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