Trail camera: 9/21-9/28 (coyotes)

When I looked at the trail pictures this week, I was pretty surprised to find a lot of pictures of coyotes. They often show up minutes after deer or raccoons leave the bait. Although, a couple pictures showed them actually eating or licking the grain block.

I also captured more does and one more buck, although it appears that it is one of the six points that I captured last week.

The pond stand

 

This is another new stand that we built this year and one of the ones I will use as a backup. We positioned it on the edge of some big woods and a patch of thicker brush, not too far from an old pond. It seems like every year at this location there are a lot of rubs, some of them on 4+ inch trees. Only Troy has hunted this stand so far (twice), but he has seen deer both times.

Deer sighting summary so far

I was curious, so I just looked over the trail camera pictures over the last couple weeks and kept track of the time that deer arrived. Below is a chart showing the number of deer (y-axis) that arrived during each hour (x-axis) over the last two weeks.

Although I have only been keeping track for the last two weeks, during daylight hours, the hot times are between 6 and 9 AM and between 5 and 6 PM. The middle of day between 11 and 3 PM is also decent as well. For evening hunts, it appears that the best time to get to the stand will be around 4 PM.

Notes: Small bucks are anything between a spike and a 7 point. Large bucks are anything 8+ points. Hopefully I'll be adding some of those to the chart soon.

Three days until opening day - Scouting report

Only three days until opening day, but unfortunately I will be out of town opening weekend and unable to hunt. I went out to the woods tonight with Troy. We found a lot of new rubs and a couple new scrapes. Most of the rubs were near a stand that we recently built, which is a great sign. This stand will probably be one of my backup stands for the year.

To close the evening, I drove by the fields around the property we hunt. In one of the fields adjacent to where my main stand is located, there were two nice bucks, one of them a brute. Its back was a good foot or two over the full grown soy beans (most deer you can only see their head). I pulled over to the side of the road and watched them for a bit through binoculars. The one is a nice 8 point, the other a 10+, with a pretty wide rack.

I hope I start seeing these guys in my trail camera...

Trail camera pictures: 9/15 - 9/21

 

Above are the first bucks that I have captured with my new trail camera - two six points and a four point. They are all pretty small, but it's a start. The stand continues to look like a great spot with deer visiting every day and night - and not just the same deer. During daylight hours, the deer are showing up mostly around sunrise and a couple hours before sunset. The hours between noon and 2 PM is seeing some action as well.

 

The camera also captured a few new creatures - a possum, a small coyote, and a fox.

 

First trail camera pics

Above are the first pictures of deer that I've collected in the woods using my new trail camera (Bushnell Trophy Cam). I took it out for the first time on Friday 9/10/2010 and mounted on a tree facing the small clearing I previously made. I faced the camera to the north (towards my stand) in order to keep the sun behind the camera and hopefully improve the pictures. I then added some corn and a grain block to the clearing in order to attract deer.  In the first four days in the field, the good news is that the camera captured deer every day and night. The bad news is that none of them were bucks. Even so, the camera appears to be working great in both day and night time and was sensitive enough to even capture squirrels, rabbits, and even small birds. Although it's a small sample so far, during daylight hours, the deer have been showing up between 7 and 9 AM and also around 2 to 3 PM and 6 to 7 PM.

Unfortunately, the deer are not the only things that have been eating the bait. On the first night, one raccoon showed up. On the second, there were three. By the fourth night, there were eight. Yikes. I have a feeling I am going to be buying a lot of corn.

My main tree stand

 

Due to the fact that some of the land we used to hunt on was sold, I built a new tree stand this year (shown from the back and front above). After a lot of scouting, I decided to build the stand in some thick cover between two of the bean fields. The tree stand is up in an evergreen (providing year round cover) and overlooks a series of deer trails surrounded by about 4 to 8 foot tall brush. My thinking with this stand was that because the area is fairly crowded with hunters and stands, I would try a place that the deer would normally see as safe. Thus, my hope is that I may be able to see and potentially get a shot at some of the more elusive deer. The only drawback of the stand is that the whole tree will move if you shift your weight too much, potentially spooking the deer. I will have to make sure to make very small movements in the stand while hunting. I additionally cleared a few shooting lanes and a small area in front of the stand for baiting. I placed the trail camera on the far side of the clearing in the picture below. This should hopefully allow me to get good pictures of any deer that come in to feed or are just waking the main path past my stand. The second picture looks out to the right of the stand at one of the larger trails.

 

The trail camera

  

After a lot of research, I ended up purchasing a Bushnell Trophy Cam at Amazon.com. In the end, for the features I wanted, it came down to the HCO Scoutguard or the Trophy Cam and I decided on the Trophy Cam due to a slight price advantage at the time. The Trophy Cam is small, features 3, 5, or 8 MP resolution, infrared night vision, and the ability to capture pictures or video. Most important, the camera has a very fast trigger time (the time it takes from when it senses an animal to when it takes the picture), a battery life of up to 1 year, and a relatively cheap price for a camera with its features. Trigger time is critical for catching animals on the move. On slower cameras, the animal may already be out of the screen when the picture is taken.


Here are the main web sites I used to make my decision-
Trail camera review site: http://www.trailcampro.com/bushnelltrophycamreview.aspx
Trail camera "shootout": http://www.trailcampro.com/2009trailcamerashootout.aspx

Due to the fact the hunting land is crowded with hunters, I also purchased a custom lock box on Ebay from the RC Store and a Master Lock Python Locking Cable.

After receiving all the items, I set it up in my back yard to make sure it was working properly. Below are some of the images I captured over about a week of testing. Click on the images for larger versions. There were no deer, but it did capture a squirrel (and my neighbor) during the day and quite a few pictures of a cat at night. The pictures taken during the day looked great. The pictures at night were dark around the edges and a little fuzzy, but I am going to increase the number of batteries in the unit from 4 to 8. From what I've read, this should help improve the IR flash and the night time pictures. I am looking forward to see what it captures in the woods...
~Joe

Scouting so far...

During the summer, we (mainly myself, my brother-in-law Pat, and my cousin Troy) have seen a lot of deer in the fields where we hunt. We have scouted mostly during the afternoons and evenings. Deer have been seen feeding in the soy bean fields mostly about an hour before sunset, but also occasionally in the afternoon. The doe above was spotted a few weeks ago at about 5 PM when were repairing one of our old tree stands. While she was feeding on the beans, we walked within 40 yards of her before she realized we were there.

We have seen several nice bucks - two 10+ points, several 8 points, and other smaller bucks. Hopefully one of us will get a chance to see them when we are in our stands. I am looking forward to seeing what my trail camera shows - not only the deer near my stand, but also when they are there.

About the hunting land

The hunting land is about 250 acres (0.4 square miles) of urban farm land. The area has 4 fields, all of which are planted with soy beans this year. The fields cover roughly half the area where I will be hunting. This year, there are about 10 or 12 hunters with permission to hunt on this land and about 16 tree stands, so it goes without saying that it is pretty crowded. As with most urban hunting areas, the increased human traffic makes it much more difficult to spot and shoot deer. After the first couple weeks of the season, most of the deer become very cautious. Thus, the best chances to see and shoot a deer are during the opening week and before and during the rut when the bucks are a little less cautious.
~Joe