TN Whitetail Freak
Well-Known Member
To get a good indication of the quality of bucks in the area?....I have more areas than cams and would like to move em around to get an idea of the type of bucks in each area
How long to leave a camera Out?
- Thread starter TN Whitetail Freak
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Shed Hunter
Well-Known Member
That's a tough question to answer. If you want to know what bucks use the area throughout the year, you are going to have to run cameras all through the year. On a well established salt lick my deer usually come through at least once a month and on bait usually every two weeks. Scrapes are just something that you have to know the right timing for. Sometimes the bucks will use them frequently, but there are times they avoid them. I do 't do much for food plot cams so I can't help you there. Actual trail setups are just a complete guess.
Jarred525
Well-Known Member
This time of year I like to move mine once every three weeks. I mainly have mine over established mineral sites.
Mr.Bro
Well-Known Member
The 2 bucks im looking for havent showed up.Will be moving all mine soon.
UTGrad
Well-Known Member
I set mine up on commonly used trails and don't move them. I try to keep from going in the woods too much. I like to leave the woods "undisturbed"
TN Whitetail Freak
Well-Known Member
Im more or less trying to get a guess on the homebody deer...the ones that shiw up during the rut are bonus deer the way I see it.......i guess the best option is to buy more cams
Shed Hunter
Well-Known Member
TN Whitetail Freak said:
Summer is by far the worst time (IMO) to know what deer call your property home during season.
TN Whitetail Freak
Well-Known Member
Master Chief said:
Whats your reasoning
Shed Hunter
Well-Known Member
TN Whitetail Freak said:
Simply because summer ranges often are not the same as fall ranges. Summer ranges tend to make up a small proportion of a deer's home range and many times the buck never uses his summer range during the fall.
TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
Very true, often not realized.Master Chief said:
SOME bucks will use similar patterns summer and fall, but I believe most will make significant changes. Just keep in mind 1 square mile is 640 acres, and many bucks will be spending their fall roaming on over 2 square miles, with occasional excursions sometimes many miles in a single direction.
Bucks tend to group together during summer, and not move around much when undisturbed. With thick summer cover surrounding them, they tend to get disturbed less, with this additional summer cover allowing them to occupy places that may be void of cover during the fall.
But once that farm crop is harvested, or that summer cover becomes more sparse fall cover, particular summer bachelor groups may be daily using a much larger area centered a mile away in any direction. What's more, may see 4 bucks together during summer, each going a separate direction for their separate fall ranges.
I do often see SOME of the summer bucks again during the fall. But more often, most of the bucks seen during fall were not seen during summer, or may be being seen regularly over a mile away during the fall from where they were regularly using a salt lick or field during the summer.
And sometimes the more we do to "improve" the habitat, install lush food plots, etc., it can equate to seeing fewer bucks during the summer in what we may consider our best habitat. Female deer will mainly occupy the best habitat of an area during the summer months, and dominate the male deer (running them off).
The bucks we typically call "ours" are more typically "everyone's".
BSK
Well-Known Member
TN Whitetail Freak said:
Are these cameras over bait of any kind, or just covering trails/fields?
When running summer camera censuses over bait, I find, on average, that I have 57% of the bucks I can get on camera within the first 7 days. At 14 days, I have 80% of what I can get. At three weeks (21 days), I have 93%. So you get the most benefit during the first two weeks (4 out of 5 bucks that can be photographed), but if you want to get 9 out of 10 bucks on camera, you're looking at leaving a camera over bait for 19 or 20 days.
BSK
Well-Known Member
TN Whitetail Freak said:
TN Whitetail Freak,
As Wes pointed out, in some situations, bucks may have very different summer ranges than fall ranges. Bucks often leave their normal range to join a summer bachelor group. This social strategy has numerous advantages. However, often the geographic location of a summer bachelor group is outside the normal fall range of each of the bucks in the group. As summer comes to an end (and this usually occurs right around antler velvet shedding time--the last week of August or the first two weeks of September), these summer bachelor groups break up and each buck returns to his normal fall range, which can be miles from where the bachelor group had been using during the summer.
This is one of the primary reasons hunters wonder why the bucks they've been watching all summer suddenly "disappear" just before bow season opens.
Every property is different, and I've certainly seen properties that see no major change in buck population from summer to fall, but I've also seen a BUNCH of properties that experience EXTREME turnover in buck population from summer to fall, and I mean literally none of the bucks that use the property during the fall hunting season are the same bucks that used the property during the summer.
TN Whitetail Freak
Well-Known Member
When about do bucks quit growing antler size
BSK
Well-Known Member
TN Whitetail Freak said:
For most bucks, the first week or two of August. They then generally spend about 3-4 weeks hardening the antlers to bone. Look closely at the velvet antler's tips in pictures. If each of the point/beam tips look rounded, bulbous, and darker in color, the antlers are still growing longer. Once the antler tips have stopped growing longer, the velvet tips will narrow down to a point.
