineral mixes and mineral blocks.

I’m running a little comparison, the advice I’ve heard is to have cameras that face straight north or straight south to avoid the camera facing directly into the sun when it’s at low angles.

So I have one cam facing north on mineral lick #1 and the camera on mineral lick #2 is facing straight south. Will be interesting to compare.

I put a third camera on the driveway coming in, it’s off to the side so it’ll be interesting to see what’s walking (or driving) down the driveway.

I think I might add a couple more cameras to the fleet this year.

Now that I’ve got a good system for spooling pictures directly off the camera and onto my smartphone, it’s a lot easier than having to have a pile of chips that got swapped out with each visit. Unloading pictures now just involves plugging in the card reader to the smartphone and copying off the pics to the phone and then putting the card right back into the camera. Ain’t technology wonderful?

Grouse

When possible I have tried to avoid even facing them south simply because the sun travels the southern sky. Mid summer the sun gets pretty high so it should not affect them, but spring and fall it is lower on the horizon and may affect them. By no means am I saying all my cams face north, but when possible I face them north. You can also adjust the direction by when you expect traffic in the area. Meaning, if they visit the area in the evening only, face it anyway but west, opposite for morning visited spots.