Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 1052: Foundations - The Evolution of Trail Cameras and How Hunters Still Use Them Wrong

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Ep. 1052: Foundations - The Evolution of Trail Cameras and How Hunters Still Use Them Wrong · Wired To Hunt Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide
0:05
Speaker 1: to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, presented by first Light,
0:09
Speaker 1: creating proven versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind.
0:14
Speaker 1: First Light, Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host
0:19
Speaker 1: Tony Peterson.
0:20
Speaker 2: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast,
0:23
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by First Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and today's episode is a look back on
0:27
Speaker 2: what trail cameras used to be, and I'll look at
0:29
Speaker 2: what they are now and how you can really use
0:31
Speaker 2: them to figure out deer and become a better hunter.
0:41
Speaker 2: The forward march of technology never ends for us, and
0:45
Speaker 2: it's easy to look at it like it's a negative,
0:47
Speaker 2: and it sure can be. But it's also nice to
0:49
Speaker 2: turn on the lights of an air conditioned house and
0:51
Speaker 2: sit down to stream content that tickles your specific fancy.
0:55
Speaker 2: It's also nice to know that if you catch the flu,
0:57
Speaker 2: you can take some over the counter medicine and not
1:00
Speaker 2: from it, you know, like our ancestors did. Technology can
1:03
Speaker 2: be good for us, and this goes for stuff we
1:05
Speaker 2: use while trying to shoot rabbits with antlers, like trail cameras.
1:09
Speaker 2: I mean, it's hard to find a better example of
1:11
Speaker 2: the evolution of technology in the hunting space than trail cameras,
1:14
Speaker 2: which is what I'm going to talk about right now.
1:22
Speaker 2: When I think about my childhood, which happened way back
1:26
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties, I think about sitting down to
1:28
Speaker 2: watch Saturday morning cartoons and microwaving a corn dog for breakfast,
1:33
Speaker 2: which I probably washed down with a glass of kool aid.
1:36
Speaker 2: I think about the time when my neighborhood buddies and
1:38
Speaker 2: I walked into the Gully, which was a wooded ravine
1:41
Speaker 2: in town that if you followed it far enough, would
1:43
Speaker 2: take you to a culvert beneath Highway fifty two, and
1:45
Speaker 2: if you kept going, would eventually lead to Mill Creek,
1:49
Speaker 2: or as we called it, the Creek. We also had
1:52
Speaker 2: the river, which was the Root River. Well. In this
1:55
Speaker 2: particular adventure, we met up with a stray dog that
1:57
Speaker 2: hung out with us, and we went to the creek
1:59
Speaker 2: to just around. I don't remember what we did exactly,
2:03
Speaker 2: but I remember it wasn't all that warm, and I
2:05
Speaker 2: remember going under a barbere a fence that I poked
2:07
Speaker 2: my arm with pretty good. I remember thinking that my
2:10
Speaker 2: mom would kill me if she knew that I was
2:11
Speaker 2: hanging out with a random dog and that I had
2:13
Speaker 2: bloodied myself up on a barbere fence. Well, that part
2:16
Speaker 2: of the creek was probably about two or three miles
2:18
Speaker 2: from my house. Now, as you can imagine, my parents
2:21
Speaker 2: had no idea me and my buddies were there, and
2:24
Speaker 2: they wouldn't have had a good idea of where to
2:25
Speaker 2: start looking for me, even if they had wanted to
2:28
Speaker 2: find me. And I know it's cliched, and I don't
2:30
Speaker 2: want to get into it, but when I look at
2:32
Speaker 2: my childhood and then the childhood of my kids, they
2:35
Speaker 2: couldn't be further apart. I don't know if that's good
2:37
Speaker 2: or bad. It's just reality and will probably always be
2:40
Speaker 2: so when it comes to parents and their kids. That
2:43
Speaker 2: time of my life was part Lord of the Flies,
2:45
Speaker 2: part total freedom, and part torture because we were left
2:47
Speaker 2: to our own devices in kids or assholes, or at
2:50
Speaker 2: least they were then. And I'd guess if you sat
2:52
Speaker 2: down with some elementary school teachers today, they'd say that
2:55
Speaker 2: hasn't entirely gone away. While I was devouring process food
2:59
Speaker 2: and avoiding even the light at supervision from adults. Other
3:02
Speaker 2: things were happening things in the hunting world, one of
3:05
Speaker 2: which was the advent of the first commercial trail camera
3:09
Speaker 2: from a company called trail Master. This new product category
3:12
Speaker 2: didn't come out of thin air. In the late seventies
3:15
Speaker 2: and early eighties, some hunters, probably hunters who were engineers
3:18
Speaker 2: by trade, started building tripware cameras that consisted of a
3:23
Speaker 2: string that you'd tie across the deer trail that activated
3:26
Speaker 2: a thirty five millimeter camera when it was tripped. These systems,
3:29
Speaker 2: as you can probably guess, weren't the most waterproof or
3:33
Speaker 2: immune to elements. They were heavy, they're prone to false triggers,
3:36
Speaker 2: and they were expensive. They didn't do much for hunting
3:39
Speaker 2: success overall, but they did prove the concept that remote
3:44
Speaker 2: wildlife photography was possible. Those kinds of ideas and those
3:48
Speaker 2: kinds of experiments generally crossed the radar of enough folks
3:51
Speaker 2: until one of them sees the commercial possibility and sets
3:54
Speaker 2: out to do something about it. And that's what trail
3:57
Speaker 2: Master did with their first models that were built in
4:00
Speaker 2: big metal housings, you know, fitted with actual real thirty
4:03
Speaker 2: five millimeters cameras, and you know that utilized a huge
4:07
Speaker 2: battery pack and had a mechanical shutter activation. They retailed
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Speaker 2: for anywhere from four hundred and fifty to about seven
4:14
Speaker 2: hundred bucks, which when you adjusted for inflation today, that's
4:18
Speaker 2: out to around eleven hundred to seventeen hundred buckaroos. That's
4:22
Speaker 2: no small investment for something that really didn't work very well,
4:26
Speaker 2: but was the loan product in a whole new category.
4:29
Speaker 2: The drawbacks of those cameras and the next several models
4:32
Speaker 2: to hit the market were many, including the fact that
4:34
Speaker 2: they were only good for daytime photos. But the main
4:37
Speaker 2: drawback was that with actual film, you only had either
4:41
Speaker 2: twenty four or thirty six chances to get your pictures.
4:45
Speaker 2: That's all roll of film could hold, and if you
4:47
Speaker 2: had grass blowing in the breeze in front of your camera,
4:50
Speaker 2: you might fill that sucker up in an afternoon. Now today,
4:53
Speaker 2: a whole bunch of false triggers is an annoyance, but
4:56
Speaker 2: you can solve for it pretty quickly, and it wouldn't
4:58
Speaker 2: keep you from also getting pictures of d year they
5:00
Speaker 2: walked by. But back then, once that role was full,
5:03
Speaker 2: you had to go into the woods to retrieve it,
5:06
Speaker 2: then take it into a store to actually have your
5:08
Speaker 2: film processed. It might have taken a couple of days
5:11
Speaker 2: or longer, and then you got a paper packet with
5:13
Speaker 2: your printed pictures in it, and you'd flip through them
5:16
Speaker 2: eagerly to realize that you didn't get a single picture
5:18
Speaker 2: of a deer. Plus you had to pay for the
5:20
Speaker 2: film development with every single role. Now fast forward to
5:25
Speaker 2: the mid nineties, by time when a lot of us
5:27
Speaker 2: could be found dying in a field somewhere from alcohol
5:29
Speaker 2: poisoning on a random Friday or Saturday night, and Camtracker
5:33
Speaker 2: came out with the next wave of trail cameras, which
5:36
Speaker 2: retailed for about three hundred to five hundred bucks. These
5:39
Speaker 2: were still built with thirty five millimeter cameras inside of them,
5:42
Speaker 2: but they had pr detection, flash photography, and could handle
5:46
Speaker 2: weather better. They also offered some improved battery life, but
5:51
Speaker 2: they still relied on film, which was by far the
5:54
Speaker 2: worst part of the whole deal. It was expensive and
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Speaker 2: so limiting. It wouldn't be until the early two thousands
6:00
Speaker 2: that multiple companies would develop the first wave of digital cameras.
6:04
Speaker 2: These cameras ditched the thirty five millimeter headache and functioned
6:08
Speaker 2: off of memory card storage. This meant that you could
6:11
Speaker 2: now capture hundreds and eventually thousands of photos and wouldn't
6:15
Speaker 2: have to wait for days to see what you had captured.
6:19
Speaker 2: This was a huge leap in the evolution of trail
6:21
Speaker 2: cameras and allowed for all kinds of advancements, you know,
6:24
Speaker 2: advancements like multiple photos per triggering, event sensitivity adjustment, LCD
6:30
Speaker 2: viewing screens that were just built right in, and a
6:33
Speaker 2: host to other benefits. But they still used white flash though,
6:37
Speaker 2: which spooked the crap out of the deer, as you
6:39
Speaker 2: can imagine. But that wasn't meant to be a forever thing,
6:42
Speaker 2: and soon infrared led lights allowed cameras to capture nighttime
6:46
Speaker 2: movement without blowing out every deer that walked by. Along
6:49
Speaker 2: the way, better battery life became standard, temperature and moonface
6:53
Speaker 2: stamps became standard, higher megapixel sensors that allowed for better
6:58
Speaker 2: resolution became standard, and the price started to come down
7:01
Speaker 2: into one hundred and fifty to three hundred dollars range
7:04
Speaker 2: from about twenty ten on. Camera manufacturers figured out how
7:08
Speaker 2: to include video options, audio, faster trigger speeds, better performance
7:13
Speaker 2: in low light, and a bunch of other valuable stuff.
7:16
Speaker 2: Then along came sell cameras, which have been the biggest
7:20
Speaker 2: leap in technology, probably since the jump from thirty five
7:23
Speaker 2: millimeter to digital. And at first these cameras were not cheap.
7:28
Speaker 2: They went for about four hundred to six hundred bucks
7:30
Speaker 2: a pop, but the benefit was undeniable. Not having to
7:34
Speaker 2: go into the woods to figure out who walked through
7:37
Speaker 2: all your spots absolutely changed the whole game, and that
7:40
Speaker 2: category of cameras has come to dominate the market. This
7:43
Speaker 2: is due to obvious reasons, but one fun fact I
7:46
Speaker 2: found was that the first cameras to hit the market
7:49
Speaker 2: took on average about three to five seconds from triggering
7:52
Speaker 2: event to taking an actual picture. As soon as I
7:55
Speaker 2: read that, I remembered how often we used to get
7:58
Speaker 2: pictures of deerbuts most cameras will go from trigger to
8:01
Speaker 2: capture in about a fifth of a second. That is
8:04
Speaker 2: a huge advancement and one that speaks to the widespread
8:08
Speaker 2: adoption of the latest and greatest. Now, don't get me wrong,
8:11
Speaker 2: you can still buy dumb cameras that use SD cards,
8:15
Speaker 2: but it's getting harder by the year. It's getting harder
8:18
Speaker 2: by the year to find any hunters who don't use
8:20
Speaker 2: cameras at all as well. Even the traditional deer camp
8:23
Speaker 2: rifle hunter, who is the epitome of the weekend warrior,
8:26
Speaker 2: uses sell cameras. Why wouldn't they. It's fun to get
8:31
Speaker 2: pictures of deer, to build a little stoke before the opener,
8:34
Speaker 2: and to just get a glimpse into the world of
8:36
Speaker 2: white tails without having to be there with them, which
8:39
Speaker 2: almost always affects what they do to some extent. But
8:53
Speaker 2: trail cameras are tools, and we all know that tools
8:56
Speaker 2: can be used wrong, or at least not to their
8:59
Speaker 2: full potential. And even saying that, I realize that it's
9:02
Speaker 2: hard to make the argument that most people use their
9:04
Speaker 2: cameras wrong if the cameras are doing what they're supposed to,
9:08
Speaker 2: which is my first point that I want to make.
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Speaker 2: What do you want to learn with your cameras? I
9:13
Speaker 2: know I talk about this all the time, but it's
9:15
Speaker 2: so important. I don't think we acknowledge this enough because
9:18
Speaker 2: it feels like putting a few cameras out and getting
9:20
Speaker 2: pictures is just the goal, and it's a very achievable
9:23
Speaker 2: goal for pretty much all of us. If that's as
9:26
Speaker 2: far as you want to take it, great, But there's
9:28
Speaker 2: a lot more that can be done. I can look
9:31
Speaker 2: at the desk in my office and see a couple
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Speaker 2: of new edge fours from Moultrie that I'm going to
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Speaker 2: put in the woods, And I can run down the
9:37
Speaker 2: list of things that these cameras can do, which is
9:41
Speaker 2: a lot. I won't utilize them to their full potential,
9:43
Speaker 2: I'm sure, but what I can do with them is
9:46
Speaker 2: more than just get some photos of deer. In fact,
9:50
Speaker 2: I pretty much run all of my cameras on video mode.
9:52
Speaker 2: Now I learn more from a twenty second clip of
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Speaker 2: a buck working a scrape than I do have an
9:58
Speaker 2: image of a buck on a scrape. It's honestly that
10:00
Speaker 2: simple in some ways, and I'll explain it simply. When
10:04
Speaker 2: I started running cameras on video mode on scrapes, I
10:07
Speaker 2: realized that every single deer that visited them uses the
10:10
Speaker 2: licking branch. All of the bucks, and all of the
10:13
Speaker 2: does all of them, but most of them didn't pop
10:16
Speaker 2: up the soil and take a leak in it. Some did,
10:20
Speaker 2: but many didn't, but all of them use the licking branch.
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Speaker 2: So if I'm out hunting and I find a scrape
10:25
Speaker 2: but it doesn't have a clear licking branch on it.
10:28
Speaker 2: I'm going to pass. Simple stuff like that can be
10:31
Speaker 2: learned through trail camera usage and it will help you
10:33
Speaker 2: hunt better. Years ago I hunted blacktails in California with
10:37
Speaker 2: a fellow who ran a lot of trail cameras, and
10:39
Speaker 2: in the frame of every one he'd hang a small
10:42
Speaker 2: strip of flagging tape so that it was clearly visible.
10:45
Speaker 2: His goal was to not only get images of blacktails
10:48
Speaker 2: and start to pattern them, but to pin down exactly
10:51
Speaker 2: what win the deer used to go through a spot,
10:53
Speaker 2: which is about as actionable of intel as you're going
10:56
Speaker 2: to get. Again, it's great to get picks or videos
11:00
Speaker 2: of a buck going by, but knowing that he only
11:02
Speaker 2: shows up when the wind is out of the west
11:05
Speaker 2: is information on steroids. Now you have a huge piece
11:08
Speaker 2: of the puzzle that can take you from digital scouting
11:11
Speaker 2: to actually putting together a plan to hunt him when
11:14
Speaker 2: he's most likely to show up. This is one of
11:18
Speaker 2: my favorite things about trail cameras. Honestly, not only do
11:21
Speaker 2: they show me how to better hunt a spot given
11:24
Speaker 2: how frequently deer come through and what they do to
11:27
Speaker 2: get there and leave, but also how they check my work.
11:31
Speaker 2: What I mean by that is that Some of my
11:33
Speaker 2: most active cameras have been in spots that I just
11:36
Speaker 2: couldn't seem to hunt correctly. This happened last year in Nebraska,
11:40
Speaker 2: and while I really don't know what we were doing
11:42
Speaker 2: wrong on this amazing pinch point I found, I know
11:45
Speaker 2: that we were definitely doing something wrong. The camera there
11:48
Speaker 2: showed me tons of movement. I had an access plan
11:52
Speaker 2: and a blind setup really brushed in, but no matter
11:55
Speaker 2: what we did, we couldn't see deer when we hunted.
11:58
Speaker 2: It had something wrong, and I don't know what it is,
12:02
Speaker 2: but I know that it's real. I didn't get a
12:04
Speaker 2: chance to try to reverse engineer that situation, but the
12:07
Speaker 2: first thing I would have done is leave that camera
12:10
Speaker 2: where it was and start to back out of that
12:12
Speaker 2: spot to hunt deer. Going to it from a distance,
12:16
Speaker 2: being one hundred yards away and not right on the
12:18
Speaker 2: pinch point means that some of the deer, if they
12:21
Speaker 2: did show up, you know we're going to be out
12:23
Speaker 2: of play. But at least I'd learn whether my presence
12:26
Speaker 2: right there was the problem. The other option would have
12:29
Speaker 2: been to approach my original setup from the opposite direction,
12:32
Speaker 2: which I thought would kill the action. But since I
12:35
Speaker 2: killed the action with my best plan. Maybe it was
12:38
Speaker 2: nothing more than me reading the whole scene wrong. Either way,
12:43
Speaker 2: that camera showed me that deer loved that spot, but
12:47
Speaker 2: not when a hunter was there. I don't know how
12:49
Speaker 2: to get more valuable info than that out of any
12:51
Speaker 2: other technology that's legal in the woods. That's a huge deal,
12:55
Speaker 2: and it's somewhat applicable to most hunters in their situations.
12:58
Speaker 2: I would guess attention to not only what your cameras
13:02
Speaker 2: show you with the deer when you're not there, but
13:05
Speaker 2: for sure what the deer do when you are there.
13:08
Speaker 2: There will be a difference almost always. How severe that
13:11
Speaker 2: difference is matters a lot. You can also use cameras
13:16
Speaker 2: to learn where the deer go when they don't do
13:18
Speaker 2: what you expect them to. I think this is one
13:21
Speaker 2: of the most underrated use cases for trail cameras. But
13:24
Speaker 2: think about this. You put a camera in your food
13:27
Speaker 2: plot or on a field edge, and then you hunt
13:29
Speaker 2: the biggest buck on the block and he doesn't show,
13:32
Speaker 2: or he does but you don't kill him. Eventually that
13:36
Speaker 2: deer is not going to show at all, and your
13:37
Speaker 2: pictures show he's coming in at midnight instead, you know
13:41
Speaker 2: of a half hour before dark. Is he truly nocturnal
13:45
Speaker 2: or is he just avoiding the hunting pressure in that
13:47
Speaker 2: spot you know, where it's been most concentrated. My experience
13:52
Speaker 2: with a lot of deer over a long timeline is
13:54
Speaker 2: that they mostly aren't nocturnal, but they are very good
13:58
Speaker 2: at not going to the places we often hunt. So
14:01
Speaker 2: you can use a camera in this situation to confirm
14:03
Speaker 2: your suspicions. You know that he's nocturnal, you know, because
14:07
Speaker 2: you're not actually looking for him other than on that spot.
14:10
Speaker 2: Or you can use them to get into the cover
14:11
Speaker 2: and see if he's actually just moving where he feels safer.
14:16
Speaker 2: This leads to another thing that a lot of hunters
14:18
Speaker 2: do with camera intel that hurts them, which I'll frame
14:21
Speaker 2: up as simply as possible. If I go hang and
14:24
Speaker 2: bang hunt somewhere, private, public, whatever, and I see a
14:28
Speaker 2: buck doing something, I will almost always try to get
14:31
Speaker 2: on that movement as soon as I can, usually the
14:34
Speaker 2: next day. And the reason is simple. If a buck
14:37
Speaker 2: walks along a ridge today, I munching on acorns, my
14:40
Speaker 2: highest odds of catching him do that again, or another
14:43
Speaker 2: buck doing that same thing are as soon as I
14:46
Speaker 2: can possibly set up for it, but with a camera
14:49
Speaker 2: we often don't trust one off intel a whole lot.
14:53
Speaker 2: We get picks of a buck moving through a spot
14:55
Speaker 2: shooting hours, and we wait to see if he'll do
14:57
Speaker 2: it consistently. This is often the ca of death in
15:01
Speaker 2: all parts of the seasons that aren't the rut. It
15:04
Speaker 2: might be due to a cold front that's going to pass,
15:08
Speaker 2: or a tree dropping the best acorn, some er, or whatever.
15:11
Speaker 2: But a deer that shows you he's killable right now
15:15
Speaker 2: is a deer that won't probably be more killable in
15:18
Speaker 2: five days, and will often be less likely to make
15:21
Speaker 2: those same movements In person observation makes this believable, but
15:26
Speaker 2: trail cameras convince us we need to wait for a
15:28
Speaker 2: bigger pattern to emerge for we try to hunt around it.
15:32
Speaker 2: But a lot of what deer do they do in
15:33
Speaker 2: short windows of activity and then they switch. This is
15:37
Speaker 2: rarely talked about, but I kind of believe it to
15:40
Speaker 2: be true. Most prey animals have an innate sense of
15:43
Speaker 2: not making themselves overly predictable. Look, I know there are
15:47
Speaker 2: plenty of exceptions to this, but if you hunt where
15:50
Speaker 2: there is some pressure from other hunters or from four
15:53
Speaker 2: legged predators. Deer aren't guaranteed to follow the same routine
15:57
Speaker 2: for weeks on end. If they show you something, now,
16:01
Speaker 2: try to use it. Trail cameras can give you that
16:04
Speaker 2: and a hell of a lot more. Consider that as
16:06
Speaker 2: you get into your scouting season and start getting those
16:09
Speaker 2: fun little dopeamine hits. When your camera sends an alert
16:12
Speaker 2: that you have new images that are ready to be viewed,
16:15
Speaker 2: do that and come back next week because I'm going
16:17
Speaker 2: to talk about deer populations and how they fluctuate and
16:20
Speaker 2: why understanding what that means in your world can help
16:23
Speaker 2: you build a better plan to kill a buck, no
16:25
Speaker 2: matter whether you hunt in a place with one hundred
16:27
Speaker 2: deer per square mile or ten. That's it for this week.
16:31
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt
16:33
Speaker 2: Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening.
16:36
Speaker 2: If you want more content, whitetail content, squirrel hunting content,
16:40
Speaker 2: vision content, whatever, go to the medeater dot com. We
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Speaker 2: all there. Go check it out at the mediat dot
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Speaker 2: com and thank you once again. For your support,