Tuesday's Tips & Techniques - #1

Preseason scouting using Camera's:

With deer season for most states right around the corner most of us are doing some last minute preseason scouting. Some say that patterning a whitetail is next to impossible and that might be true to a certain extent but, if you do your homework and spend as much time as possible looking, watching, glassing, studying and taking pictures you can get an educated idea on where they might be at a given time of year.

For me scouting never stops whether it is January and the season is all over and I am gearing up for shed hunting or it's the end of summer and I'm watching the fields looking for deer after the farmers have harvested their crops or it's the middle of deer season and I'm watching deer from my tree stand that are out of range.

Here is one of my most important tools for scouting, a deer cam with a motion detector set up to take pictures when I'm not even around.

When I first bought this they were fairly new on the market and it was real expensive but now you can get some real nice ones at a fair price.

I use it on travel corridors and I have set it up on scrapes and even sometimes rub lines. They can help you figure out deer density, age of deer and help with determining the buck to doe ratio in your area as well as time of day they are coming by.

In my opinion they generally have paid for themselves in the first year.

This camera I pictured was mounted in an area that I frequent and have since named the Grass Pond. Last year I was able to keep track of no less than Five bucks that used this dried up pond to hide out in.

If you look closely at the picture the two other deer in the background are actually bucks as well. This pond is surrounded by laurels bushes which makes it almost impossible to get into without making noise not to mention leaving your scent all over the place.

That is why I prefer to use camera's because you can get them where the deer are and you don't have to be out there stinking up what could be the best area you have seen in awhile. So my recommendation would be to spend a little cash and pick yourself up a camera, you won't be sorry you did.

Consiquently that camera and that exact spot gave me the opportunity to harvest my biggest buck so far last season, a 150 pound 7 pointer shot at 30 yards.



I hope you have enjoyed my first post of "Tuesday's Tips & Techniques"