The Best Summer Trail Camera Strategy

The most prominent trail camera strategy in today’s deer-o-sphere is using them to confirm what a hunter already suspects about local whitetails. This is why so many of us mount cameras over standing soybean fields or the edges of food plots in July. We know bucks feed regularly in those spots, and we want to get pictures of them.

It’s pretty simple, really, but often not all that productive. If you’ve got a property locked up and know that no one will come in and mess with the summer patterns, then yes, you can plan a strategy around those images. But be honest, you were going to hunt those spots anyway, because they’re no-brainer locations for early-season bowhunting setups.

The problem with scouting that way is that it works with a good summer destination food source — but then, those patterns crumble just before or right after you get your first chance to slip in with a bow and try to intercept a target buck. This is where trail cameras can hurt us if we’re not careful.

It’s easy to hunt on memory, but a buck that has bailed on his summer food pattern isn’t likely to return to it in a way that will allow you to encounter him during shooting hours. This is especially true if you’re hunting pressured ground, whether public or private.

A better bet with scouting cameras is to use them to figure out what is going on in the places where you’re really not sure what the activity level is, or to sort out the routes target bucks are taking as they travel to/from food sources. Practically speaking, this is what scouting is all about, and it’s possible with the right camera strategy.

The idea obviously is to identify good bucks that might be moving during legal shooting hours, then pin down locations you can sneak into, and actually hunt, correctly. Doing so isn’t nearly as easy as we’d like to believe, though. If it were, success rates would be much, much higher.

Each year I hunt whitetails on public land in four or five states, and if there’s one thing I find consistently, it’s that the easy spots are nearly always worthless to hunt outside the hottest part of the rut. The better bucks I see, and occasionally arrow, almost always have made the mistake of moving during daylight either on a travel route or in a staging area, both of which will be in security cover.

While some big bucks seem to be terribly ensconced in a nocturnal lifestyle, most aren’t. They just don’t move a whole lot during daylight in any place but their favorite sanctuaries. This information matters, because those might be the only spots in which you’ll ever encounter them with enough daylight to get a legal shot.

These spots will almost always relate to a destination food source. That’s true even in the Northwoods, where there isn’t an agricultural field or food plot within miles. The deer usually have a feeding place in mind, but they’ll take their sweet time getting there — and most often, you’ll run out the clock before they poke their nose into any open areas.

So while the soybean field on your farm or parcel of public land is where the bucks will probably end up each night, how they get there and how they leave are what matter most to us hunters. The same goes for the oak ridge in the big woods or an irrigated alfalfa field out west.

My typical strategy is to start at the most obvious destination food sources and place cameras in the first patch of good cover off them, hanging in what appear to be high-traffic spots. This might be a ditch or ravine crossing or simply a trail carved down the face of a bluff. Regardless, the idea is to get an idea of which deer are moving through the cover near the most obvious food.

It’s important to remember here that the July woods can look a lot different from the September woods, and another thing entirely when you consider November. The first, most likely staging area off the food will last until the leaves drop or hunting pressure on the field edges pushes the deer deeper, or maybe persuades them to stay even farther back.

NO DICE…NOW WHAT?

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.

How to Avoid Western Hunting Mistakes

When hunters fresh to the West go home empty-handed, it’s usually for one of two reasons. They can’t get to the game, or for those who can, they fail to get in position and make the shot before the opportunity walks away.

Nine years of professional guiding in Montana and Utah taught me that. And every guide I’ve discussed the matter with agrees.

While these issues are all-too-common, you don’t have to be that hunter who goes home with nothing but wistful tales of the one that got away. Here’s how to anticipate, prepare, and perform when the time comes.

Get in the Game

The physical aspect of hunting the West’s Rocky Mountains is vastly different from hunting, anywhere else in the Lower 48. Yawning canyons, knife-edged ridges, and windswept plains give up their shot opportunities reluctantly. You can expect to put in a considerable physical effort to find game and then more, usually in a race against time, to get within range.

Your level of physical fitness will determine where and how hard you can hunt. Be realistic, but be determined, too. Exercise frequently for several months before your hunt and emphasize building mental toughness. A no-quit attitude is more critical than even physical capability.

While working on physical fitness and mental fortitude, practice visualizing shot opportunities in rugged, dangerous, wild country far from any treestand, ground blind, or shooting bench. Expect a big, mature animal to be in the hardest-to-access spot in the country. You may be exhausted from hours of hiking, but if you or your guide spots a big critter, you’ve got to switch on the reserve tank, put the motor in high gear, and get yourself close enough for a shot.

That may require running a mile down a ridgetop or climbing a half-mile straight up through a treacherous, loose-shale rockslide. You may have to cross through a cavernously deep canyon and climb out the other side.

Sometimes the effort for success is so shocking that hunters quit, often when just a little more lung-heaving, muscle-burning toil would have put them inside ethical range. Those folks never return to the West. Those that dig deep and get it done reap rewards that are deeply fulfilling, and they become addicted.

Just remember: If you aren’t willing to gut it out to get to a spot from which to shoot, you’ll never have even a chance at success. The West calls, challenges, tests, and rewards those that meet her halfway. Expect it. Relish it. Earn it.

Make the Kill

Once you’re within your ethical range and found a shot window, you must have the mental wherewithal and technical savvy to put together a stable position and send a bullet through the vitals of that big buck, bull, bear, or ram—usually with very limited time.

Here’s where most non-mountain hunters come apart at the seams. First, they can’t see the game. Then, they can’t get quickly into a steady position. Finally, they don’t know where to hold past 100 yards. The fact that many big western animals are shot at distances 300 yards or farther exacerbates the issue.

To prevent the first problem, practice looking. When your guide finds animals, ask him to point them out and take the time to study them, even if they’re females or small bucks. Learn how they move, learn their colors, and learn their shapes. Don’t fall into the habit of being a lazy client by letting the guide do all the glassing. Try to find animals before the guide. All this will help you key in on a shooter when it appears.

Next problem. Field positions are tricky for non-westerners. After all, who wants to lie prone among the chiggers back home and practice shooting? Or learn to dive into position like a baseball player going for home? Practice shooting paper plates offhand out to 60 yards or so. Past that distance, most hunters—no matter the running whitetail that they bumped off with a 200-yard snapshot back in high school—just can’t reliably make an offhand shot. Try for speed, with the caveat that you never fire unless you know the shot’s money. Don’t press the trigger on a high-risk shot; you’ll just spook the game out of the country. If you’re wobbling all over, get steady and then kill cleanly.

This mule deer buck was shot from a considerable distance using an improvised position on a steep slope seconds after being spotted. The deer was about to crest the mesa top.

Learn to drop quickly into a sitting position, elbows planted firmly on knees, and smack that paper plate out to 200 yards. Sitting is the most stable, most useful position for fleeting shot opportunities inside that distance.

Perfect the art of going prone fast and squeezing a careful shot into that paper plate out to 300 yards—in less than seven seconds from a standing start. Then add a daypack or bipod and extend that distance to 400 yards.

Learn to glance around and use natural terrain features when setting up to take the shot. A big rock, log, or hummock can serve as an improvised benchrest and significantly improve your chances of making a perfect shot.

Once steady, take a deep breath or two, oxygenating muscles and sharpening vision. Lock the crosshairs in position and squeeze that trigger. Follow through as the rifle recoils. Then, while keeping the scope on the animal, work the bolt like there’s no tomorrow and get the reticle back on the vitals, ready to shoot again if necessary.

Simple & Savvy

When hunting rugged, high-elevation country, the old adage KISS (keep it simple, stupid) applies. You don’t need a daypack full of whiz-bang gadgets; you just need to be really good with your rifle. Know your precise point of impact to 400 yards. Use a clear scope that allows you to see your game in challenging low-light conditions. Use a premium bullet that will drive deep and kill effectively from any shot angle.

Finally, be aggressive. Unlike the whitetail woods, where a big buck is often better left unpursued and unspooked in hopes of getting a better opportunity another day, game in the West is unpredictable. Once that big trophy is found, give everything you’ve got to take it, because you’ll probably never see it again.

How to Scout and Hunt National Forest Land

More hunters than ever are taking the chance on new hunting areas. It’s the new frontier in deer hunting, in my opinion. Of course, it’s our philosophy at North American Whitetail, both in print and on TV, to bring you hunting experiences from many geographic regions. In so doing, we commonly find ourselves scouting and hunting in a compressed time period, just as you might on a DIY hunt to a new area.

Early in the history of NAW, I wrote about our research findings here at the Institute for White-tailed Deer Management & Research, noting how it might apply to readers’ management/hunting situations. Our research on buck movements and behavior led to a number of articles providing key insights into the world of mature bucks.

In summer 1991, one of my research technicians approached me with a challenge. “You get to hunt all these great places,” he chided. “But can you show me how to kill a good buck on national forest land in Texas?”

Younger and feeling full of “vinegar,” I accepted the challenge. I told my student to pick out one of the national forests (all of which are in the eastern part of the state) and we’d give it a go.

He chose Davy Crockett NF, one of the most heavily hunted public properties in Texas. He then picked out the general area for the experiment.

The first thing I did was acquire aerial imagery of the forest, along with USGS topographic maps. It wasn’t as easy then as today to acquire such resources, but the U.S. Forest Service and Soil Conservation Service had just what we needed.

The next step was to critically analyze the maps to find areas that fit the model of deer behavior and habitat preferences our research had developed. Fortunately, our research wasn’t limited to deer; we also studied hunters. Our early research had shown that the average hunter never gets more than 1,500 feet from a road or right-of-way. Using this knowledge, we drew a “hunter influence zone” extending that distance from all roads and rights-of-way. We’d just identified places few hunters visited.

We’d also learned whitetails are “drainage” creatures, preferring to associate their activities linearly along drainages. No matter how pronounced or subtle the drainage, deer use is higher in such areas than elsewhere. Each drainage has at least one doe social group (clan) living mostly adjacent to it. The social group is made of a tightly knit family of related does: mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts, etc.

The biological purpose of bucks is to maintain the genetic diversity of the population by traveling from drainage to drainage (one doe group to another) during the rut. They move between drainages mostly via “saddles,” which are topographically defined spots between the heads of two drainages.

To this point in the exercise, we’d found the areas of lower hunting pressure and then had parsed those into the zones featuring drainages. The next step was to find saddles connecting the drainages. This reduced our setup choices significantly.

The final step was to critically analyze the habitats associated with these areas. What we looked for was suitable bedding and foraging cover. Bedding cover in the region consists of young pine plantations and regenerating cutover areas 5-10 years of age. (In the North, this age class would have to be a bit older; trees grow more slowly as we move north.) We narrowed our search down to three areas.

The only way to further narrow our reconnaissance was to actually visit the areas. This wasn’t difficult, as by now we’d narrowed down several thousand acres to a few hundred.

It now was early September, two months until gun season. But rather than rush to the woods, I waited until the end of the month to allow bucks to establish rub lines and early scrapes. I’ve never placed much credence in scrapes, as most are made at night, but they do reveal info on the density and attitudes of the bucks. I took my assistant and his hunting buddy with me to share in the “teachable moments” afforded by this exercise, as well as to show them how to get into and set up on any hotspots we found.

Using aerial photos, we found the shortest paths to the scouting areas in question. Each one took about an hour to reach, and we determined the best approach to use for each area during hunting season. We primarily were looking for areas easy to travel through. Although the season was a good time away, we didn’t want to disturb the areas excessively.

In East Texas, the prevailing wind is from the southeast, even during gun season. However, cool “northers” often push through around opening day. So we took into account the wind direction our two hunters likely would be facing in November.

The next step was to go to the drainages and inspect mid-slope areas for trails and buck sign. Finding a rub is like finding the edge of a highway. Most hunters treat a rub as a point object, rather than a linear path. But when you find a rub, you need to look in all directions for the next one. It should lead to the next, and so on.

Bucks tell us where they go when in hard antler by leaving rubs. These travel corridors can be one-way or two-way, as evidenced by whether trees are rubbed on just one side or both.

So-called “signpost” rubs serve to notify other bucks, both visually and by smell, that a certain dominant buck uses that area. These rubs generally occur in only two places: in staging areas and around sanctuary beds. A staging area is a place where bucks congregate late in the evening to intercept does on their way to feed. Such a location is distinctive, featuring a very open understory and numerous larger-diameter trees rubbed substantially.

Older bucks arrive in these spots just at dark, deposit scent on their signposts, then bed and wait for the does to come through. Just before daylight, the bucks leave and head back to their sanctuary beds. Around each bed is a circle of signpost rubs, making these spots fairly easy to find — if you know what to look for.

Conducting a reconnaissance in each of our three identified areas on public land, I made my choice, basing it on several attributes. First, the travel corridor extended along the mid-slope of a drainage populated by older hardwood trees with some understory cover, then turned sharply to cross the small creek at a shallow point.

Second, the travel corridor extended up the drainage to a well-defined saddle some 200 yards away. Within the saddle area trees had been logged about 10 years earlier, producing a great bedding area.

Third, the drainage led downhill into a small cover of mixed oaks, which we determined by binocular examination were covered with developing acorns. It was a classic setup; all we had to do was devise an approach plan and find the “perfect” trees in which to hang stands.

As there would be two hunters to set up, the situation was a bit complicated. I decided to check the drainage on the other side of the saddle, finding a good location for a second stand there. Both spots would be perfect for a southeast wind, but a disaster with a north wind. In each place I marked the tree with a random pile of branches. (In heavily hunted areas it’s a shame you have to hide your markings, but why waste all that work and give away a great spot?)

We were conducting research on the social activities of mature bucks at the time. Based on that research, I recognized the tendency for a mature buck to travel with another buck (aka a “toady”), most often a year younger. So I cautioned both hunters to not shoot the first buck that came along the trail, as he might prove to be the lesser buck. (Of course, if the first buck was so big it didn’t matter, forget that advice!) My last admonition was not to hunt the two spots on opening morning unless the wind was from the southeast. We’d worked too hard to then “squirrel” the deal by being impatient.

I gave little more thought to this after that day. But at 9:45 a.m. on opening day of gun season, I received an excited call from my research assistant. There were no cell phones at that time, so he’d traveled a good half-hour or so to find a pay phone.

“You were right, Doc,” he said. “A buck came right down the trail, right to left, just like you said . . . and I shot him!”

Of course, I was thrilled. But then he revealed that after he’d shot the buck, he’d climbed down from the tree and heard a snort up the trail. “It was the big buck,” he confessed. “I guess you were right about waiting.”

I wasn’t upset. My friend had a nice young buck and hopefully had learned something about hunting whitetails on public lands.

Since those days, we’ve learned even more about buck behavior, activity and habitat preferences. New technologies such as trail cameras and GPS have greatly increased the efficiency of patterning deer. We no longer wait until September to pattern travel corridors, as we know rubs and even scrapes remain obvious to the trained eye for over a year.

I’m writing this on June 7, just after returning home from work on a buck-sign study in Georgia. Research intern Nathaniel Payne is using GPS to map the distribution of buck sign over a 4,000-acre area. We trained him to recognize rubs that were made last fall, and some even earlier. Old rubs are easy to spot; the tree tries to heal itself, making a callus scar. Even scrapes can be found, due to their telltale cupped depressions (even filled with leaves) and the broken licking branches over them. The bottom line is, you can pattern deer any time.

But what about a really “cold” DIY hunt for which you have only a few days or weeks to prepare? You can use the same techniques, but you have to use stealth and timing of work to not disturb the deer. I prefer to do all such reconnaissance work in midday and to move quickly in the process. A buck isn’t going to be run out of an area by what appears to be a human’s casual appearance. You can reduce disturbance further by doing most of your work at home or at the office, using the wealth of aerial and satellite imagery and maps.

When we began our research using GPS, the cost was very high and you had to have some very sophisticated geospatial analytical tools to make sense of the data. Now a host of smartphone apps can collect and display GPS locations, letting you conduct “computer” analyses with your brain.

A hunting career should provide skills based on years of observations, data and analytical thought about what happened (or didn’t) over that span. And that’s really what so much of deer hunting boils down to: experience. Some hunters are still using the same tactics they did when they started. Others have adapted, learning from their mistakes and successes alike. Going in “cold” is one of the best ways to learn skills, and being able to take a nice buck in the process is the last stage in the development of a skilled hunter.

8 Awesome Ducks Hunts You Can Do Right Now

1. Summer Lake, Oregon: Many generations of waterfowl hunters from around the Pacific Northwest grew uphunting Summer Lake in central Oregon's high desert region. Early-season duck and goose hunting can be very good, with snow goose and Canada goose hunting getting better as the season progresses, until freeze-up. Camping is available, check-in is required.

2. Tillamook Bay, Oregon: A great place to take the boat and cover water, Tillamook Bay, in the northwest corner of the state, offers good puddle duck hunting late in the season, with widgeon dominating the take. It's also one of the best places to pursue sea ducks and divers, with scoter, goldeneye, the occasional harlequin, and more.

3. Humbolt Bay, California: Ducks and geese galore, and great public access for your motorized duck boats. Black brant are a draw here, as are sea ducks, divers and Aleutian Canada geese. When the Aleutians are hammering the fields late in the season, access is a challenge, but PacificOutfitters.com can take care of you, and their rates are very reasonable.

4. Columbia River, WA & OR: Big water and lots of birds with loads of access along the Washington and Oregon borders. Perhaps the best river in the region to secure an array of divers and puddle ducks, and the Canada goose hunting can be great, too. Decoying both puddle ducks and divers along the protected edges can be exceptional. When storms kick-up, be careful, this is serious water.

5. Willamette Valley Rivers, OR: The Willamette River and its tributaries offer much public access, be it with a drift boat or sled. Puddle duck shooting can be good from late November on, and if the surrounding fields and ponds freeze, the rivers are where you want to be. Decoying in sloughs can be red-hot on icy days.

6. Willamette Valley Fields, OR: With the influx of multiple subspecies of Canada geese holding in many of western Oregon's rye grass fields all season long, the real estate between Salem and Eugene is prime. Travel the I-5 corridor, and Highway 99, looking for geese working fields along with flags farmers have put out to keep geese away. Cacklers can be in flocks of 5,000 or more, and they move around, but many farmers want them gone.

7. Snake River, OR & ID: Early in the year the hunting for resident ducks can be good, but late-season migratory hunts can be exceptional. Mallards, widgeon and wood ducks abound, along with divers. This is big water, and a motorized boat is a must.

8. Klamath Basin, OR & CA: Several hunt areas lie within the Klamath Basin. Opening weekend waterfowl hunts in both the California and Oregon portions of Lower Klamath Refuge and Tule Lake Refuge are authorized through a draw permit only. Applications are accepted Aug. 1-31. Throughout the season, other areas require check-in, some are on your own. There are marshes and grasslands you can walk through, other places you'll need a boat. Learn more at fws.gov/refuge/Tule_Lake/visit/visitor_activities/hunting/waterfowl.html.