Odd trail-camera data

[BSK]

Just throwing this out there for all those who run camera censuses on their property: has anyone else observed rapidly increasing adult sex ratio data from cameras over food plots but NOT at other locations? I ask because I've noticed that with each passing year, I'm getting many, many more pictures of does feeding in food plots but not bucks. I may get 50 set of pictures of the same 3 does and 2 fawns feeding in a plot over an hour's time, but when a buck comes by I just get one or two sets of pictures as he feeds across the plot. The bucks almost never stay and feed for long periods of time. This doe-heavy feeding in food plots really skews my sex ratio data. In fact, I've gone to calculating my sex ratio data separating food plot data from all other camera locations. The food plot data shows a sky-rocketing number of does per buck while all other camera locations combined do not show this trend. I have no idea which number is "real" (and possibly neither are). Anyone else seen anything like this? Below is a graph (a three-year running mean) of calculated adult sex ratios for food plot cameras versus cameras not pointed into food plots since 2007. Notice how fast the adult sex ratio is skewing towards does in the food plot data but not for all other locations.

 

[Shooter77]

Most buck pics I've had in my plots over last 4 years, are bucks just cruising through. Does will stay there for 10-30 mins. The only pic I've gotten that a buck stayed was a nice 8 this fall. He stood in front of my cam on video mode for over 5 mins and only did 2 quick bits. rest of time, he was looking around.

Here is the buck from fall

 

[DoubleRidge]

Just throwing this out there for all those who run camera censuses on their property: has anyone else observed rapidly increasing adult sex ratio data from cameras over food plots but NOT at other locations? I ask because I've noticed that with each passing year, I'm getting many, many more pictures of does feeding in food plots but not bucks. I may get 50 set of pictures of the same 3 does and 2 fawns feeding in a plot over an hour's time, but when a buck comes by I just get one or two sets of pictures as he feeds across the plot. The bucks almost never stay and feed for long periods of time. This doe-heavy feeding in food plots really skews my sex ratio data. In fact, I've gone to calculating my sex ratio data separating food plot data from all other camera locations. The food plot data shows a sky-rocketing number of does per buck while all other camera locations combined do not show this trend. I have no idea which number is "real" (and possibly neither are). Anyone else seen anything like this? Below is a graph (a three-year running mean) of calculated adult sex ratios for food plot cameras versus cameras not pointed into food plots since 2007. Notice how fast the adult sex ratio is skewing towards does in the food plot data but not for all other locations.

Wow...that's interesting...I have not seen anything like that? But I haven't been collecting data as long and don't have as many cameras dedicated to only food plots.

But...while I don't "bait" with corn at camera locations I do have trophy rocks in three different locations and similar to what you described...I get plenty of buck pics but at certain times couple mama does with fawn get on the trophy rock and won't leave...picture after picture of the same group....so I'm sure this has inflated our doe numbers in our survey calculation some.

 

[rifle02]

Wow...that's interesting...I have not seen anything like that? But I haven't been collecting data as long and don't have as many cameras dedicated to only food plots.

But...while I don't "bait" with corn at camera locations I do have trophy rocks in three different locations and similar to what you described...I get plenty of buck pics but at certain times couple mama does with fawn get on the trophy rock and won't leave...picture after picture of the same group....so I'm sure this has inflated our doe numbers in our survey calculation some.

Same thing here for the trophy rocks. I get does with their fawns constantly. During antler growing time and just before velvet sheds I have Buck groups visit together. The best Buck I've ever seen on my property was at a trophy Rock last year in november. Never saw him before, haven't seen him since. But he did stop to lick the Rock!

 

[JCDEERMAN]

Same observations. The does and fawns will stay for hours. I do see quite a few yearling bucks stay for long periods as well. I assume they are still a little "family-oriented", as the 2.5+ bucks are well on their own and are always just cruising through grabbing a bite here and there.

 

[Ski]

You've got a doe infestation. A property can only support so many mouths, and does/fawns naturally get priority preference of habitat. Pregnant does require lots of nutrition. Fawns require lots of cover. Your property has the lion's share of both in your neighborhood, so logically your property will eventually have the lion's share of does & fawns if not already. I'd say that is what you're beginning to see unfold. With every doe fawn born, a buck leaves. With every new doe who moves in, a buck leaves. Eventually you'll be lucky to see a 2.5yr+ buck at all because the girls chase away yearlings and up. It happens pretty fast and is exponential. I think you're seeing it exaggerated this year because of the lack of natural food as result of late frost & drought leading into it, so there's a stronger than usual gravitation to your place/plots. Problem is they'll stay and give birth to more does.

 

[BSK]

Same observations. The does and fawns will stay for hours. I do see quite a few yearling bucks stay for long periods as well. I assume they are still a little "family-oriented", as the 2.5+ bucks are well on their own and are always just cruising through grabbing a bite here and there.

Same. Yearling bucks acting like does, feeding multiple times per day. But 2 1/2+, they just grab a mouthful on their way through.

 

[BSK]

You've got a doe infestation. A property can only support so many mouths, and does/fawns naturally get priority preference of habitat. Pregnant does require lots of nutrition. Fawns require lots of cover. Your property has the lion's share of both in your neighborhood, so logically your property will eventually have the lion's share of does & fawns if not already. I'd say that is what you're beginning to see unfold. With every doe fawn born, a buck leaves. With every new doe who moves in, a buck leaves. Eventually you'll be lucky to see a 2.5yr+ buck at all because the girls chase away yearlings and up. It happens pretty fast and is exponential. I think you're seeing it exaggerated this year because of the lack of natural food as result of late frost & drought leading into it, so there's a stronger than usual gravitation to your place/plots. Problem is they'll stay and give birth to more does.

Only problem with that theory is, I'm seeing a massive increase in bucks on the place. In 2021 and 2022 we set new records for the number of unique bucks on camera, many of them older to mature. But why the huge increase in does using the food plots? At all other locations, including terrain funnels, habitat bottlenecks, trails, old roadbeds, etc. I'm not seeing a big spike in does. Sex ratio has stayed somewhat constant at those locations. The only place I'm seeing the spike in doe numbers - and I believe most of that is simply due to their long feeding times each visit - is in food plots. During the same time period, we have vastly increased the natural browse on the property. I'm shocked the does spend so much time in the food plots when so much other food is available.

 

[puppy]

Just throwing this out there for all those who run camera censuses on their property: has anyone else observed rapidly increasing adult sex ratio data from cameras over food plots but NOT at other locations? I ask because I've noticed that with each passing year, I'm getting many, many more pictures of does feeding in food plots but not bucks. I may get 50 set of pictures of the same 3 does and 2 fawns feeding in a plot over an hour's time, but when a buck comes by I just get one or two sets of pictures as he feeds across the plot. The bucks almost never stay and feed for long periods of time. This doe-heavy feeding in food plots really skews my sex ratio data. In fact, I've gone to calculating my sex ratio data separating food plot data from all other camera locations. The food plot data shows a sky-rocketing number of does per buck while all other camera locations combined do not show this trend. I have no idea which number is "real" (and possibly neither are). Anyone else seen anything like this? Below is a graph (a three-year running mean) of calculated adult sex ratios for food plot cameras versus cameras not pointed into food plots since 2007. Notice how fast the adult sex ratio is skewing towards does in the food plot data but not for all other locations.

I have the same general observations on my larger plots, but the smaller .25 acre plots are in line with any terrain feature camera set. I pulled 4 cams down Sat. and was going thru the cards and the biggest plot (~1.3 acre) had 9 does and fawns in one sequence and were there for 45 minutes total. All the videos off the smaller plots showed single doe/fawn families moving thru and single or in the last couple weeks small groups of bucks but never large numbers or either sex.

 

[BSK]

I have the same general observations on my larger plots, but the smaller .25 acre plots are in line with any terrain feature camera set. I pulled 4 cams down Sat. and was going thru the cards and the biggest plot (~1.3 acre) had 9 does and fawns in one sequence and were there for 45 minutes total. All the videos off the smaller plots showed single doe/fawn families moving thru and single or in the last couple weeks small groups of bucks but never large numbers or either sex.

That's fascinating puppy. I'll investigate that (usage by size of the plot). We definitely vastly increased the size of our plots. Maybe that's the key.

 

[JAD]

My observations exactly the same as JCDEERMAN. I always wondered why 2 1/2 + bucks hardly spent any time at all in my food plots, even at night. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. I do get plenty of videos of better bucks at salt licks in the woods.

 

[BSK]

I have to admit, I used to see older bucks spending time feeding in plots. Now I don't. perhaps Ski is correct that an increased number or size of doe/fawn groups are dominating the larger plots, hence older bucks just "drift through" instead of spending time feeding. Plus, we vastly increased the size of our plots, from most 1/4 to 1/3-acre plots to acre-plus plots.

And that's the difficulty in figuring out deer behavior, patterns and population structure over time. Change the habitat and the deer change their behavior. Sometimes I have to draw a vertical line through my graphs to depict when any major change occurred. I already draw a line at the point we switched from Traditional Management (shoot any buck) to QDM, and then another line at the point we started to alter the habitat. Guess I'll need a 4th line for when we made massive changes to the habitat instead of small, incremental changes.

Actually, I already have a 4th line, depicting when we started placing serious hunting pressure on the property. And since we still do, I call that the "beginning of the modern era," because that's the point at which it became difficult to kill bucks after the 1st week of MZ season (excessive pressure).

 

[Ski]

Only problem with that theory is, I'm seeing a massive increase in bucks on the place. In 2021 and 2022 we set new records for the number of unique bucks on camera, many of them older to mature. But why the huge increase in does using the food plots? At all other locations, including terrain funnels, habitat bottlenecks, trails, old roadbeds, etc. I'm not seeing a big spike in does. Sex ratio has stayed somewhat constant at those locations. The only place I'm seeing the spike in doe numbers - and I believe most of that is simply due to their long feeding times each visit - is in food plots. During the same time period, we have vastly increased the natural browse on the property. I'm shocked the does spend so much time in the food plots when so much other food is available.

I hope you're right. But at least consider the possibility that perhaps your property hadn't yet met full carry capacity so there was room for new deer. At some point in recent years that limit has been reached and is now beginning to overflow. But what's spilling out isn't random. It's your bucks. They're steadily but assuredly being pushed further & further into the periphery and it's only a matter of time before they're no longer welcome on your property at all. Those girls are viciously territorial.

Bucks and does do not coexist, especially when resources have to be rationed like this year's failed mast crop. They naturally self segregate with does & fawns taking priority choice of habitat. It's just nature doing what nature does. Like I say, I hope I'm wrong and this isn't what you're experiencing. I don't like being a Debbie Downer. And perhaps we'll have a lush summer that leads to a fall flush with mast, and everything will be back to normal. One can hope. But keep an eye out for markers that indicate over dominating does.

 

[BSK]

I hope you're right. But at least consider the possibility that perhaps your property hadn't yet met full carry capacity so there was room for new deer. At some point in recent years that limit has been reached and is now beginning to overflow. But what's spilling out isn't random. It's your bucks. They're steadily but assuredly being pushed further & further into the periphery and it's only a matter of time before they're no longer welcome on your property at all. Those girls are viciously territorial.

Now in the summer, I absolutely agree on this. We've gone from having a good number of bucks of all ages on the place in summer to just a couple of yearlings. The doe social units are absolutely pushing bucks off the property. But once acorns start to fall, we get flooded with new deer from the neighboring bottomlands. Unless we have no acorns, then the hunting really sucks! The bucks don't leave the bottomlands in poor acorn years. In 2020, and 2021 we had just 4-6 bucks using the place in summer, almost all yearlings. But both years we ended up with over 50 unique bucks using the property during the fall/hunting months, of all age-classes. But then we had decent acorns both years.

 

[deerhunter10]

Yes I have noticed it this year not years past. I personally think it's from the hard cold zapping a lot of food that usually is around add that to not good acorn crop our struggling plots and aggressive field where we left standing beans have been absolutely hammered worse than they ever have. I think we picked up a ton of deer trying to survive in January and February. It seems somewhat back to normal now of course most deer have lost their horns (Hickman County maury county line) at home where we had timely rains a good acorn crop and plots are in pretty good shape (less deer numbers) I haven't noticed it at all business as usual. Also had a somewhat normal shedding to. Hickman County a big bulk lose horns early at home they have just started in the last weekish it seems. Crazy what 40ish miles difference can make.

 

[megalomaniac]

I see the same thing... its almost like does 'claim' an area.

I think it's because does have a much smaller core area than most bucks. This time if the year, does get the best food sources and drive away the bucks. The bucks still travel through, but they don't spend a lot of time in the midst of them. But I have been seeing bucks feed for long periods of time in my 8ac plot right now. Usually does out in the plot as well, but they are 150y or more away from the does. i think thats because its such a large food source and the deer can space out from one another. The bucks are def feeding, just maybe not on the best foods (plots). At least that's what I'm thinking.

 

[tellico4x4]

Most definitely the case imo. Before CWD we used corn post season & salt blocks pre season for census data. Stopped corn & salt 3 years ago when CWD began moving our way & started trying to use plot data but seemed highly skewed. Past two years I've leaned more to observational data and it appears to be more in line with what we were seeing several years ago.

 

[BSK]

Most definitely the case imo. Before CWD we used corn post season & salt blocks pre season for census data. Stopped corn & salt 3 years ago when CWD began moving our way & started trying to use plot data but seemed highly skewed. Past two years I've leaned more to observational data and it appears to be more in line with what we were seeing several years ago.

I used to downplay the relevance of observation data for some herd dynamics primarily because, on a year-to-year basis, the observation data jumped up and down while the trail-camera data did not. However, once I started analyzing the observation data only on a statistic trend (three year running mean), I found it tracked pretty close to the trail-cam data.