00:00:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to the White Tail Woods, presented by first Light, creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First Light Go Farther, stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast.
00:00:22
Speaker 3: This week on the show, I’m joined by Dan Johnson to discuss how our trail camera strategies have evolved over the last fifteen years and where exactly we’ve landed now today. All right, welcome back to another episode of the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to you by Moultrie.
00:00:46
Speaker 2: This week we’re talking trailcams.
00:00:48
Speaker 3: I think, at least in my life, the month of July has always signified the beginning.
00:00:53
Speaker 2: Of cameras really being a part of just that kickoff of the new season.
00:00:59
Speaker 3: July is when I feel you can really tell what a buck’s going to be. The velvet’s really picking up steam. You want to get cameras out, you want to get out there and looking at bean fields or alfalfa fields. It’s all just starting to happen. And so with that mind, I wanted to kick off a series of episodes here over the next couple weeks. Diving more deeply into trail cameras, and I wanted to start with this conversation with my buddy Dan by looking backwards a little bit and looking at how both Dan Johnson and I have used trail cameras over the last fifteen to twenty years since the two of us started riffing on this stuff publicly and together, and exploring what we’ve learned along the way, what we found worked, what didn’t work, What kinds of things do we throw to the wayside, what do we double down on, and now where do we stand today, what tactics and strategies are we actually using still now in twenty twenty six, especially as the technology and cameras has changed so much. Right fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, it was standard cameras. Now it’s almost impossible not to be using a cell camera, and in some ways cellcams seem to be swallowing the deer hunting world, and that’s something that Dan and I want to try to make sense of a little bit too in this episode. So we’re going to discuss our summer camera strategies, everything from when we put them out to where we put them out, to why we put them out and then we move into in season camera used too, thinking through our goals, our placement strategies, the actual settings we use in the setups that we create. And then also how do we think about cell cams and the questions that they can or cannot answer and maybe should or should not answer. I think that’s an important part of this conversation too. So, whether you are new to deer hunting and trial cameras or have been doing this for decades just like Dan and I, I’m hoping this will be helpful and interesting to you. So, like I mentioned, Dan Johnson is the guest today. He is a longtime member of the Wired Hunt family. He helped co host for some early years of the podcast. He runs the nine Finger Chronicles show and plenty of other amazing work over there in his podcast networks. So check it out and tune in to the rest of this chat or an interesting conversation about trail cameras. Then and now, all right with me on the line is mister Dan Johnson.
00:03:16
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show, buddy.
00:03:18
Speaker 4: It’s been a while, mister Kenyon.
00:03:20
Speaker 2: I’m glad we’re a while. I’m glad we’re doing it.
00:03:23
Speaker 5: I like how every once in a while, you gotta slum it. You gotta call me up and slum it a little bit.
00:03:30
Speaker 3: No, No, it’s like, well, that’s a joke I can’t make.
00:03:34
Speaker 2: It’s just good. It’s just really good. As what I’ll say.
00:03:39
Speaker 6: It’s like it’s like you meet someone you went to high school with that but you never hung out with at like a Walmart or a Target or something, and you you make eye contact with each other, you don’t want to have the conversation, and so now it’s just just forced awkward conversation where it’s like.
00:03:56
Speaker 4: Hey, what are you up to?
00:03:57
Speaker 3: Oh?
00:03:57
Speaker 4: Nothing, just got out of rehab.
00:03:59
Speaker 2: It’s like, oh cool, did you just get out of rehabs?
00:04:03
Speaker 4: No?
00:04:04
Speaker 2: Nope, No, how in all seriousness, how are you?
00:04:08
Speaker 4: I’m good, dude, I’m good. How are you?
00:04:10
Speaker 2: Same?
00:04:11
Speaker 3: Just just the the chaos of summer and kids and other stuff going on in life right now. I don’t I don’t have all the sport craziness that sounds like you have, but a lot of fishing business with my kids right now.
00:04:25
Speaker 5: Yeah, that’s one thing that we have not been able to do a lot of this year. Between my last year, I felt like we almost we almost had like too much time sitting around and we’re just like, hey, you want to go hop over to my you know, my neighbor down the street is her dad owns a piece of property outside of town that has a pond on it.
00:04:49
Speaker 4: So we go fishing their blue gills and bass and whatnot.
00:04:52
Speaker 5: And just you know, go out there for about forty five minutes throw you know, are they biting or not? Then leave, come back home after all the sports are done. But this year I do between traveling for my daughter’s uh you know, wrestling, like we were in Indiana a couple of weeks ago for that, and then both boys are in travel baseball right now. It’s just it’s stupid, how like busy we are.
00:05:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I’m in this this little bit of a sweet spot where we’re busy with stuff, but not all the crazy sports stuff yet.
00:05:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:05:25
Speaker 3: So yeah, the boys their goal when summer break started was to fish every day a summer break, and we haven’t quite hit it, but it’s been pretty close.
00:05:34
Speaker 5: Yeah, that’s a hefty one, but that’s the kind of goal where you’re like, let’s see.
00:05:38
Speaker 4: If we can do it, you know like that. Yeah, I’m on board.
00:05:41
Speaker 2: I’m on board. So it’s been good.
00:05:43
Speaker 3: They’ve they’ve been getting after it’s been fun. Cult the youngest has never been quite as obsessed with all the hunting and fishing stuff as ever it has been. Yeah, and this year it’s like you can see the lights starting to turn on more and more and he’s like on his own, excited to be doing it, and so doing tons of just getting their tackle boxes out in the living room, taking everything out, looking at everything. They’re testing out lures in the bathtub. They’re they’re bartering and trading between each other.
00:06:12
Speaker 2: It’s hilarious.
00:06:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, yep.
00:06:14
Speaker 5: So my oldest boy, he’s the outdoorsman of all the all the kids, and he’s done the same thing. He also tries because my father in law is a really hardcore fisherman and he’s always like, hey, Grandpa, what are you doing?
00:06:33
Speaker 4: You want to come hang out?
00:06:34
Speaker 5: And what that is is it’s code for take me to a bait shop so I can buy tackle and hooks and all that stuff. So he’s he’s working the system.
00:06:44
Speaker 2: Smart kid.
00:06:45
Speaker 4: Yep, yep.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: Well that’s uh.
00:06:48
Speaker 3: I feel like this is all kind of in a certain way relevant to what I wanted to talk to you about. Mostly today, which is something that used to consume almost all of my summer and now maybe not as much as it’s different now, and that being trail cameras. And so when I start thinking about how my summer trail camera kind of routine has changed over the years, I got to think and like, man, a lot has changed about how I think about cameras, how I use cameras, like like even like the literal specific settings I use on my cameras and where I place them, and everything from goals to actual application has changed a ton. Despite the fact that we talk about, you know, trail cameras as being this like ubiquitous thing that everybody uses and that is such a huge part of everybody’s strategy, I do feel like there’s been a lot of change within that. And you and I have been talking about this together for you know, around fifteen years now or almost that. So I got to think, and maybe you and I should talk that through for ourselves. You know, have how our trail cameras he’s evolved over time? Where do we start? Where are we now?
00:08:04
Speaker 2: What are those lessons we’ve learned?
00:08:05
Speaker 3: And I think that might be a useful thing because a lot of people just look at it like it as an assumed like, oh yeah, you just have to do it this way, or they started using it twenty years ago or fifteen years ago in a certain way and they’re still kind of doing the same thing because that’s what was told to them then.
00:08:19
Speaker 2: So that’s that’s my idea.
00:08:20
Speaker 3: You and I have been we’ve been jarring about this for approaching two decades. What’s different now? Do you feel like there’s much difference when you look back on your trail camera evolution? Does it feel like you’re in a different place now? I?
00:08:34
Speaker 5: Well, definitely, dude. Turkey season used to be for me, go out turkey hunt, don’t mineral put up trail cameras, and then the entire spring. I can remember years when I was watching deer sprout nubs, you know what I mean, And even to the point where maybe even late shed season, I would get a camera out and just throw it on an inside owner of a field to see what was going on, right, and you’d see the just the nubs grow, or to document when it was time for me to go out and start shed hunting seriously, right, And so back then it was a three one hundred and sixty five day deal, but now it’s not even close.
00:09:20
Speaker 4: Like I have right outside my door.
00:09:23
Speaker 5: In here, I have this gear room and it has all of my trail cameras sitting in a box right now. Not all of them, but majority of them are sitting in there. I have a couple out in the woods that are out of batteries right now, and I need to go and you know, do the thing. But I feel like not to get ahead of myself here, but like there was a tipping point for me, and the tipping point was when I needed to become more efficient in my time because of kids and family and other responsibilities. And then when you learn, for like the summertime, right the summertime, look at all these awesome velvet bucks on my farm. Look at all of them, Oh my god, look at this mineral site, and they’re just crushing this mineral site. And then the velvet comes off and none of those deer are around anymore.
00:10:12
Speaker 4: There’s the shift.
00:10:14
Speaker 5: And I think when me and you started talking about identifying bucks coming off of their summer patterns and going into their fall routines and breaking up bachelor groups, that’s when I was like, velvet pictures are awesome, but they don’t mean anything to me anymore, as like back in the day, it’s like, oh, this buck’s in the area September hits, No he’s not. And now it’s just try to get them out. So I get a couple of cool velvet picks. I want to document, you know what, deer in the area, just because it’s kind of cool. Honestly, I have a trail camera sponsorship too, so I got like, I got to check some of those dumb boxes.
00:10:56
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
00:10:58
Speaker 5: But it’s all about getting them set up for like hardhorns, and that’s kind of what that’s kind of where I’m at right now, is just like getting them out do a little anyway.
00:11:11
Speaker 4: That’s where I’m at. That’s where I’m at.
00:11:13
Speaker 3: Well, that’s a good setup because the first thing I did want to explore was was kind of summer time first, because I was like, you like, I looked at summer trail camera season as this massive chunk of the year and it was a really important part of that year. And I do feel differently about it now, not maybe not maybe entirely. It’s not entirely irrelevant, but it’s substantially less critical than I used to think of it, I would.
00:11:43
Speaker 2: I would say, like.
00:11:45
Speaker 3: Back in the day, my summer trail camera goals were very similar to you know what I thought My goals were with cameras throughout the whole rest of the season too, which is like, tell me what bucks are here, tell me how good this area is, tell me how big the deer are, tell me what areas I need to be hunting, tell me everything is what I thought it was going to tell me. And then you know, as you alluded, I eventually learned that, you know, the shift happens so much changes between summer and fall, so many you know, the individual patterns, the regions and the property that you use, all of that stuff can be so different. Ye. That said, though, I do still find some value in it today, and I think like my goals now are just kind of establishing a vibe almost, And I guess twofold one is like a vibe of a place. So if I’m in a new area, the summer cameras will give me a little bit of a possible preview of what’s to come, like just a sense of what might be possible out here. There’s some properties that I’ve found. I’m sure you’ve seen right where there might be different deer in the summer and then different deer in the fall, but there will be some bucks there, right, It’s not like there’s zero and then a bunch. So, yeah, buck X that’s here now, that might be a mile away in the future.
00:13:07
Speaker 2: I think it still tells you something about the region.
00:13:09
Speaker 3: If you know it, Oh, there’s a bunch of five year olds in here in the summer, that probably means that the rest of the area has something like that. I just don’t get too hung up on any one particular buck. I feel like, now, you know, something like fifty or sixty percent of the bucks that I get on camera in the summer probably though, are still around. So there is maybe you know, maybe half for a little bit more than half, that are going to be around and so there is value in that at least knowing like, hey, this buck is these bucks could be around here, especially if it’s a buck you know from previous years. That’s when it does become useful, right because you can say, oh, yeah, I know this buck’s been around here in the fall in the past. Now I can confirm he’s alive. Now all of a sudden, you’ve got a month or two head start to start thinking about Okay, I know he’s back. Now what do I know from the last year or the year before?
00:14:01
Speaker 5: Right, I have a specific example about that. I have a new farm. It’s new word. This is only like my fifth year hunting. It coming up this year, and there’s been a big ten pointer who has showed up the last three years. So he’s on there right now. My guess is we found the neighbor found a shed, shared a picture of him, a picture of the shed with me. I knew it’s the same buck. So he made it through March all right. Last two years, the last two years he has showed up on or in the summer on the mineral sites. Big giant buck disappears. And so if I don’t have my cameras out in the summertime, I don’t know about this buck. First off, I just don’t know about him. I go and I put my trail cameras out on the farm. Let’s just say October first, he shows up three different times throughout between the last week of October and the second week of November. This buck has some kind of routine that I haven’t figured out, and he’s coming in like once every seven days to this one do betting area and he comes in I’m gonna guess like once every seven days on a northwest wind, And so I set up a tree stand for that northwest wind this March before the knee surgery. And now what does that summer picture tell tell me? It tells me that he’s alive and I have an opportunity at this buck within this timeframe.
00:15:44
Speaker 2: Which is pretty substantial to know.
00:15:46
Speaker 5: That exactly and specific wind directions based off of what other pictures are telling me. So I basically gather all that intel and I say, okay, a is this the only buck that I want? If it is, then why am I hunting? And that this betting area or here at all until that timeframe hits? Okay, if that is my number one target buck, if I’m a buck specific hunter, I’m not going to go try to kill that buck in early October at all, or during the mid October October or even I mean maybe late October or not late October, late November or December or whatever the case is. But my goal then is those three weeks and finding the right opportunity for those that three week period. But if I don’t have a summer picture, I don’t know if he’s alive, and then at that point I’m going in and I’m guessing if he’s alive or not.
00:16:44
Speaker 3: So well, that makes a big difference. If you can confirm he’s alive in July. Right now, all of a sudden, you can use your weekends in July or August when you maybe have a little bit of free time prior to the season to do that work to prepare for it. If you didn’t have that month to a window of possible work, now you’re not finding out till October or November, and you’re just limited a little bit more limited in what you can do in that changes thing. So I do I do really think there’s value in that summer kind of verification like oh, yeah, he’s here, or he’s not, or this type of deer could be here. You know, it’s like a temperature check on a lot of things. That said, though, I probably don’t put out as many cameras that I used to in the summer. I definitely don’t obsess over them as much as I did in the summer, and then I definitely have changed, you know, actually the setup itself. I used to and this is a little bit because of just like changes and regulations. But I used to do the trophy rock or dump some mineral or dump corn or whatever just in a random place along a field and do a bunch of that and then get a bunch of pictures of everything and be really excited, you know, for that reason. And then you know, in my home state Michigan, that just became illegal, so we couldn’t do that, and that that just then forced me to take a different approach, which now I’ve just ended up taking that approach everywhere. To keep it simple, I guess, and to stick with kind of how I do things. So my typical summer camera approach now is to have you know, a handful of cameras on any property or region couple in the summer, and they’re going to be focused on either like the best food, the best water, or some other thing that it’s like that concentrator of summer activity. So that’s like the inside corner of a soybean field, or that’s a little watering hole. And then the one other thing I would just say is that I was very indiscriminate, you know, fifteen years ago, would that camera placement and just like pick a good looking tree on a field edge and go with it.
00:18:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, when now it’s.
00:18:54
Speaker 3: Much more detail oriented and like trying to find this just like hunting. Like I’m trying to find the spot within the spot. If I want to be on a bean field, because I know they want to feed on those beans a lot in the summer. I’m trying to find what is the best concentration of deer movement on this soybean field going to be? So is it the inside corner, Well, not just the inside corner, but then that’s also put it closest to that down portion of the barbed wire fence that goes around it. That’s going to concentrate deer a little bit more. And then oh, by the way, I’m also going to try to get this licking branch in the frame too. I think that’s because if you’re not using an attractant or mineral to get deer to come to you, you have to really work hard to find the absolute best spot that they’re going to pass through naturally to get that data point. So I’ve just put a lot more time into getting that set up right. I don’t put as many cameras up, I don’t spend as much time, I don’t buy money or use money to buy any of these attractives. But I do put more time into those handful of cameras per place, and I do think that has helped in the absence of the mineral or a tract. And I definitely don’t get as many pictures as as I would have gotten that stuff. You can’t deny it gets a.
00:20:07
Speaker 4: Lot of pictures, yeah, absolutely, but.
00:20:10
Speaker 2: It’s it’s still made it.
00:20:12
Speaker 3: I can still get useful information this summer without it as it guess what I’m getting on.
00:20:16
Speaker 5: And so for me, you know, like the example of the bean field right, here’s just what you’ve learned about deer movement over the years. They’re coming out at the lowest let’s say you meet a field, a field edge against a timber edge, right, a very hard transition. They’re coming out more than likely at the lowest topographical point in that field, right. And so I look at something like that and I go, all right, good place for a trail camera right here. And if there’s not a tree there or a quote unquote trail camera location, I’m making a trail camera location. Whether it’s with a fence post or I’m chopping down branches or you know, Obviously there are certain rules and regulations on public lands of what you can and can’t do. But on my farms, I’m making it happen. Getting I’m bringing a weed eater out there, weed eating, I’m weed eating grass. I’m even springing some chemical to kill vegetation in certain instances to get like enough of an angle on that particular fence crossing or that trail, or that low point pinch point around a pond dam or I mean, the list goes on, and so I’m always I’ll force the trail camera location if I need to.
00:21:39
Speaker 3: Well, I think, and just as important as the idea of like forcing it is just better. Let’s just be more like if we’re gonna do it, it just seems like we do it, better do it the right way, because right, how many times have have both of us put up a camera somewhere not thinking about all the details, and then we got back two months later check the camera and there was six weeks of grass covering the camera right, waving back and forth, or a sunset and sunrise, or you know, one of the two blinding out the picture all the time, or just so many different things that if you’re just rushing the process or just slapping things up and kind of like a shotgun approach style that inevitably you’re going to get a lower quality return on those efforts. So I think that kind of summarizes a lot. It’s it’s it’s efficiency as you mentioned earlier, and just doing maybe doing less, but doing it better and ending up getting more positive.
00:22:35
Speaker 2: Results because of that.
00:22:37
Speaker 4: Yep, absolutely.
00:22:40
Speaker 3: Has your timing it all changed. I would say that I used to be like you and like, you know, I guess you did mention this the nubbins. I’d have them out there for Nubbins and on and I probably if all things are equal, I’ll you know, end of July is kind of a sweet spot to get them out, but it’s also when you can and make the time to go to this place or that place and put a camera up. But yeah, you know, as long as they’re up in August, I’m pretty happy. That’s that time when I’m really thinking, like it’s gonna tell me what I want to know.
00:23:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don’t know why I do this to myself. I do it with the actual hunting season where I’m like, you know what, Mark, I’m gonna hunt more October early October for doze this year and I don’t, And then I say to myself, you know what, I’m gonna get my trail cameras out a month earlier this year just to see what’s going, and I don’t. And then I just like, Okay, guess what I’m gonna I’m gonna hunt late October this year.
00:23:35
Speaker 4: Nope, you’re not.
00:23:36
Speaker 5: And it’s just like I just tell myself, I’m gonna do a better job or or spend more time doing this, and then instead I choose the family or other activities over that because trail cameras have told me or showed me, excuse me, showed me what’s on my farm.
00:24:01
Speaker 4: But like, how do I how do I say this? My success necessarily hasn’t gone up or down because of a trail camera, you know what I mean? Like, I’ll use let me, let me find a year here.
00:24:19
Speaker 5: Two thousand and twenty, twenty twenty Great deer on trail camera. Blah blah blah terrain feature during the rout, buck shows up. One hundred and fifty inch buck shows up ish late high forties, low fifties shows up. I shoot him, right. I had no clue about this buck. I don’t know where he came from. But I shot him because he was a you know, a four and a half year old buck, and I had and trail cameras didn’t play a single role in that particular buck.
00:24:54
Speaker 4: And so these things start to click for me. And now maybe I’ve talked to you about this. Maybe I don’t like dude.
00:25:05
Speaker 5: I don’t give a shit what a buck is doing at all throughout the year anymore. I care about one thing. And even some of my trail camera setups.
00:25:15
Speaker 4: Are this way.
00:25:17
Speaker 5: I want a dough group on camera as much as possible.
00:25:34
Speaker 4: Here’s the way I look at it.
00:25:36
Speaker 5: If I have a dough group on my trail camera walking to or from a place in a given twenty four hour period, guess what’s gonna happen The closer you get to the breeding season, bucks are going to be in that area as well. That’s the same exact thing with my tree stand locations. Now, my goal every single hunt is to have a dough within the shooting range of me. And that’s how I set everything up now is I’m I am heavily dough focused.
00:26:07
Speaker 3: So explain to me how that. Then let’s let’s move into the season. We’ll skip past a little bit of my summer thoughts there and just move into the season. When it comes to your trail camera setups for the actual fall, Yeah, given what you just said, given given the fact you’re so dough focused, where are you putting these cameras how much?
00:26:27
Speaker 2: And then also how are you thinking about the camera activity throughout the season?
00:26:31
Speaker 5: Given that, and I will I will start in the summertime, I and I’m going to use a mock scrape.
00:26:36
Speaker 2: I have.
00:26:38
Speaker 5: It’s right outside of a betting area on a pasture, and it the the deer come out of their betting area, they come into this pasture and in this pasture is like sprinkled clover. I don’t I don’t think anybody necessarily planted it there. It’s just naturally grows there. And so I put a mock scrape there. And so throughout the course of the summer even I’ll pair that with a trail camera. And there’s no attract in some other than the preorbital gel that I spread on the rope. And dude, I got little fawn heads poking up at the bottom of the picture. I got does I got bucks all year round coming to this, this particular mock scrape and so that tells me that they’re still using that area, and they’re coming out of this bedding area and they’re feeding, and then they’re going into either a different farm or they’re cresting the hill to go to a destination egg food source on the opposite side of this big ridge that’s in this pasture.
00:27:46
Speaker 4: And so.
00:27:48
Speaker 5: That’s where it starts, because it tells me that’s I mean, let’s how how scientific do you want to be if a deer, if a trail camera, a cell cam, send you send you send you a picture of a deer, that means there’s deer in the area, right, Like, how much more complicated does it need to be?
00:28:09
Speaker 4: It doesn’t.
00:28:11
Speaker 3: But Dan, I remember for many years the Dan Johnson trail cameras everwhere connect the dots on the map approach that we used to talk about.
00:28:20
Speaker 2: What happened to that?
00:28:21
Speaker 4: Yeah? I still use it, right because because.
00:28:27
Speaker 5: It’s just it has evolved because you you put the dots, you connect the dots, you find the terrain feature, and then guess what goes through that terrain feature every day?
00:28:39
Speaker 4: The does, right? Yeah, And I had I had a really good conversation with a guy about this. A couple of weeks ago about like.
00:28:49
Speaker 5: How important it is to figure like figure the does out and like and that these does seem to absorb. Okay, for example, bachelor group of bucks, they’re all velvet. Trail cameras are showing you this bachelor group coming up. They go hardhorn. One starts to be missing. The next week, another one’s missing the next week, They’re all gone. But where is the consistency. The consistency is for some reason, does seem to absorb time of year changes, food source changes. They are coming back to this. I don’t know about you, but they’re coming back to the same betting areas.
00:29:32
Speaker 2: All the time.
00:29:33
Speaker 5: If you want to find yeah, you want to find consistency, go find a mature dough coming back to the same betting area over and over and over, and not just one time of year, all year long. Right, And when you can find those spots, you leave them alone, or you throw a trail camera in there, you leave them alone. And then when I mean, let’s let’s not kid ourselves. The technology today can tell you when you need to up in there.
00:30:01
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, let’s let’s dive into that a little bit further, because that has been one of the major I mean, probably the biggest change in trail cameras, right since we really dove into this deep over the last twenty years when the cell camera stuff happened.
00:30:16
Speaker 4: Yep.
00:30:16
Speaker 2: That’s changed things in a massive way.
00:30:18
Speaker 4: Yep.
00:30:22
Speaker 3: And I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on it, both how it impacts the experience and how it impacts actual success.
00:30:33
Speaker 2: I think.
00:30:36
Speaker 3: That I would generally say, and I’m on the fence about this, but I think, just by a little bit, I think it has made trail camera use less fun.
00:30:45
Speaker 4: I’m gonna be a hot take, No, I agree.
00:30:48
Speaker 2: So yeah, tell me tell me why you think that. I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you money.
00:30:52
Speaker 4: Yep, yep.
00:30:52
Speaker 5: Okay, two years ago, you know, cellular trail cameras have a stigma with them, just like any type of drone or any type of major technology, pizza technology versus woodsmanship and all that stuff. And so the thing, Iowa had passed a law that says trail cameras cannot aid in the or cellular devices cannot.
00:31:27
Speaker 4: Aid in the.
00:31:32
Speaker 5: I don’t know the aid of taking wild game. Okay, So that means if I’m on a farm. What does that mean? Again, it’s a gray law.
00:31:41
Speaker 4: Is it one hour?
00:31:43
Speaker 5: Is it two hours? Is it twenty four hours? Is it immediately? Like?
00:31:47
Speaker 4: There’s no wording around it.
00:31:50
Speaker 5: It just that’s all it says, is that cellular trail cameras cannot aid in the or cellular devices.
00:31:57
Speaker 4: And so.
00:31:59
Speaker 5: I was just like messing around and I forgot to shut off, shut that portion of it off on my phone, because you can go into your app and shut it off so that you’re only receiving pictures or change the settings to where you’re only receiving pictures at like seven pm or something like that. Anyway, I had a trail camera down in a pinch point. It was probably two hundred and fifty yards away from the tree stand that I was in, and a two year old ninety inch buck walks in front of it. I just so happened to be on my phone and I said, it’s time to.
00:32:35
Speaker 4: Test some theories.
00:32:37
Speaker 5: Right, rattle guess who shows up within like five minutes.
00:32:43
Speaker 4: Right. If that trail camera wasn’t.
00:32:45
Speaker 2: There, would I have rattled, Oh, you would not have.
00:32:49
Speaker 5: No, So that aided that trail camera aided in that buck walking.
00:32:55
Speaker 4: In front of me.
00:32:56
Speaker 5: Now he wasn’t what I was wanting to shoot, and more than likely are more than often not. I’m not getting trail camera pictures of the deer coming and going out of the spots because usually, to be honest with you, the trail camera is in the spot that I’m in. Meaning it’s like some I have some trail cameras that are at the base of my tree that I’m in, right, And so.
00:33:25
Speaker 4: I don’t know what the law is there. Now.
00:33:29
Speaker 5: What I will say is that when that buck showed up, I had some thoughts going in my head of like what does that mean?
00:33:38
Speaker 4: Right? Like if it was a booner that showed up and I shot it, what real strategy could I have said that I used in that killing of that animal. I don’t know.
00:33:53
Speaker 5: There’s a lot of work putting that tree stand in throughout the year and moving it, you know, ten yards another fifteen yards to find the spot within the spot a great pinch point. Maybe that two year old would have came through, or that buck would have came through at a different time or later anyway, right, because it was like natural dear movement would come by this pinch point, and maybe he would have come through anyway. But I rattled and he came in and so it just felt it just for me, it felt really weird to do that, and so I’ve kind of made it a personal thing to where I’m adjusting my settings on my trail cameras or putting my trail cameras in location. Because the one rule about it about it is that I talked to a DNR officer about was if you can see the trail camera, then it does not aid in.
00:35:00
Speaker 4: It does not aid in the take of wild game.
00:35:04
Speaker 5: If it sends you a picture while you’re in the tree and you can see it, well, the deer is already there anyway. So I try to have my tree stands. Now this isn’t the case for everything, but my tree stands and my trail cameras in the same spot. Like so when in the middle of the night, if it sends me one, it’s on a trail near near near a tree stand, if that makes sense.
00:35:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s interesting.
00:35:30
Speaker 3: I’ve definitely felt the same like ickness with the idea of that real time stuff. Yeah, so I’ve set I almost always if the camera has the ability to do like just once a day transmission, that’s what I do. The twenty four hour delay keeps me feeling less icky. But I also feel like there’s just like a a fun factor that used to be there with cameras when you had to actually wait for weeks or months on end, and then you get to go there and pull that card and then get back to your truck or the house of the cabin or the restaurant and you sit down with your buddies and you click through those pictures on the on the computer. That was like Christmas morning. That was one of the most fun parts of every single the of the whole hunting season. Every time you have to pull cards and look at them. That was an absolute blast. And I just don’t think that the daily looking through my phone ever really matches that.
00:36:31
Speaker 4: It was hard. Yeah.
00:36:33
Speaker 5: I don’t know about you, but what happens now is I’ll get a buck come through a pinch point I don’t know, five out of ten days, right, fifty percent of the time, and I got him locked in and I’m.
00:36:48
Speaker 4: Like, Okay.
00:36:49
Speaker 5: Then you go and hunt that stand and he doesn’t show up, and now you’re disappointed for some reason and you’re like, well, what’s going on, what’s happening? And now you’re finding excuses of why this buck didn’t come through, dude, And how many years did I hunt before I even ran trail cameras And I didn’t have that feeling, right, it was just a deer shows up and you get jacked about it. And so now you have all of this, like it’s the the anticipation is gone and it’s I don’t know, it’s been replaced with disappointment. Maybe he’s the word, or maybe there’s another, a different word.
00:37:31
Speaker 2: Where some more expectations.
00:37:34
Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s like I think when you yeah, yeah, this buck has been here for this number of days and oh, by the way, the rut maybe he found a hot dough doesn’t have anything to do with it. It’s hey, this buck’s.
00:37:46
Speaker 5: Come through here all the time, and now he’s not coming here. He must be dead or he you know, Like it’s it’s like hunting used to be playing on their schedule, and now it’s like we want the deer to cooperate.
00:38:00
Speaker 4: To our schedule. Yeah, And I think that just when it doesn’t.
00:38:03
Speaker 3: Work, And I think that has led to one of the biggest sets of mistakes that that I’ve certainly made over recent years, and I think a lot of other people make too, which is chasing sell camp picks. Right, you’re you’re getting these picks coming in. This is what he did yesterday, or this what he did the last three days, and then going there and then oh, well I was here, but he ended up being where I was at the day before.
00:38:24
Speaker 2: So now I’ve got to go there. And to some degree.
00:38:27
Speaker 3: That could happen with regular cameras if you were checking them, you know, relatively frequently. But at least it slowed it down. At least it forced you to take a second.
00:38:37
Speaker 2: And just hunt. Yeah.
00:38:39
Speaker 3: And so this is probably the biggest shift for me as a hunter with cameras in recent years has been going from slow camera mode and then when we got cell cameras, falling into the temptation of chasing pictures all the time and thinking that they were.
00:38:55
Speaker 2: The end all, be all.
00:38:56
Speaker 3: And now I’m reaching this third phase with my cameras, which is, even though we have the ability to get real time updates all the time and you could chase them around and you could blanket your property with them, I’m realizing that A that’s not as much fun and B it’s not necessarily even more effective. I know there’s some people who use it very effectively, and I you know, everyone’s going to do their own thing.
00:39:20
Speaker 2: But I have found.
00:39:22
Speaker 3: That the way that works best for me, both for the experience I want and then actually leading to me filling some tags, is to use my cameras now more generally to establish like what’s here, even in season, it’s going to tell me who’s here, what kind of goal should I have? What’s the general movement in activity in a region, like you said, like following, what’s the dough activity? I want to watch, kind of how the how the running activity is ramping up. Those kinds of like indicators are important to me. But I’m realizing that chasing a specific buck from this camera to that camera, or thinking that because he did this thing too in a row on that camera means he’s going to do it a third day, that’s just not working. And then it just gets you wrapped up in everything you just mentioned, which is all these weird expectations and predictions, and it becomes a video game rather than being out there hunting, learning the land, watching what they do, and I find myself wanting to retreat more and more away from that part of the technology. I think there’s still a way to use cell cameras that are great, and you can use the good sides of them without having to go too deep down that slippery slope. But I think it requires being extra thoughtful about it, Like how do I use this It’s like any technology. I guess, how do I use this technology in a way that it’s useful to me without taking over my attention, my time, or my experience.
00:40:49
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
00:40:49
Speaker 4: Yeah, dude. I was doing that stuff before cell cameras.
00:40:53
Speaker 5: Like I would go in and check a trail camera and let’s say on a Tuesday, I had a big butt. That morning, I had a big buck on trail camera, so I hunted there. Then the next night I had another I went to go check another trail camera and there was a big buck there. And all I’m doing is chasing yesterday what happened yesterday, And so all I was doing is moving. I wasn’t putting the time that I needed to in a particular pinch point I found the pinch point deer or moving through it. But I was chasing individuals that if I sat in there three days in a row, I’m sure I would have had some kind of encounter with them or seen them from the tree stand. But instead I was giving it. One hunt, didn’t show up, got to move, one hunt, give up, Gotta move. And that is where the cell cam technology really escalated that for people because they look at it. Oh, that buck has not come through this area in twenty four hours. Why would I hunt this tree? Stand Well, he walked behind you. He walked behind it, or maybe he decided to go munch on smy corns up the hill a little bit more and then walk around it. And you have no idea. You have no idea what’s going on in the woods. Even with cell cam sued.
00:42:12
Speaker 3: Yep, it gives you the tiniest glimpse into what’s happening out there. Yeah, and we’re giving them way too much credit, yep, way too much credit. So I would say now my in season camera placement because of that, has shifted away from doing things that might help me try to target a specific buck in a specific place to kill him, and more so putting cameras in areas of high deer traffic, like natural deer traffic, so that I can simply keep track of the ebb and flow of activity kind of seeing like, okay, this is the ruts definitely starting to pick up.
00:42:47
Speaker 2: As I would expect it, or hey, the new bucks for the fall have arrived, and here’s who’s passing through here, And it’s more of a temperature check, and I guess, I guess everything I said about the summer somewhat applies to the fall.
00:42:59
Speaker 3: Now.
00:43:00
Speaker 2: It’s much more of a temperature check and.
00:43:02
Speaker 3: A thirty thousand foot overview of a place yep, just enough now to say, Okay, yes, this property does have the bucks you are interested in, or yes, that pre rut is kicking off the way you thought it should be. It’s time to do your week of vacation, or it’s time to spend a little extra time.
00:43:24
Speaker 2: Or whatever it might be.
00:43:25
Speaker 3: Or maybe you know, maybe every once in a while you’ll get some kind of key time related data that you know, you get a hot doll in the area, and all of a sudden, seven bucks pile through, and you see that the next day in your camera, and then it tells you, okay, yeah, that I better make sure that for the next three days I spend some extra time in that zone. But I’m much less specific spot attached or specific buck attached to anyone data point, because those they just don’t add up.
00:43:55
Speaker 2: As I used to think they did.
00:43:57
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean that dots on a map stray still applies to me. Like I’m using historic data from trail cameras, I’m looking at terrain features.
00:44:07
Speaker 4: The thing.
00:44:08
Speaker 5: Even even checking the temperature of a farm can be misleading at times.
00:44:13
Speaker 4: I can’t. I had a this past year.
00:44:18
Speaker 5: I’m sitting inside the timber and Dude, I had a trail camera in a crick crossing and and I said, man, all this activity was following the terrain and it didn’t go through that particular crit crossing. They were crossing other spots, jumping it. And I bet you there was twenty five deer within a four hour period that were cruising through this area and not one of them went through this crit crossing. Cold must be cold. There’s no deer in here, you know, or even on a field edge like I have a couple of trail cameras where I got it on a field edge, and I’m I see a big area. I’m sitting in a tree stand. I can see that trail camera. Maybe a couple deer walk by it. If I basing it on that two hundred yards down there’s deer fighting, right, A whole bunch of does running crazy around, and so I’m just like, it means nothing until you’re in there. So you better get caught up on your woodsmanship and start to still observe because you start getting into this this, I’m gonna only do what my trail cameras tell me. Dude, you’re gonna you’re gonna miss the boat big time.
00:45:36
Speaker 3: And you’re missing out on not just that activity, but the thing we all fell in love with.
00:45:41
Speaker 2: It’s actually hunting right.
00:45:43
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly why keeping you from hunting, then you are not using the right way, and that is that’s. Yeah, I think that there has to be a major return. And you know, I think people have been talking about this for years now. Everyone’s of coming to similar realizations. I think a lot of us are feeling this, and and then just the evidence continues to stack up that yeah, this is this is not a silver bullet that all of a sudden everyone’s going to be killing giant deer because of the video game on their phone. You have to hunt, you have to still do all the old school things that used to work in the seventies, eighties and nineties, early two thousands. That all still matters a lot. Being overly dependent on.
00:46:28
Speaker 2: Those photos is. It’s not the answer. There’s ways to use it, there’s ways that can be helpful.
00:46:35
Speaker 3: It’s got to be a part of like a of like a broader portfolio of stuff you’re doing, right.
00:46:39
Speaker 4: Yep, yeah, absolutely so.
00:46:42
Speaker 3: So all that said, though, let’s talk to some specifics. So we’ve kind of both ended up in a similar position and that we still use cameras, but it’s different than it used to be. We probably don’t view them quite as obsessively as we used to, but they do still.
00:46:58
Speaker 2: Play a role.
00:46:59
Speaker 3: And now it sounds like both of us are finding ways to just be smarter about how we do them, more efficient with how we use them. How has your actual you mentioned a little bit of this, mentioned like making the ox great, But I’m curious about how your actual trailcam setups, the settings that you use, any of the specific details like when you put out a camera for in season use.
00:47:22
Speaker 2: How are you actually doing?
00:47:23
Speaker 3: What are the little things that you’ve found over the last fifteen twenty years that have led to your camera use being more efficient and effective? Walk me through that, because I’ve definitely had some changes on my end there.
00:47:34
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:47:35
Speaker 5: So, back in the day when battery life did not last as long, right, And I like lithium batteries were not as readily available as regular batteries, right, I would do like one minute, like one minute photo delay with like a three batch of you know, three images at one time, one minute delay, and that’s you know, I kind of expect to use batteries up during the dear season. But now with how efficient shil cameras are and the battery life and how long they last and how many images you can get out, I’m not the guy who needs the four K. Number one, I never run video, never run video. I don’t care.
00:48:28
Speaker 4: Number two, I am not using like if twelve megapixels is the highest end photo, I’m using maybe eight megapixels.
00:48:37
Speaker 2: Right.
00:48:38
Speaker 4: I don’t care about quality per se.
00:48:40
Speaker 5: I just want to know what’s there, and I can pretty much tell what’s there by the eight megapixel.
00:48:47
Speaker 4: But where I now.
00:48:49
Speaker 5: Things have kind of now changed, is how Number one, how far is the farm away from my house if.
00:48:55
Speaker 4: Batteries run out?
00:48:57
Speaker 5: Like last year, batteries ran out one week before I went down there, and I was just like, now what now, what’s going on? You know what’s going on in the farm and so but when when I’m there, I’m using like a thirty second delay. Now I’m using like five images because one thing that I’ve noticed is if a dough comes by in the hunting season, thirty seconds is a long time a buck could be coming through there as well. And so man, I’m just like I’m burning batteries during the hunting season, and I want as many pictures as I possibly can get of what’s kind of happening wherever I have my cameras, and and other than that, it’s like I never Another thing is I never face any cameras east or west anymore. I’m used there either straight north or you know, straight south to avoid the sun glare, unless it’s like in a situation where it’s in some thick timber or terrain is blocking the sun, you know what I mean. But all that is thought of when I go and hang it up, I’m using a ton of screw in type of I’m not strapping it to the tree per se. I use like a stick and pick. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that brand. They have the screw ins, they have the that go right down into the ground. I’ve done fence posts before, rebar longer pieces of rebar hammered down into it and just trying to get it into the best possible spot.
00:50:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, that resonates especially.
00:50:55
Speaker 3: You mentioned this earlier with their summertime cameras, and I, based on what you just said there, I think it’s the same the fault.
00:51:00
Speaker 2: It’s it’s I’ve certainly moved from going to where the.
00:51:05
Speaker 3: Spot was available to now making the spot in the right spot if I have to.
00:51:11
Speaker 2: So.
00:51:11
Speaker 3: So Yeah, I agree with you on like the idea of using sticking picks or different camera camera stakes or stands. I have also started adding, and this has probably been the last five years or so. I don’t think I ever put up a trail camera now without there also being a licking branch, if at all possible. They’ll occasionally be spots where it’s just simply not possible and I want to be in a spot because of some other reason. But if all possible, if there’s not already an available liking branch in the place I want to be, I will hang one up. I’ve just seen that too many times be a helpful little thing to get a deer to stop for a picture, or maybe if a deer was already coming through ten yards away, and all of a sudden, there’s a mock scrape here, They’re willing to come the extra ten yards. That just seems to have gotten so much activity at these camera locations year and year out, no matter what time of the year. Even if it’s not a you know, destination scrape, it’s not something like I’m not there because of it being an awesome scrape. I’m there for some other reason. I’ll still put it there and it still helps at least a little bit. Yeah, that’s a change. What about And I’ll detail more of my setups as it currently stands in a second. But one of the things I was wondering is you were describing that is what about the height of your cameras these days? Because over the years, I’ve bounced back and forth a lot.
00:52:35
Speaker 2: I used to start just.
00:52:36
Speaker 3: Right, I used to be at eye level, and then there was increasingly more and more buzz about, well, you’re probably spooking deer even with no flash cameras, you should put your cameras up high and angle them down. So I’ve experimented with that a lot in the past, and you know, honestly, I think I’m back to being kind of back down more often than not.
00:52:56
Speaker 2: I’ve had so many photos where I.
00:52:59
Speaker 3: Try to do the up high and the quality of the photo and the view of the deer has not been as good. And I’ve had relatively few occasions with the camera being relatively kind of low ish and those deer freaking out. I’ve just had so many pictures that have been fine, and the buck continues to reappear in the future and sticks around that I’ve gone back to that what about you.
00:53:23
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I don’t give a shit, Like, remember, Iowa deer are dumb dude, right, we just we just shoot big dumb Iowa deer. So I guess that’s why that’s why he was so easy, right, because they’re stupid. No, I’ve always been eye level. I’ve never seen I shouldn’t say never. I’ve had one buck that I got a picture of three He came in, he looked directly at my trail camera. He did not like it. And I never saw that buck again at that at that mineral site. That’s the only buck that was like two thousand and like seventeen or something like that. And outside of that, never really had any issues.
00:54:09
Speaker 4: With levels and angles. And I’ve just strapped to the tree screwed into the ground. Dude.
00:54:14
Speaker 5: I will put it right in the middle of a field facing a corner, so they look at it and they’re like, what is that? But obviously it’s there long enough where they get used to it.
00:54:26
Speaker 4: Right.
00:54:27
Speaker 5: Here’s one thing that I didn’t mention that I want to say, is you know how we talk about a trail camera only sees just a very small glimpse of what’s going on.
00:54:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:54:40
Speaker 5: In the past, I have pulled fences up higher in certain areas to dictate deer movement. I have cut down branches to block trails. I have like any big dead trees that I could possibly move. In the past, I’ve moved some of them into weird positions to try hopefully instead of jumping the log, they kind of curve around it and make a very small obstacle for them to come around. That seems to have worked in the past, especially on like pinch points. I’m thinking of one pinch point in particular, where there’s a inside corner of a pasture and then about two hundred yards away there’s a big bank where a river cuts into the ridge and it creates a big bank. So all the deer movement goes through this two hund little pinch point. And so they went through and they logged it one year and I went in and I pulled all these old beat up tree tops and kind of made like a little row to narrow it down. Like I blocked two trails so that they would come through the one trail.
00:55:53
Speaker 4: Dude, did it worked.
00:55:54
Speaker 5: I got a ton of deer movement come through this one. And even sitting in the tree stand, they walk the trail, they would meet the the dead tree and then they would walk straight up the row of dead trees to hit that trail and cross by. Now I didn’t Yeah I didn’t shoot a deer a deer out of that stand, but I got a ton of pictures of deer from that type of strategy.
00:56:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s it goes back to that do maybe doing a little bit less, but doing it better.
00:56:29
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:56:29
Speaker 3: Maybe there’s fewer total cameras that are out there, but in this doing it in a place where you get the return, Like your return on your investment is higher when you account for those little things right, making sure you were in this the perfect concentration of movement, making sure you have those types of little tweaks made adding the licking branch. You know another thing that I’ve done to make my setup, and I don’t have this for all of them, but increasingly more and more of my camera setups I now have on solar. That’s been a thing like, I don’t have enough panels for all of them, but I’ve can kind of been slowly accumulating, And that’s just another way to enjoy the main benefit of sell cameras that I like now it’s not getting real tem information. What I really like is the fact that I don’t need to go in there over and over and over again and educate deer to my presence. If your batteries keep dying on you, then you’re negating that. So the more solar panels that I get on the cameras, the more I’m like, oh, yeah, this is a good idea. Keep doing that, Mark, Because another change that I’ve made is that in season now I am running not all, but more cameras on video mode. I never used to, just like you mentioned for yourself, I was always worried about the battery draw and so I never did it until the last two years or so.
00:57:43
Speaker 2: I was like, you know what, I’m going to experiment with it. A little bit.
00:57:46
Speaker 3: I’m going to test it out a little bit more, and I have ended up finding some really interesting stuff that I never would have saw if I didn’t have that video mode on. And the way I have it on my cameras is that it’s just that you’ll still get just a picture and then you can choose to request a video later if it looks like if the preview picture looks you know, interesting, like there’s a buck coming in, and so I’ll request an actual video. You know, maybe twenty percent of the time, but when you do have the situation like you describe, like a dough runs through, and then if it was a photo, it would have just been a dough and then maybe that first buck. But when I turn the video on and it’s a fifteen or twenty second clip, all of a sudden, I see the dough run through, and I see five bucks chasing her, and.
00:58:31
Speaker 2: I see the last one was the big old one.
00:58:33
Speaker 3: Or whatever it might be where you see two or three bucks at a scrape and you see how they’re acting with each other, and you notice the one is like way more dominant and totally different than all the rest. You know, that might impact how I hunt him if if I see him three or four days later, right, Yeah, So there’s all these little things that you can learn that that video uniquely shows. So that’s that’s one big change the last couple of years that as long as my battery is a good situation, and I’ve got a solar panel set up, and I’m not, you know, worried about that anymore. I’m now finding that to be a pretty handy thing to keep in mind. Yeah, so solar, more video, the twenty four hour delay on my photo, so I’m not tempted to be chasing cameras too much. And then you know, as far as you know the rest of the settings, I’m with you. I do not as long of a delay as I used to because I’m not worried about battery as I used to. I also don’t run any kind of mineral or bait, so there’s not like deer just sitting in one spot for two hours repeatedly taking photos. So I do a quick trigger, I do the burst mode still if I am on photo mode, and most of those things, I guess have stayed pretty consistent.
00:59:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, So when when cell cams first came out, right, or well, when the good ones first came out, Dude, I probably had too many on a particular farm where I was. I was almost like security camera mode and not trail camera mode, you know what I mean. So now I’ve learned that I’m not.
01:00:08
Speaker 5: Necessarily getting any The more cameras on a farm doesn’t necessarily mean the better information you’re getting, right, And so one thing that I’ve done is pull some of those trail cameras down and I’ll take one of those trail cameras and I’ll put it in a random spot. And it’s not a it’s a spot that I don’t hunt. Maybe it even doesn’t look good from satellite imagery or even have a ton of deer sign So I’ll throw a trail camera in there or in some CRP buffer strip in the middle of a cornfield that doesn’t have like doesn’t look like it’s good, and then just forget about it, right, And that I used to do that with SD card cameras too, But just in case a buck comes through there, or a buck pushes a dough in there, or whatever the case is, I’ve I’ve started allocating some of my trail cameras for more random spots or different farms where you drive down a road and you say, oh, that doesn’t look good, but there might be a strip of trees that goes through it, and you throw a trail camera up there. Oh my god, there is deer back here. There is decent deer movement back here, and then gives you some other options as well.
01:01:31
Speaker 3: That’s a great, a great point, and you’re probably right, I’ve not done a good enough job of doing that. But if if you were to take one, let’s just say, for like a simple number, let’s say you’ve got four cameras on your hundred acre property or whatever. If you were to take one of those off, and you probably everybody puts them in the best possible places they can think of, right, the place is that they think that deer activity is going to be the most. That’s also the same places that they’re probably going to hunt, right And so you’re you’re almost doubling up your efforts in many ways, especially if you’re trying to hunt, you know, and use your own eyeballs, as we’ve already been talking about. So taking one of those off and putting it in that off the wall kind of location that the flyer that you’re not gonna hunt anyways, That’s how you probably end up getting real new information. Just rotate, have these like free agent trail cameras or wild stard cameras that you kind of rotate to brand new places to learn about something you would never go to otherwise. That’s a genius idea that I’ve not done but should.
01:02:31
Speaker 4: Yeah. I’m not a genius though, so I don’t know what that means.
01:02:36
Speaker 2: Man. You just you just achieved genius status, my friend.
01:02:40
Speaker 4: That dude, it’s like what that does is if you think like that, then you go to and this even has.
01:02:49
Speaker 5: More of a hunting access opportunity where you’re just you’re like, you know what, I saw some deer running through this field. I’m gonna knock on this guy’s door see if I can get permit. And dude, one of the best farms I ever hunted was exactly that. It was two little fingers through a crp field that held giant deer. That’s where the shipwreck story unfolded, right, And so these little pockets and they’re not big at all, or a strip or a tree and some grass enough for a deer to lay down and not be seen from the road these days can go a long way.
01:03:27
Speaker 3: Man, I’m telling you, I think this might be like the theme of the entire chat synthesize and like one little tiny thing I think that for too long.
01:03:37
Speaker 2: I’ll just speak for myself. I have fallen.
01:03:39
Speaker 3: Into wanting to use trail cameras sell cameras, especially as a means of like confirmation or guaranteeing something like those cameras tell me, well, this is what I think they’re gonna do, and this is where they should be. And the cameras are going to tell me, yes, he was there yesterday, or yes he’s been there three days out of five, and that’s I’m gonna kill him. And I think a lot of people do that kind of thing, and I think they might be better used both from like how it impacts like your fun of the hunt and maybe even your success. They could be better utilized, or at least I’m finding personally that they’re better utilized as like a tool for discovery, not trying to guarantee something, not trying to get proof of something and confirm something, but.
01:04:22
Speaker 2: Instead just go learn some new cool stuff.
01:04:25
Speaker 3: Cameras can help you discover this neat new area, or they can help you discover, oh, hey, this buck is in the area now now go hunt them, but don’t worry about much more than that.
01:04:34
Speaker 2: I think that looking at it in that.
01:04:36
Speaker 3: Way, at least for me as i’ve been coming, as I’m going more and more that way, that’s been really refreshing, and I think that’s a really good I’m going to personally try to lean into that even more this year, this coming season, because I think that resonates a lot.
01:04:53
Speaker 4: YEP.
01:04:54
Speaker 5: One more way, I’ve started using cellular trail cameras for the most up to date.
01:05:02
Speaker 4: Data.
01:05:04
Speaker 5: Is not necessary for the big buck that walks down a trail, but for who else is on the farm with me that night truck pulls through. You know, maybe I’ll throw it, not necessarily on a gate crossing. You know, I don’t want it to look like I’m there. It’s there to see what people are, but I’ll put it in a spot where hunters walk by or trucks drive by, and that way, I know, Hey, listen, you know there’s a guy, another guy’s already here.
01:05:32
Speaker 4: I’m not going to this part of the farm.
01:05:34
Speaker 5: Or a truck comes through and I go to the landowner, Hey do you know who this is? Because I don’t you know you told me the guy owns a blue truck and this is a red truck. So what’s the You know, I don’t know who that is, you know, why are they here? And then I don’t know. Just I don’t want to ruin anybody’s hunt, but I also don’t want to be surprised by people who are or are not supposed to be there.
01:06:00
Speaker 3: For sure, I think that’s a very good use of them. Yeah, and if anything that can help you be a better neighbor or share the property user right to your point, you know, avoid that area, then don’t mess up there hunt.
01:06:12
Speaker 4: Yep.
01:06:13
Speaker 5: Have you ever turned into uh or had a wounded buck on trail camera and then reached out to a neighbor or someone who maybe reached out to you saying, hey, I shot a buck but didn’t uh didn’t get it and it resulted in them finding their deer.
01:06:31
Speaker 3: It’s a great uh, it’s a great question. I have not had that happen. I’ve had a situation where I was checking cameras specifically looking for that because of that neighborhood shot one he thought it came across the property, so I did like a deep check of all the cameras over the last couple of days, so that specifically hasn’t happened to me. The closest, you know, the only like recovery kind of situation that happened to me was I had hit a deer, not recovered.
01:06:58
Speaker 2: Him, and then he was dead.
01:07:00
Speaker 3: After not seeing him for weeks on end, and then three weeks later, I finally get a photo of him. And this was one time when like cell cameras really really did help in a way that I felt good about because I’d hunted a bunch hoping he was still alive.
01:07:17
Speaker 2: He didn’t show up for weeks and weeks, so.
01:07:18
Speaker 3: That I was finally giving up on him, and then out of the blue, three and a half weeks later or something like that, there he is, and I put a camera specifically because I was hoping to maybe get lucky and see him again. I went into the interior of his home, like deep in the bedding, like in a spot that I would never go because I knew i’d blow things up. But I’ve been tracking and looking for him and all this kind of stuff, so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna go in there and put a camera up right in the middle of it, because if he is still alive, that would be the place to confirm it. And sure enough, almost a month later, that’s where I got this picture of him. And because I got that picture of him back, I all of a sudden was like, Okay, I’m gonna go full boar again and try to get him killed that I know he’s here because i’d kind of given up on it and was looking at other places and doing different stuff, and that got me out there and then I was able to was able to finish the deal. So that’s that’s the closest example I have.
01:08:12
Speaker 2: What about you.
01:08:15
Speaker 5: I got a picture of a wounded buck with just like it was hit pretty back, but you could tell he was hit hunched up real bad. And so I called the landowner and I told him, and I told him about it. He goes, yeah, I shot that buck yesterday and then he recovered it pretty soll, And so yeah, there’s that.
01:08:38
Speaker 3: That’s pretty wild. Well, for better or for worse, cameras are here. They’re here to stay. And uh, I think it’s I think as I look back on our stories and our our evolution here is that it doesn’t have to stay the same, and you don’t need to use cameras in any one.
01:09:00
Speaker 2: Particular way just because that’s what everybody else, how everybody else is using them.
01:09:04
Speaker 3: Right, You don’t have to just do what so and so on TV does or such and such person on social media does, if anything. As I kind of think through what we just talked about, it comes down to realizing that you still got a hunt, and that this this cannot be the entirety of your hunting strategy, and then be really do what makes it? And so many of our conversations have been like this the last three or four years. What’s the most fun, what’s the way, what’s the kind of experience you want? And I don’t think most of us came to deer hunting because we wanted to look at our phones a lot, right, and then hunt once every couple of weeks and kill something. That’s not what got us into this. That’s not why why we fell in love with deer hunting. So I don’t think we should let technology push us in that direction just because it’s convenient or popular.
01:09:53
Speaker 2: So I will say my two cents, Yeah, I will say.
01:10:00
Speaker 5: I was like, what was I gonna say? I think I had one of those those old head injuries just flare.
01:10:05
Speaker 4: Up and.
01:10:08
Speaker 2: We better.
01:10:09
Speaker 5: It’s like I had something real cool to say, No you don’t, my brain just goes, no, you don’t.
01:10:14
Speaker 2: We better wrap this up before we have a stroke on air or something.
01:10:16
Speaker 4: All right, I’ll get to the hospital.
01:10:20
Speaker 3: I appreciate you though, walking down memory lane a little bit here, ye talking about talking about this as I’m definitely getting the excitement and it’s feeling like that part of the year is arriving. I’m seeing bucks out in the bean fields, as getting my juices.
01:10:35
Speaker 2: Flowing, and cameras on the brain.
01:10:37
Speaker 3: So this is a good reset and a really good reminder of of looking at my cameras as a means for discovery versus trying to guarantee something.
01:10:46
Speaker 2: I think that’s something that’s going to stick with me absolutely.
01:10:48
Speaker 5: Also just a friendly reminder to the people who hunt public land, dude. Rules and regulations on trail cameras seemed to be changing every single year now, so it is very important to make sure you can or cannot use trail cameras on state ground federal ground, like, there’s different rules and regulations for all that stuff. I know, Iowa, this year will be the last year that you might be able to use cameras. But in twenty twenty seven all trail cameras on Iowa ground is done with, so no trail cameras at all on public ground.
01:11:29
Speaker 2: Great great reminder. Tell you what, it’s weird when Dan.
01:11:34
Speaker 3: Johnson is the one that’s like the cool headed, responsible one of reminding people to check their check their work, cross their t’s, dot theirrise.
01:11:42
Speaker 2: You’re really grown up man, right, yeah, I quit drinking.
01:11:47
Speaker 3: And on that note, thanks for another good chat. Absolutely all right, and that’s going to do it for us today. Thanks for being here, appreciate tuning into this episode and just enjoy. I’d encourage you to just enjoy these coming weeks and months. It’s a wonderful part of the year as this ramp up towards the fall really seems to sink in. So get out there, get the cameras out, glass the fields, shoot your bow, and have fun. It’s a great time of year and I appreciate you being a part of this year community. Stay Wired to Hunt,
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