Latest / Wired To Hunt Podcast / Ep. 766: Foundations - Long-Game Trail Camera Lessons

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Ep. 766: Foundations - Long-Game Trail Camera Lessons · 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 Wire to Hunt Foundation's podcast,
0:22
Speaker 2: which is brought to you by first Light. I'm your host,
0:24
Speaker 2: Tony Peterson, and this episode is all about running cameras,
0:28
Speaker 2: but not running them like other folks. Probably one of
0:35
Speaker 2: the biggest reasons that I love hunting is because there's
0:38
Speaker 2: just sick. There's never a good excuse to stop learning,
0:41
Speaker 2: and there isn't anything you can do where you'll just
0:44
Speaker 2: know it all. Sure, if you're into a small town
0:47
Speaker 2: bar and say southwest Wisconsin about I don't know, mid October,
0:51
Speaker 2: you'll inevitably meet someone who is fourteen beers deep, you know,
0:55
Speaker 2: wearing a faded real Tree shirt from nineteen ninety seven,
0:58
Speaker 2: who will let you know that. But he has the
1:00
Speaker 2: whole thing totally dialed. But the truth is he doesn't,
1:04
Speaker 2: and neither do you. I was reminded of this recently
1:06
Speaker 2: when I drove over to northern Wisconsin to cut down
1:08
Speaker 2: some trees, scout some deer, and pull a few cameras
1:11
Speaker 2: I had left up from November. The images that I
1:15
Speaker 2: found when I checked those cameras, they have literally changed
1:18
Speaker 2: the course of my hunting plans for this year. They
1:20
Speaker 2: taught me a few things that you might be able
1:22
Speaker 2: to learn from as well. As I get older, I
1:30
Speaker 2: realized there's just like a lot of things that I
1:32
Speaker 2: actively dislike. A forced small talk that's way up there
1:37
Speaker 2: on the list. Social media, I was maybe right there
1:41
Speaker 2: at the top of the list. Standing in line for
1:44
Speaker 2: any reason tends to get under my skin. Mark Kenyon, Well,
1:49
Speaker 2: you know, kind of just in general, it's pretty tough
1:51
Speaker 2: to deal with. But there is one thing about modern
1:54
Speaker 2: society that I absolutely love music, or more specifically, you
1:59
Speaker 2: can listen to any damn song you want at any
2:01
Speaker 2: time and can be exposed to new music all day long.
2:05
Speaker 2: You can search it out, you know, you could watch
2:07
Speaker 2: some new TV series that is chock full of interesting music.
2:11
Speaker 2: It's all over. It has also led to an interesting
2:15
Speaker 2: conundrum for musicians in that anyone who has ever written
2:19
Speaker 2: a song might find music that is similar to theirs
2:22
Speaker 2: out there somewhere. Every once in a while you see
2:25
Speaker 2: a news story on this situation, where some popular artists
2:29
Speaker 2: will have to go to court to defend a chord
2:31
Speaker 2: progression or a specific melody after a different artist, usually
2:35
Speaker 2: a pretty much unknown artist, says that they wrote it
2:38
Speaker 2: first and that they got ripped off and are definitely
2:41
Speaker 2: entitled to some enormous royalties. This is interesting because some
2:46
Speaker 2: musicians openly talk about how they lift certain riffs from
2:50
Speaker 2: their favorite guitarists or heavily lean on some type of
2:53
Speaker 2: music for inspiration. If there is a spirit of admiration
2:57
Speaker 2: in this and a tip of the hat to the inspiration,
3:01
Speaker 2: it's often an issue of respect and doesn't go to court.
3:04
Speaker 2: This tends to happen when two successful artists or bands collide,
3:08
Speaker 2: but isn't the case when a successful artist creates something
3:10
Speaker 2: similar to a no namer. Now, there are legitimate cases
3:14
Speaker 2: of this, I'm sure, but these no namers also give
3:17
Speaker 2: off strong ambulance chaser vibes and it feels like they're
3:21
Speaker 2: looking for a payday and not much else. You know,
3:24
Speaker 2: then you have the classic plagiarizer accusations. I didn't know
3:28
Speaker 2: this until Larry recently, but apparently a lot of people
3:31
Speaker 2: thought Nirvana's anthem for disenfranchised teenagers in the early nineties
3:36
Speaker 2: smells like teen Spirit apparently sounds a hell of a
3:39
Speaker 2: lot like Boston's more than a feeling. I guess maybe
3:45
Speaker 2: then you have the big one, led Zeppelin's monster, huge,
3:49
Speaker 2: mega hit, Stairway to Heaven, which, for all you young fellows
3:52
Speaker 2: out there struggling with the ladies, just learned to play
3:55
Speaker 2: the intro to that song on an acoustic guitar and
3:58
Speaker 2: at least you'll have a fighting chance since it's been
4:01
Speaker 2: a few decades since led Zeppelin topped the charts. Look
4:04
Speaker 2: at it this way. They were like a group of
4:07
Speaker 2: Taylor Swifts, swifting it up all over the planet for
4:11
Speaker 2: quite a few years, and Stairway to Heaven was their
4:14
Speaker 2: biggest hit amongst a hell of a lot of big hits.
4:18
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, after Stairway to Heaven had been out
4:21
Speaker 2: for multiple decades, the bassist from a band called Spirit
4:25
Speaker 2: filed a lawsuit saying that led Zeppelin had ripped off
4:28
Speaker 2: some of his riffs. I guess a jury found that
4:31
Speaker 2: to be great a bullshit, but it was a good
4:33
Speaker 2: try anyway. The thing about this stuff is that you
4:37
Speaker 2: can't escape inspiration if you're creating things. It's impossible to
4:42
Speaker 2: be a music lover and an artist and not draw
4:45
Speaker 2: from others' work. That's actually what's pretty cool about music
4:49
Speaker 2: and authors and painters and anyone who takes an idea
4:52
Speaker 2: and turns it into something that others can enjoy in
4:55
Speaker 2: some form. In that way, it's like a giant collaboration
4:59
Speaker 2: between different people. And do you know what else is
5:02
Speaker 2: like that? Golf? I'm sorry, I actually am sorry. I
5:06
Speaker 2: feel really bad. I can't help myself. It's hunting, and
5:10
Speaker 2: more specifically hunting strategies and styles. We see what others
5:15
Speaker 2: are doing and we emulate them with kind of a
5:18
Speaker 2: personal twist. It's no different from hearing a song that
5:22
Speaker 2: worms its way into your brain and then finding yourself
5:25
Speaker 2: playing some chord progression that sounds an awful lot like
5:28
Speaker 2: that song, because, for whatever reasons, those sounds in that
5:32
Speaker 2: order make you happy. With hunting, you might see someone
5:36
Speaker 2: who puts a series of food plots on a small
5:38
Speaker 2: property to not only draw a deer in, but funnel
5:41
Speaker 2: them through on a specific route. Or you might have
5:44
Speaker 2: a buddy who is a certified public land whitetail nutcase
5:48
Speaker 2: who runs cameras in a way that is just better
5:51
Speaker 2: and different from your personal strategy. This is what happened
5:55
Speaker 2: to me with my buddy Clint Campbell, who coincidentally or
5:59
Speaker 2: maybe not, is also one hell of a guitar player,
6:02
Speaker 2: but you probably know him as the host of the
6:04
Speaker 2: Truth from the Stand podcast. But he's also a hunter
6:08
Speaker 2: who plays the long game with trail cameras. He's always
6:12
Speaker 2: sending me pictures of big mountain bucks from Pennsylvania along
6:15
Speaker 2: with texts that explain how he's piecing together a large
6:19
Speaker 2: puzzle on ground that anyone can hunt, even though most
6:22
Speaker 2: of his competition isn't hunting the way he is, and
6:26
Speaker 2: certainly isn't scouting the way he is now. Clint's scouting style,
6:30
Speaker 2: you know, it's just vastly different from a lot of
6:32
Speaker 2: public land whitetail hunters. He covers a lot of ground
6:36
Speaker 2: which is similar, you know, especially in the winter in
6:38
Speaker 2: the early spring months, he obsesses over access, deer sign,
6:43
Speaker 2: you know, all the usual suspects. But he also puts
6:45
Speaker 2: cameras out and leaves them for months at a time
6:49
Speaker 2: to gather a better picture of what the local bucks
6:52
Speaker 2: do through you know, different months, different weather events, different
6:56
Speaker 2: times of the year, when they might deal with tons
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Speaker 2: of people or almost know people. This is not something
7:01
Speaker 2: I've done a whole lot in my life, but I've
7:04
Speaker 2: started to lift a few riffs from Clint, if you will.
7:08
Speaker 2: It happened mostly by an accident of timing, at least
7:12
Speaker 2: the first time I left my cameras out. That was
7:14
Speaker 2: in northern Wisconsin, and I thought I'd have to have
7:17
Speaker 2: some time to run out and grab a camera before
7:20
Speaker 2: winter set in. I didn't, and so one of my
7:22
Speaker 2: cameras stayed out there, shivering in the cold, but diligently
7:26
Speaker 2: taking pictures for me, so that when I pulled it
7:28
Speaker 2: in the spring, I got to see all kinds of
7:31
Speaker 2: interesting stuff. I got to see who made it through
7:34
Speaker 2: the gun season and who survived until various points of
7:37
Speaker 2: the winter. I got to see how a huge blizzard
7:39
Speaker 2: affected deer movement and what a three week thaw did
7:43
Speaker 2: to their travels and habits. It was interesting, but mostly
7:46
Speaker 2: showed me that there were a couple of spots I
7:48
Speaker 2: probably should have had stands to sit during the rut.
7:52
Speaker 2: Since then, I've conducted a more deliberate trail camera strategy
7:56
Speaker 2: over there to see what the long game look into
7:59
Speaker 2: the deer world would reveal. This year, I took it
8:03
Speaker 2: to a higher level, I guess, kind of by leaving
8:07
Speaker 2: three cameras a piece on two different pieces of private
8:10
Speaker 2: ground over there. I hung all of them in mid
8:13
Speaker 2: October while the rut was still going and the gun
8:16
Speaker 2: season was coming up quick. Now, when I went back
8:19
Speaker 2: to pull those cameras in the beginning of March, the
8:22
Speaker 2: cards showed a story that was fascinating from start to finish. Well,
8:27
Speaker 2: if I'm being honest, five of the cameras did, because
8:30
Speaker 2: one of them never took a picture because I left
8:32
Speaker 2: it on setup mode and never actually started it, which
8:35
Speaker 2: is the deer hunting equivalent of filling a knee high
8:38
Speaker 2: sock with gravel and then swinging it as hard as
8:40
Speaker 2: you can right at your own knackers. The other five
8:54
Speaker 2: did much better for starters. I wanted to see what
8:58
Speaker 2: the buck movement looked like during the Wisconsin gun season,
9:02
Speaker 2: since it's the time when about six hundred thousand people
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Speaker 2: hit the woods with rifles in their hands. Now, while
9:07
Speaker 2: the deer movement definitely slowed down, then it didn't stop,
9:12
Speaker 2: not even the daylight movement at its most basic level.
9:17
Speaker 2: It showed that a lot of time and stand on
9:20
Speaker 2: either property would have probably led to an encounter with
9:24
Speaker 2: a few different bucks. Listen. Not great, but not terrible.
9:29
Speaker 2: It also showed a group of dozes on one of
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Speaker 2: my properties walking down a trail half an hour into
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Speaker 2: the morning on the second day of the season. Then
9:36
Speaker 2: they spooked, and my buddy walked down the trail four
9:40
Speaker 2: minutes later on his way to sit one of my stands.
9:43
Speaker 2: He saw six dos, which is a lot for that area,
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Speaker 2: and then walked out an hour and a half later.
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Speaker 2: He had no idea. He booted all of those doughs
9:51
Speaker 2: ahead of him on the way in, and he wasn't
9:53
Speaker 2: there long enough to witness any of the midday movement
9:56
Speaker 2: that happened there later. I've unintentionally run this experiment with
10:01
Speaker 2: him and his dad several times, and it's always a
10:04
Speaker 2: lesson in time on stand. They have very little faith
10:08
Speaker 2: in a buck walking by, so they don't put in
10:10
Speaker 2: hardly any time on stand in the midday or even
10:13
Speaker 2: when it's prime time. Sometimes, judging by the picks I've
10:16
Speaker 2: gotten during the gun season, their strategy is costing them dear.
10:21
Speaker 2: Another interesting finding from just running multiple cameras during a
10:25
Speaker 2: busy gun season was that while there were days when
10:28
Speaker 2: the overall movement was really rough, the best buck movement
10:32
Speaker 2: was almost always between like nine am and two pm.
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Speaker 2: That midday thing is real. It's just hard to believe
10:41
Speaker 2: for a lot of folks, especially in a high hunting
10:44
Speaker 2: pressure situation. But if you think about it, if your
10:47
Speaker 2: state's gun season happens during the rut, which is real common,
10:52
Speaker 2: those bucks aren't going to stop chasing and cruising. You know,
10:56
Speaker 2: they might do a lot of their looking when there
10:58
Speaker 2: is a lull in the hunter activity, which happens in
11:01
Speaker 2: the middle of the day. I know you know that,
11:04
Speaker 2: but do you know it with experience or because you've
11:07
Speaker 2: heard dipshits like me say it? Because there's a big
11:09
Speaker 2: difference there. I was also really curious to see who
11:13
Speaker 2: it was left after the gun season. I don't mean
11:16
Speaker 2: this just in terms of bucks either. The county we
11:19
Speaker 2: hunt over there offers up a huge amount of dought eggs,
11:22
Speaker 2: which makes zero sense to me, considering it took me
11:25
Speaker 2: twenty one days of hunting to see a single dough
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Speaker 2: last fall. Maybe the deer managers over there know something
11:31
Speaker 2: I don't, or maybe I know something they don't anyway,
11:35
Speaker 2: I just wanted to see how many deer made it through.
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Speaker 2: I'd have guessed I might have had a couple of
11:41
Speaker 2: bucks on each property and a couple of dos but
11:44
Speaker 2: it was clear that at least six bucks made it
11:46
Speaker 2: through in each place, and that a decent amount of
11:49
Speaker 2: doz did as well, you know, pretty similar to the
11:53
Speaker 2: number of bucks. What was cool was that there was
11:56
Speaker 2: a mix of bucks at each place, ranging from barely
11:59
Speaker 2: spikes to one deer that is probably pushing one hundred
12:02
Speaker 2: and sixty inches, and who, by the couple of times
12:05
Speaker 2: I got pictures of him, showed me he does not
12:07
Speaker 2: like trail cameras one bit. There's a lesson in there too.
12:12
Speaker 2: In fact, his reaction was not unlike just about every
12:16
Speaker 2: old long nosed dough that spotted my cameras over there.
12:19
Speaker 2: This year, all of my cameras will be a lot
12:22
Speaker 2: more discreet. What was really interesting in the post gun
12:27
Speaker 2: season findings, besides taking stock and the survivors, was seeing
12:31
Speaker 2: the conditions that got the deer moving. We've had the
12:34
Speaker 2: mildest winter pretty much ever, I think, but the few
12:38
Speaker 2: cold fronts we had, you know, kind of during December,
12:41
Speaker 2: got the deer on their feet. No surprise there. It
12:45
Speaker 2: was just interesting to see on two different properties and
12:48
Speaker 2: also see once again how often they moved right in
12:52
Speaker 2: the middle of the day when it was very unlikely
12:55
Speaker 2: to be motivated by anything other than food. Definitely probably
12:59
Speaker 2: not the rut. What really started to stand out to
13:03
Speaker 2: me as I filed through thousands of pictures was that
13:06
Speaker 2: the buck activity didn't really change much. From at least
13:10
Speaker 2: one perspective, there was far more consistent movement over there,
13:14
Speaker 2: even if that movement wasn't all that frequent. What I
13:18
Speaker 2: mean by that is, for example, on one of the
13:21
Speaker 2: cameras that allows me to monitor a subtle trail that
13:24
Speaker 2: keeps the deer in the woods and away from the
13:25
Speaker 2: houses or openings or anything anywhere nearby where they might
13:29
Speaker 2: get spotted, there is always a buck in daylight at
13:33
Speaker 2: some point in every two or three day time period.
13:36
Speaker 2: Now this is in southern Iowa, so that's actually pretty good,
13:40
Speaker 2: considering a whole section over there might not even have
13:43
Speaker 2: a dozen bucks using it on any given year. Where
13:46
Speaker 2: that camera was, there is now a sneaky access trail
13:50
Speaker 2: cut to a double trunk pine tree that will have
13:52
Speaker 2: a stand in it. For next fall, and I will
13:55
Speaker 2: go in there and I will hunt it hard during
13:57
Speaker 2: the rut. If I still have a tag left. I'm
14:00
Speaker 2: honestly more excited for that than anything this fall, besides,
14:05
Speaker 2: you know, getting another crack at putting one of my
14:07
Speaker 2: daughters on a bear. And keep in mind, I'm probably
14:10
Speaker 2: going to draw an I would tag this year. Another
14:13
Speaker 2: zoom out epiphany that I had, which my buddy still
14:16
Speaker 2: doesn't believe, is that the northern Wisconsin deer don't behave
14:21
Speaker 2: much different from deer in you know, much better regions.
14:25
Speaker 2: There just aren't very many of them and they deal
14:28
Speaker 2: with a lot more predation. This is another thing that
14:31
Speaker 2: my camera showed me, even though I knew it. I
14:34
Speaker 2: can't prove this, but other than bears, it seems like
14:38
Speaker 2: the coyotes, bobcats, and wolves all showed up and stuck
14:41
Speaker 2: around before moving on. Now this isn't to say there
14:44
Speaker 2: weren't plenty of random picks of predators, because I had plenty,
14:49
Speaker 2: but there were also times where it was obvious the
14:52
Speaker 2: same three coyotes were working the area around my camera heavily,
14:55
Speaker 2: and that the deer movement went way down because of this.
15:00
Speaker 2: I saw that saturation of coyotes and on both places
15:04
Speaker 2: wolves at different times, and as you can guess, when
15:07
Speaker 2: that happens, it's best to go somewhere else. Even the
15:11
Speaker 2: bobcats seem to kind of group up and hang around
15:15
Speaker 2: for a while. But I'm, you know, a little bit
15:17
Speaker 2: more inclined to believe that's just a family unit that
15:19
Speaker 2: I'm seeing there. I also have no idea what I'm
15:22
Speaker 2: talking about when it comes to this, I'm just spitballing.
15:25
Speaker 2: Maybe the biggest takeaway from this experiment, besides how important
15:29
Speaker 2: time in the woods really is no matter where you hunt,
15:33
Speaker 2: is that we often think about deer movement the wrong
15:36
Speaker 2: way or in an incomplete way. I should probably say
15:40
Speaker 2: we think of summer bucks when we first start putting
15:42
Speaker 2: cameras out, you know, and seeing our bachelor groups, and
15:45
Speaker 2: as the summer moves toward fall, we start to think about,
15:48
Speaker 2: you know, well, fall movement. This is where we laser focus,
15:51
Speaker 2: and we think about feeding areas, staging areas, and funnels.
15:55
Speaker 2: You know, something that might work this week but not
15:57
Speaker 2: the next, or might be on fire next week, but
16:00
Speaker 2: the deer just aren't quite there yet. A long game
16:03
Speaker 2: camera strategy kind of exposes that as faulty thinking, of course,
16:08
Speaker 2: a funnel might get busier in November when the chase
16:11
Speaker 2: is on, But that same funnel we'll probably host some
16:14
Speaker 2: buck travel in December two and January, and February and
16:17
Speaker 2: March and every dang month of the year, including September
16:21
Speaker 2: and October. What this means is that while you're waiting
16:24
Speaker 2: for everything to get right for a certain spot, the
16:27
Speaker 2: deer might be out there using it their own leisure. Already,
16:31
Speaker 2: all of the cameras I hung in November were in
16:34
Speaker 2: spots that I thought would catch November movement. But November
16:38
Speaker 2: movement isn't as different from the movement in other months
16:41
Speaker 2: as we think, And that's important to acknowledge and if
16:45
Speaker 2: you can try to understand, because it has ramifications beyond
16:49
Speaker 2: where you'll do an all day sit during your rutation.
16:52
Speaker 2: Just think about it this way. Take your favorite pinch
16:55
Speaker 2: point or maybe your favorite river crossing, run a camera
16:59
Speaker 2: on it for a year. What do you think you'd learn.
17:03
Speaker 2: My guess is that you'd learn that they are good
17:06
Speaker 2: spots beyond their usefulness and the timing window we focus
17:09
Speaker 2: on to actually hunt them. That's important for no other
17:13
Speaker 2: reason than to rewire your willingness to hunt whenever you can,
17:17
Speaker 2: versus hunting when you believe it only should be good.
17:21
Speaker 2: A long game camera strategy can teach you this, and
17:24
Speaker 2: it's a lesson that is worth learning for everyone. It
17:27
Speaker 2: might not matter if you have a banging spot to
17:30
Speaker 2: hunt that no one else can set foot on, but
17:32
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with smaller spots or shared spots, understanding
17:36
Speaker 2: how consistent the deer movement is all year can put
17:40
Speaker 2: you in a spot to take advantage of that movement
17:42
Speaker 2: well outside the rut, or well outside of whatever weekends
17:46
Speaker 2: you feel like you might just want to hunt. It's
17:49
Speaker 2: honestly a confidence thing, and that matters. It's intriguing enough
17:53
Speaker 2: to me that I'm already getting ready to put some
17:55
Speaker 2: cameras out and leave them at least until Midsummer. I
17:58
Speaker 2: feel like the value of their intel we won't be
18:01
Speaker 2: that high. But I also feel like I might be
18:03
Speaker 2: totally wrong on that. Plus, it's kind of like getting
18:06
Speaker 2: paid dividends on some stock or earning royalties from a
18:09
Speaker 2: book you wrote seven years ago. In other words, you
18:12
Speaker 2: know you're making money while you sleep, sort of. A
18:15
Speaker 2: long game camera strategy is like that, and it's worth
18:18
Speaker 2: it if you have the opportunity. It's also worth it
18:22
Speaker 2: to listen next week because I'm going to take a
18:24
Speaker 2: deep dive into the topic of game management. That's it
18:30
Speaker 2: for this episode. I'm Tony Peterson and it's been the
18:32
Speaker 2: Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you
18:35
Speaker 2: by First Light. As always, thank you so much for
18:38
Speaker 2: all your support. We honestly appreciate it so much. Here
18:42
Speaker 2: at meat Eater, all of us do. If you like
18:45
Speaker 2: this podcast, if you want to listen to Clay's podcast
18:48
Speaker 2: or something else, you want to check out some how
18:49
Speaker 2: to videos, some hunting episodes, read some articles, whatever, you
18:54
Speaker 2: can head on over to the medeater dot com. Tons
18:57
Speaker 2: of hunting content there. Maybe you want a new recipe. Ever,
19:00
Speaker 2: go there, check it out, and once again, thank you
19:02
Speaker 2: so much for your support. H