What I like about this pic.

[Harold Money jr]

I have a chestnut oak tree that has always dropped very early, like middle of August yellow and brown acorns. I had picked up my camera to move on fresh sign, so I checked that tree and as I hoped, there was fresh and old popped hulls and acorns were raining down. There was old and fresh droppings too. Since season is not open yet I hung the camera like I was going to hunt the spot. The camera is pointed away from the food tree in the direction that I figured the deer would come from and I'd have about a 10yd recurve shot if I were hunting this evening. I have a tree with pegs already set up about 10yds to the left of this camera. I'd have had this buck in close range coming from down wind. Btw this is a south facing slope, the camera is facing due west into a bedding thicket and that's where the prevailing wind comes from. I'm new to the cameras and they've confirmed and taught me alot about what's out there. Anyway that's what I like about this pic.

 

[Ski]

Looks like an outstanding spot. South facing slope with thicket and a feed tree just a few yards away so the buck can bed in the thicket and feel safe hitting the tree in daylight. During winter that thicket will get full sun and should be good bedding.

And you are correct about cameras. I learned more about deer behavior in the first year I ran a camera than I did in the lifetime of hunting before it. Now I run many of them. The devil is in the details. I find myself going back to reference years old photos and cross referencing them with historical weather data, moon position, etc. that coincides with the date and time a photo was taken. Weather Underground is perfect for that. It's amazing the patterns you can pick out that you'd never have noticed while hunting.

For instance I wanted to find out why bucks hit scrapes during daylight. I wanted to know if it was random or something I could predict. What I found over years of scrape pics was that a big majority of daylight pics were during a wind shift. As a front causes a major wind direction change such as from south to north, there will be a short lull where the wind dies to zero or near zero before picking up speed again in the opposite direction. Bucks that hit scrapes during daylight did so during that lull. I'd have never known that without trail cams. And that's only one example.

 

[BSK]

Although I had played around with the very first commercially available trail cameras back in the mid 90s, I got seriously into trail cameras for scientific purposes in the late 90s. And as I used them to collect scientific data, I realized I was learning a lot about deer behavior. In the 25+ years I've been using them extensively, I've learned a great deal about deer behavior, which has made me a more knowledgable hunter. And being a more knowledgable hunter, I've become a more successful hunter.

 

[TnTurk]

Looks like an outstanding spot. South facing slope with thicket and a feed tree just a few yards away so the buck can bed in the thicket and feel safe hitting the tree in daylight. During winter that thicket will get full sun and should be good bedding.

And you are correct about cameras. I learned more about deer behavior in the first year I ran a camera than I did in the lifetime of hunting before it. Now I run many of them. The devil is in the details. I find myself going back to reference years old photos and cross referencing them with historical weather data, moon position, etc. that coincides with the date and time a photo was taken. Weather Underground is perfect for that. It's amazing the patterns you can pick out that you'd never have noticed while hunting.

For instance I wanted to find out why bucks hit scrapes during daylight. I wanted to know if it was random or something I could predict. What I found over years of scrape pics was that a big majority of daylight pics were during a wind shift. As a front causes a major wind direction change such as from south to north, there will be a short lull where the wind dies to zero or near zero before picking up speed again in the opposite direction. Bucks that hit scrapes during daylight did so during that lull. I'd have never known that without trail cams. And that's only one example.

Using wind shifts are imo, one of if not the best tactic to killing a mature deer. If I know that a mature buck is using a certain bedding area with a specific wind direction, and the wind is going to change anytime during the day, I will slip into that area about an hour before the change because he will likely get up and move to that area to get the wind back in his favor.

 

[Ski]

Using wind shifts are imo, one of if not the best tactic to killing a mature deer. If I know that a mature buck is using a certain bedding area with a specific wind direction, and the wind is going to change anytime during the day, I will slip into that area about an hour before the change because he will likely get up and move to that area to get the wind back in his favor.

For sure. Outside of heavy rut, that might be the single biggest factor in getting older bucks on the move during daylight.

 

[Harold Money jr]

I've written about this spot before. At night and before about 9am the wind (thermal) blows directly into the thicket from the East (my entrance direction) and having hunted this spot for over 30 years I realized way too late in life that an early morning hunt did far more harm than good. I'd hunt it as a teenager and knew that until about 9 I'd get blown at. It was only if deer moved through here after the warming slope that I'd have a chance. Now it's where I take juveniles and my son, we stay across the farm where the East wind (thermal) is favorable until it shifts then move quickly into this area with a fresh wind in our face. In early Nov, way more often than not a buck or two will be running does back and forth between the bedding thicket and cedar thicket and they don't seem to realize the wind has recently shifted.

 

[Harold Money jr]

I read somewhere, maybe here, that "to kill a mature buck the wind must be mostly in his favor but, not all in his favor" I think about that one a lot.