Real-Time Intel: Moultrie Mobile

Who says you can't be in two places at once? The right cellular camera system will let you keep tabs on your deer woods even when you're nowhere near.

Until we finally crack the code of Star Trek teleportation, we hunters will have to be content with plodding along between places at standard human speeds. Which is no big deal, normally...but it can be when you’re not in the deer woods but are desperate for information on what’s happening there. Then the need for TV’s 23rd century technology to become reality early in the 21st is a tad frustrating.
Ah, but what if we could be in two widely separated places at once? Or close enough to “at once” that a slight lag was no worry at all? That presumably would make a lot of things in life simpler. And yes, whitetail hunting and management would be among those things.
Well, thanks to the ongoing development of cellular scouting cameras, we now are close to bridging this gap. We can in effect be in the deer woods even when we aren’t.
We’ve had stand-alone scouting cameras for over two decades now, and they’re popular. But today’s growing interest in the use of cellular-enabled cameras has sprung from four realities: (1) It takes time and often a fair bit of fuel and effort to physically check any camera; (2) every time you visit a camera site, you risk spooking deer — thus offsetting some of the practical advantage offered by acquiring photos of them in the first place; (3) by the time a camera has physically been checked, even the most recent capture image is likely to be somewhat dated; and (4) if you have trespasser/thief issues, a cellular camera offers better odds of identifying the perpetrator. Add up these facts and it’s easy to see the advantage of being able to monitor a spot in real time, even when you’re not around.
The newest approach to doing so comes from the folks at Moultrie. Their app-based cellular camera system - Moultrie Mobile - allows for quick, easy, affordable and disturbance-free camera monitoring, as well as handy storage/retrieval of captured images.

 

Over the past few weeks I’ve been putting this system through its paces, and it’s performed as advertised. The unit I’ve been using is the XA7000i, which is built around a 20MP camera.

The camouflaged camera and its neutral-tone strap are really hard to see on most trees, which is great. Not only is the camera well hidden from human eyes, I’ve captured no images of deer looking at it during the day or at night. The invisible flash (80-foot range) thus seems to be undetectable by deer. All these attributes are key advantages, in my book.

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Of course, stealth doesn’t much matter if the camera won’t reliably capture images. But this one has done so for me. Using the 7000i in a spot that has a fair bit of daytime and nighttime deer activity, I’ve found it captures clear images and lets you see them within only a few minutes of the event.
Easily controlled via a free app on a smartphone - and with extremely affordable service and storage plans - this system seems a solid option for anyone wanting to enter the cellular camera game without first getting an engineering degree. And that’s helpful. Hunting, management and/or security concerns have many folks wanting a better connection to the deer woods. If you find yourself in that situation, give the Moultrie Mobile XA7000i a look. It could open your eyes to more of what’s out there when you’re not — and let you know about it in close to real time.

8 Tips to Shoot a Buck on Opening Day

The month of September means archery deer seasons are opening across North America. From September 1 until the end of the month, new seasons are coming in every week. But a surprisingly few hunters take advantage of these early hunting opportunities. If you are one that has been missing out, consider this your wake up call.

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Crop fields such as soybeans and alfalfa are heavily used by bucks in the late summer. These are great places to find them and observe their movements.

The earliest days of the hunting season are some of the best days to catch a mature buck totally unaware. As the season moves on, bucks are apt to see a new treestand, smell some human scent where they haven't smelled it since last season, see some trimmed shooting lanes and get bumped from their beds. Any of these things will trigger them to change their patterns.
Here are eight tips for getting out there and taking advantage of the early season opportunities.

 

Lay Eyes on Them

The last days of summer into the early fall is one of the best times of the year to get a good look at a buck in person. The use of a spotting scope or a good pair of binoculars while observing feeding areas during the last hour of the long daylight hours can give you lots of clues as to where the deer are feeding and entering the fields.

Find a high vantage point where you can overlook alfalfa, soybeans or other crop fields where the groups of bucks are feeding and pay special attention to where they enter the field based on wind direction. This information will be very valuable when it comes to setting up stands.

Get Your Cameras Working

There is no way to overestimate the value of getting photos of bucks with time and date stamps on them. They show you what time the buck was in the area and which direction he was moving. Combine that with the weather and wind conditions at the time and you have valuable clues to his daily habits.
The value of using cameras is huge, but the potential for tipping the buck off is just as big if you do not choose carefully the times you will put them out and check them. Avoid allowing your scent to blow into an area where the buck may be, never check a camera at a time when you may spook the buck and use some spray to reduce your scent impact.
I watch the weather radar and take advantage of incoming rain to get the cameras out and check the cards, trying to do so right before a rain really helps reduce potentially damaging human scent intrusion.

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Scouting cameras are an important part of learning a buck's behavior, tendencies and patterns of movement. They offer important clues as to how he moves during various wind and weather variances.

Hang Stands in Secret

Speaking of watching the weather, the clandestine hanging of treestands can be enhanced by getting out in the woods and doing the job right before a rain as well. If you don't have that opportunity, spray down and get in and out quickly. Two people can do it far faster than one, but keep a low profile and clean up after yourself. Try to avoid too much obvious cutting and move the trimmings off to the side at least 20 yards.

 

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Once you find a buck and learn his movements, it's time to get some stands up. Do it quickly and at midday if possible.

In some situations, you'll want to hang two stands close together to take advantage of varying wind directions. I have hung stands as close as 20 feet apart when bucks are using the same trail with more than one wind pattern.

Utilize Observation Stands

I define an observation stand as one that allows you to see a large area when in the stand. I use these often on DIY road trips when I am scouting as I hunt. The odds of shooting a buck out of an observation stand may not be high, but it can allow me to observe an entire field in order to make a better decision about where to move in for a more precise attack.

Don't Overlook the Importance of Water

In hot, dry weather, a buck's first stop may not be the edge of a crop field, it may be at a secluded waterhole or creek between the bedding and feeding areas. These are excellent places to waylay the buck well before dark.

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Scent control is critical when installing treestands and checking cameras. Use some Scent Killer on the lower half of your body to reduce odors left on the ground and on the bushes.

Follow trails back from the feeding areas to where they cross a creek and set up there. If you know of a waterhole surrounded by goo cover where the deer can feed without exposing themselves, get a stand on it, or at least a camera. Tracks — or a lack of them — will tell you how much use the water is getting.

Hunt the Staging Areas

While your observation stands on the edge of the field may help you learn more about deer movement patterns, the most likely place to kill a mature buck is just off the field. While does and smaller bucks may arrive and move into the open well before dark, the bigger bucks are likely to hang back and observe the deer in the field for a while, only entering during the final minutes of daylight when the indications from the deer already in the field show that things are safe.
These staging areas will be from 10-30 yards back off the edge of the field and be characterized by rubs clusters of tracks and nibbled brush. Set up downwind of these areas and you're more likely to shoot a buck there as the days get shorter and shorter.

Parallel Trails

Like staging areas, some bucks will pace back and forth inside the cover along the edge of the field for a while before exposing themselves in the open. These trails can be on any side of a field, but are most commonly found on the downwind side of prevailing winds. You will not find stomped down muddy trails, as these are indistinct and difficult to locate. With some work you can recognize them.

Be Aggressive and Stay Mobile

Things are changing by the day as the testosterone ramps up in the bucks' systems. When the velvet comes off things begin to change. Patterns begin to break down and bachelor groups begin to break up after the first of September. You must move fast and aggressively to take advantage of this short window of opportunity. Move quickly when you see changes and stay on top of the patterns day by day and you will have a chance to put your tag on a nice buck while others are still dreaming of November.

 

Training Duck Dogs for Perfection

Don't accept anything less than 100 percent during drills if you want your dog to perform in the field.

During each hunting season there are two times when you might come to realize your dog isn’t performing as expected. The first is during the initial hunts of the year where excitement is highest and your retriever is out-of-his-mind happy to be hunting. This is the time where you really get to see how much of your training lessons have stuck.
The second comes as duck season winds down and the attrition of good behavior that has been established during training sessions starts to show.
Why would a dog that is generally solid at home and in the blind suddenly start to show a crumbling foundation of steadiness or other aspects of obedience?
The answer is because your dog probably wasn’t at the top of his game when you were training, even though he might have been close.
Knowing how common this is, I have a general rule of thumb for training: I ask 110 percent of my dog. I know even the best trained dog is going to lose some of his compliance in the field, but I’ll take a dog that is operating at 85 percent versus 50 any day. You can’t get a dog to perform at 85 percent during a hunt if that’s his high-water mark during training. You have to aim higher, and here's how.

 

Why The Unraveling?

The first step is to understand where your dog is at and why. This mostly applies to obedience, and trust me, it’s important. If your dog doesn’t flawlessly comply with three basic commands (sit, stay and come) at home, he won’t do it in a duck boat.
This means that gray area commands or asking your dog to stay but not correcting him if he doesn’t, will add up to a dog that is always testing the rules. If sometimes he has to do something unnatural (stay), and sometimes he can just ignore the command (wander around and sniff stuff), guess what he’s going to choose as often as possible?
I know it's harsh, or might even sound impossible, but the reality is you can’t make exceptions. When you’re training a dog you’re giving him jobs and rules, and he needs to comply. Those lessons will help him through his entire life, and will keep him safe and happy in the field. But, he doesn’t know that.
He knows what he wants to do, and he knows what you ask of him, provided you train correctly. He knows when he has your attention, or when it’s probably OK to slip. This is so much easier to control at home while working in the backyard or the neighborhood soccer field than it is while you’re laying in the cut corn eyeballing a flock of noisy honkers.
And it’s pretty safe to assume that if you don’t do the at-home drilling, you have no chance of solid compliance in that layout blind. One does not come without the other, unfortunately.

Sneaky Rule Breakers

Maybe at this point your saying: "I’m super consistent in my training and my expectations of the dog, yet for some reason when we go hunting he only retrieves the ducks halfway to the blind and then spits them out." In that situation, and many, many others, the breakdown in behavior might stem from whoever else is handling your dog throughout the week.
Think about your spouse or your kids, and ask yourself if they hold your dog to the same standard you do every day, without question. They likely do not, and that is a problem.

 

How to Hunt Geese on a Budget

You don't need a trailer load of full-bodies to put honkers on the ground.

Most of us that read waterfowl articles in magazines dream of the wild hunts on massive grain fields teeming with thousands of geese and ducks. But what about the guy or gal that does not have a trailer full of high-end decoys, access to thousand-acre fields, and cannot afford expensive calls? There are plenty of hunters out there itching to call in their own birds, and see wobbling gray and black bombers with feet down, and hear the grunt of the honkers as they cruise within range with cupped wings. All of us want to yell, “Take em!” as we bust out of our layouts, dropping geese.
The good news is that any of us can live that dream with some planning and effort, even without access to big feeds and hundreds of decoys. In fact, fields less than 100 acres that are located in a daily flight pattern near water are killer locations, particularly later in the season. Throw in two-dozen decoys, a flag and a few layouts and you are in business.

Lighting the Flame

A few seasons ago my daughter and I were trying to do a little duck hunting on a tributary of our local river in Virginia. A farmer granted us access to a makeshift boat ramp at the end of the fields. Our duck hunting was a bust due to lack of birds, but we noticed a few small flocks of geese regularly passing over the scattered 50-acre grain fields that we dragged our boat through each morning going to and from the water.
When we stopped to pay the boat ramp access fee to the farmer, I left a “thank you” note commenting about how we noticed Canada geese flying over the fields, and how none of those birds came near our blind or the part of the creek we hunted.
A week later when we were leaving the same property the farmer stopped us and asked if we wanted to try to put a dent in the flock of geese to help save the crops. We could hardly contain our excitement, and promised to not tear up the fields—and insisted on continuing to pay the access fee.

Location Is Paramount

Since we lucked into that field to hunt, we have since started gaining access to other small, but similar fields. When looking for productive fields, we start scouting in the fall when geese filter in from the north. We use an online topo/satellite map and our online GIS maps for our local counties to locate farm fields near water sources around the Chesapeake Bay watersheds. These can be large swamps, ponds, large creeks, rivers or small bays. Smart hunters know Canada geese will roost on the water and then feed after the sun gets up.

Once we locate potential properties near where we live, we try to scout them before approaching the farmer. Binoculars are helpful. We watch for flight patterns to determine which properties the birds tend to fly over on a regular basis when going to feed and roost. Again, we focus on small fields under 100 acres that geese have flown over on a regular basis. They don’t necessarily have to feed in the small fields, but there should be some beans or grain of some sort for them to eat if they did land in the field.

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While other hunters are hitting the large fields and putting in a lot of effort and time with dozens, or even hundreds of decoys, we are going light with two-dozen or less decoys and pulling down our limits right along with the big shots with all their equipment.

Hiding Is Everything

Since we are on a budget, we carefully select two-dozen field decoys of various poses, a few layout blinds from a box store retailer and a flag for motion. While it would be nice to get the top-of-the-line gear, we make do with what we can afford and make a point to take care of it to make it last. One of the things we do with our layouts is gather up stubble from the fields we are hunting a few days before and very thoroughly brush our layouts. We also take a few trashbags and rake up stubble from the ends of the fields and use it the day of our hunt to “feather out” the profile of our blinds and our dog blind too. It is critical to blend the blinds in as much as possible.

Steve Purks, a friend and self-taught goose hunter, explained how critical this was to us.

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Geese that arrive in Virginia or Maryland after Thanksgiving when our season opens are wary and have been called to and shot at.
When we place our decoys in the field, we face a majority of them into the wind while leaving a hole for the birds to land in our kill zone; another trick we learned from Purks. We watch how the birds react to our set up and make changes as necessary. Sometimes we need to open the hole if the birds seem hesitant or sometimes we change the direction the decoys are facing if the wind shifts. Purks is always checking conditions and analyzing his spreads when we hunt with him and I keep a close eye on what he is doing and ask a lot of questions to learn as much as I can.

Next, we use the terrain to our advantage. A few rows of corn were left standing in one of the fields we hunted last season. We backed our blinds up to that hard edge and made them all but disappear. While the geese did not want to land right on our blinds, they did come in close enough for us to get our shots. We have also placed our blinds in spots that were slightly lower than the rest of the field. Doing so helps the layouts disappear and we have our decoys all around the layouts to blend in. Fencerows or hedgerows are great for this if the wind is correct for the setup of decoys. Birds won’t land if the wind is blowing towards the hedgerow; it leaves too little time for the birds to get down in the decoys. Hunters need the wind blowing away from the hedgerow for a good setup.
Last, we use inexpensive calls, but they work. We use them sparingly, mostly for getting the attention of the geese from a distance and a little grunting as they pass over. We flag the birds when they are coming off the water and heading to the bigger fields nearby. By being in the flight path, we get their first looks and then work hard to peel off birds and get them curious before they even make it to the larger fields. All it takes is a few to commit and come on down for us to get our shots and watch the dog work!
One last tip is to be in place early whether it is a morning or afternoon hunt. When the birds go to feed you want to be in place when they start flying or they will see birds landing a half-mile away and keep following them. Be at the front of the flock when they come over and work those birds.

Small Investment, Big Rewards

Hunting small fields on a shoestring works for several reasons. First, the geese sometimes get wary of the larger fields and large spreads of decoys and they begin to look for something different, something a bit more secure. Sometimes the group of birds will peel off the big flock looking for food. Being in the flight path, carefully positioning our decoys and layouts by using and considering the terrain in the field, and calling sparingly but using a flag to attract their attention, really makes a difference for us. We don’t need to purchase a trailer load of high-end decoys or spend hundreds of dollars on a lease and expensive calls to get our limits. It works, and we spend far less money and time setting up to have our fun.

No Matter the Season, Deer Orchard Work Brings Big Benefits to Whitetails

In years gone by, deer hunting was something of a seasonal affair. Hunters started getting ready in the final days of summer and first days of fall – preparing stand sites, sighting in their rifle or bow, and getting the camouflage out of storage.
But that was then, and this is now – a time when deer hunting seems like a year around activity. From shed hunting to dialing in a bow or a rifle to prepping hunting ground, the work from one whitetail season to the next never seems to end.
A lot of deer hunters know that to be true in the springtime as they get to work on land management chores through controlled burns, selective timbering, and the planting of warm season food plots on the edges of forests or in open pastures.
For some, such work includes the planting of mast trees that will eventually bring high calorie nutritional value to a local deer population. While many hunters think about red oaks and white oaks with such plantings, it can take many years – 10+ in most cases – to see acorns hitting the ground.

 

That’s why savvy land managers often turn to the chestnut trees from Chestnut Hill Outdoors, trees able to produce high energy nuts within three to five years of being planted.

 

A hard mast species that deer absolutely love, the American chestnut was all but wiped out by a blight in the early 1900s. The fungus-driven malady was nothing short of a nationwide natural disaster, one that the late Dr. Robert T. Dunstan, a renowned plant breeder, played a key role in resolving. Today, the Dunstan Chestnut hybrid tree that the good doctor helped produce is an American success story, a comeback that the Florida-based Chestnut Hill company continues to play a key role in to this very day.

 

Run for many years by Robert “Bob” Dunstan Wallace, the grandson of the late Dr. Dunstan, the family nursery business in Alachua, Fla. grows and sells tens of thousands of Dunstan Chestnuts each year to land managers and hunters across the country. That’s in addition to many other soft mast plant species like the Dr. Deer Pear trees, the Deer Candy Persimmon collection of trees, crab apples and apples, mulberries, blueberries, blackberries, Muscadine grapes, and more.

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By planting a variety of hard mast and soft mast species, the result can be an important steady supply of high energy nutrition available to whitetails throughout much of the year.
Such work is often referred to as Deer Landscaping, a term coined by North American Whitetail’s Dr. James C. Kroll at his Whitetail Breeding and Nutrition Research Center right outside of Nacogdoches, Texas.

 

I saw this deer management strategy firsthand one year as my son, Will, and I participated in Kroll’s annual Whitetail Field Day. By the day’s end, Will and I had been introduced to Kroll’s concept of planting deer orchards, or vertical food plots as some like to call them.
“We always want to concentrate on nutrition for deer,” said Kroll. “That’s the number one thing that we can do for deer on our properties, to answer the question of ‘What can I do to improve nutrition?’ ”
When I visited with him, Bob Wallace had a few answers for that question.

 

“Acorn dropping oaks are certainly good, but the thing about oak trees is that they produce a crop of acorns in the fall for a month or so and then they are done,” he said. “We always recommend that land managers plant for diversity with a variety of things available as the year goes by. That way, you can have a nutritional deer attractant working for months. Plus, they work well in concert with annual food plots and many hunters and land managers have both going on (throughout the year).”
In addition to hard mast like chestnuts and acorn producing oak trees, what kind of soft mast fruits are we talking about here?
“Crab apples are native, and deer love them,” said Bob. “And they really like native plums too. There are mulberries, which start (appearing) earlier in the year, then apples and peaches, and don’t forget things like blackberries and blueberries. These fruits will all help extend food resources for deer through the various seasons of the year. And that can help hold deer in a spot so that they will not move off somewhere else (as seasons and nutritional needs change).”
That includes springtime, a time of year that Chestnut Hill experts point out brings increasing stress to does that are carrying, delivering and nursing newborn whitetail fawns. It also includes bucks that are starting to grow antlers. And don’t forget turkeys, grouse, pheasants, quail, rabbits, squirrels, and other wildlife that are scouring the countryside as they look to meet nutritional needs. To help meet those needs, early soft mast production by mulberries, blueberries, and even plums can help.
The middle and latter stages of summer also represent a time on the calendar that doesn’t offer wildlife as much food and nutrition as one might think. Why? The experts at Chestnut Hill say it’s because herbaceous vegetation is starting to mature and die away. That’s where summertime fruits like blackberries, raspberries, and grapes can all work to help get wildlife through this often-unrecognized nutritional gap on the calendar.
As leaves change colors and the first cool fronts usher in the fall months, deer and other wildlife are again seeking key nutrition as they prepare for the breeding season and fatten up for the coming of winter. Chestnut Hill’s staff notes that such needs can be met by late summer and early fall soft mast production from persimmons, apples, and pears, food resources that can help wildlife get through until beneficial hard mast like chestnuts and acorns begin to drop in the middle stages of the autumn season.

Will Wireless Trail Cameras Make You a Better Hunter?

If you dig into the rules and regulations of your state, you’ll probably see no clear wording on the usage of cellular-enabled cameras. It’s a gray-area technology in most places right now but could be considered illegal if one of your cameras sent you a picture of a buck and you happened to shoot it a few hours later.
In-season usage in many states is up in the air, so be aware. As far as pre-season usage of cellular cameras, you’ve pretty much got the green light in most regions where whitetails reign supreme.
The question is - are they worth the money? Do they really provide an advantage over traditional cameras? The answer is a resounding - maybe.

Benefits of Cellular Cams

The obvious benefit to using a cellular-enabled camera is that once you’ve set it up, you can leave the woods alone. It allows you to sit back in the comfort of your home without wondering if your batteries are still juiced up, if someone has stolen it, or if it inexplicably went the way of the dodo - all while gathering intel in an undisturbed woods.
Throughout the summer you can gather info on the comings and goings of the local ungulates, and with most cameras, adjust your settings and check battery levels remotely. This means you’re aware and in control, without doing much more than messing with your smartphone.

Cons Of Cellular Cams

As mentioned above, the biggest downfall of these cameras might be their legality in your given area. If using one means you’re on the wrong side of the law, then it’s obviously no good.
But there is also the ethical conundrum associated with this level of technology. I can remember when they first hit the scene years ago, and a fellow from one of the camera companies told me how he used it during turkey season to check in on what fields had strutting birds in them.
If they hit the 9am lull, they’d go to where the cameras showed longbeards were at right then. He thought it was amazing, I felt differently.
And I still do. I’ve used celullar cameras for deer and bear on properties that were at least a couple hours from my house. My reasoning was that I couldn’t use real-time intel to try to gain an advantage because, at best, I’d be at least 24 hours behind the most current images if I decided to go hunting.
Eventually, they became something of a novelty for me. I put one or two out each summer and then pull them before the season or switch off the cellular function. I still really enjoy getting images from them during the summer and probably always will.

The Trail-Cam Trap Continues

Now that I’ve laid out my confusing personal strategy for using cellular trail cams, I’ll say this - if you do choose to use them during the season, they might only prove to be marginally more beneficial than non-cellular options.
This is because trail cameras are only a tool, and while it’s nice to know where a deer walked today when we weren’t there, that is far from a sure thing that a deer will walk there tomorrow when we are.

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If you opt for a cellular-enabled camera, remember to use it wisely. They are a lot of fun and can provide an up-to-the-moment snapshot of buck travels, but they probably won’t be the ticket to tagging out on Booners every fall.

What’s worse is that we often use trail camera intel to not hunt, reasoning that if our cameras are not catching daylight images of bucks, it’s better to wait until they are. That’s dangerous ground. The reality with all trail cameras is they give you a little snapshot into one small place in the woods.
That, theoretically, might be the best place in the woods by your opinion, but even so, the deer simply might not be walking there. If you are off by 20 yards, your intel is bunk. When you’re getting real-time images of squirrels and nothing else, it’s very easy to believe you should wait until the hunting will be better, and trust me when I say this, that’s probably not the best decision.
All that means is that the deer aren’t doing what you expected in one tiny area, nothing else. So be aware that while they are extremely fun to use, cellular trail cameras probably won’t be the ticket to tagging Booners year in and year out, at least not any more than traditional trail cameras were for you.

Conclusion

They are fun, they are addictive, and in the right situations they probably do offer a clear advantage over traditional cams. Cellular cameras promise a lot to the whitetail hunter when used properly, but don’t expect them to be the shortest path from no taxidermy bills to taking out a personal loan for all of your new mounts. At the very least, they are a very enjoyable tool and that’s a good enough reason to deploy one while the bucks are in velvet and you’ve got some time before opening day kicks off.

 

Deer Factory: Northern Climate Warm-Season Food Plots

The reason many of us don’t want to engage in this strategy is we won’t run in danger of having our SD cards maxed out with images. In fact, you might not capture anything that gets you excited. That’s a bummer, but it’s important. Eliminating dead ends isn’t as exciting as checking your camera and realizing that a herd of Booners has been traipsing through every day, but it’s also not nothing. Knowing where not to hunt matters, because it allows you to focus your efforts elsewhere.
This is why I try to run at least a couple trail cameras in question-mark locations. The idea is to figure out travel patterns in the cover, but you also must weigh the value of that information against how often you’ll slip in to check cameras and thus disturb the area. (That assumes you aren’t using a cellular camera, which eliminates the need to visit the spot regularly.)
If possible, I try to time my camera checks around rainstorms, but that’s far from a reliable strategy for minimizing disturbance. Instead, I force myself to give a camera at least a month in any given spot during the summer scouting period. Leaving a trail cam to “soak” in a spot for a minimum of four weeks means the deer will have plenty of time to get used to it, and all kinds of weather and the accompanying fronts will pass in that time. This allows me to compare deer movement to conditions and decide if there’s anything worth really paying attention to there.
If I do capture a good buck doing his thing a few times, it also gives me enough time to try to hang some more cameras and attempt to further pin down his daily habits. This is where different trains of thought merge onto the same track. Most of us think nailing down an exact buck’s routes is the goal, and it’s easy to slip into the mindset that deer do pretty much the same thing every day. But while they’re habitual critters, they don’t walk the same trails and utilize the same beds day after day unless they’re very comfortable in one given spot.
For most of us, those spots are behind plenty of “No Trespassing” signs and come with a serious price tag. The reality is, whitetails travel through their world in relation to the conditions and how they’ll be able to use their senses to stay safe. This means the buck that walks down a specific trail once a week is going somewhere else the other six days. Where are they? Ask yourself questions and try to answer them with long-range observation and more camera work.
For example, even though the travel pattern of a good buck on a specific ditch crossing might seem random, it probably isn’t. Think about where he’s coming from and where he’s going. Maybe there’s a pond tucked into the timber 200 yards away. Is he visiting it to get a drink? A well-placed camera can tell you.
Maybe the buck surprises you one evening as you’re swatting mosquitoes and looking through the spotting scope at a green bean field on your farm. Instead of emerging from the woods the way most of the other deer do, he pops up in a grassy swale on your neighbor’s property and hops a fence to reach the groceries where you can hunt.

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The bucks your camera finds in daylight in July might not be as visible when bow season opens. But they’ll likely still be in the area. Photo courtesy of Jim Woodward

All such in-person observations and clues gathered by your cameras will allow you to start homing in on an area that your target buck prefers. And that matters — a lot.

THE RIGHT NEIGHBORHOOD

While scouting for bow season we always strive to identify the exact tree from which we’ll arrow a good buck, during mid-summer we’re really just trying to pinpoint his preferred territory. Due to the fact so much can change from July or August to opening morning of the archery season, the idea is to get in the right neighborhood without letting the buck know you’re onto him.
This will allow you to set up a strategy for hunting the early season, but also be careful enough to preserve a buck’s safe zones until you need to slip in. Naturally, this is easier if you’re hunting private ground with limited pressure but is also a possibility on public land. You just need to understand there are no guarantees with the latter category, but that doesn’t give you an excuse to push it in a specific area.
What I’ve found through extensive camera work and summer scouting missions is that the areas I identify as hotspots for specific bucks in July are usually pretty close to where those bucks will be in September. There seems to be a big change in deer movement at that time, but a lot of it is simply that the big buck is becoming more cautious and not running into a field in broad daylight to munch away with his buddies.
That’s OK, though. If you run a practical camera strategy this summer, you’ll know where to set up off the easy food sources yourself. You’ll be able to tease out useful threads from the tapestry that is a buck’s daily habits, so you’ll know where to go even if the easy daylight activity dies on you.
Your Plan B will be way more well-thought-out than your hunting competition’s. So as you slip into a staging area or along a trail you know a specific buck uses under those conditions, you’ll have a better chance of filling an early-season tag.

IN CONCLUSION

Use cameras wisely. Your summer scouting mission isn’t finished just because you put out a bunch of cameras in June. Check them once a month and tweak their locations as needed in order to figure out why the local bucks are doing what they’re doing.
Tie that camera work into some long-range glassing and eventually you’ll start to see patterns emerge with specific bucks and how they conduct themselves on a daily basis. At that point, you’ll be in a good spot to get in and make the most of your early-season sits.