We got a chance to lease a farm in our area. This is my first time of leasing ground to hunt on but I can read the writing on the wall that if you want a good place to hunt you are going to have to pay for it or have it in the family. So me and 3 buddies went in together and picked up a little place.
There were food plots that had been planted but they were over grown and in bad shape. So we went to work putting things back in order. I knew the ground around the farm had some great deer on it but had never been on this piece before.
Great mature deer we call The Great 8
Our plan is to use trail cameras to help us learn the travel routes and what deer we have on the place so far. We all know that when the rut peaks bucks can show up anywhere. We put out a camera over a new mineral lick, one of my buddies then placed a feeder out and put a camera on it and the 2 more cameras were set one on a food plot and one a main trail we found. Each camera had a lot of activity. We got to see what was going on the farm and we were pleasantly surprised. We have one Hitlist buck We are calling him the Great Eight!!!! We also got to see some of the up and comers and several fawns hanging out with Momma. It looks to be a great season and we expect nothing but things getting better from here on out.
Here are a couple tips for running a camera for scouting.
- If you want deer only on your camera DO NOT PUT OUT GRAIN OR FEED. We had over 3500 pictures of coons, Crows, Squirrels Turkeys etc. Enjoying the grain piles in front of the cameras. Our Camera over the mineral was nothing but deer.
- Find areas that you feel are travel corridors. Don’t put out anything if you want to see if the trail is used already. If you place mineral deer will find it no matter what. Just see how much action you get on the selected trails and what is moving on them and when. If you place a camera on a trail try to face it pointing up or down a trail not across this will give you a better chance to get the animal in frame.
- Just because a buck was a homebody on your farm all summer does not mean he will be there all fall. I have in the past videoed and created a long Hitlist of deer that we had seen on our farm over and over again all summer. When the fall came and the season opened we saw about 25% of those deer on our farm. Now we also had new bucks showing up each day. Which helped us find more mature bucks to hunt.
These are 3 things to help you use a camera as a scouting tool. Follow us at Victory Outdoors as the season progresses to see if this tactic pays off for us!!!!
