Pre-cameras

[Big pig]

I love looking at photos from the multiple cameras I have running. However, with no real mature bucks or obvious target bucks it looks like a boring season.

Any other old dudes miss the days when hunting season opening days were like Christmas? You were excited and the hopes for a surprise “under your tree” kept you awake the night before.

Camera help me monitor all the various wildlife, but my dauber is real down this drought dominated year.

BTW. Good luck to all of you that have a trophy target on yours.


Big pig

[SHSU18]

i decided not to run cameras this year for the element of surprise

[huntmaster]

I really like gathering and viewing gamecam cards just to see whats around. And there is always a surprize buck or 2 that show up when I sit that was never on camera.

[Txhunter3000]

I tried putting 2 cameras on a feeder at different angles, mainly to see if the first camera was missing deer. You'd be surprised at the difference in the background deer. One camera doesn't catch the ones that don't come all the way to the feeder.

[Big pig]

I tried putting 2 cameras on a feeder at different angles, mainly to see if the first camera was missing deer. You'd be surprised at the difference in the background deer. One camera doesn't catch the ones that don't come all the way to the feeder.

I understand that. I run cameras year around and see some bucks that disappear in the fall. But feeding protein usually ends up with the dominant bucks at the feeder sooner or later

Of course, I always know during the rut a “floater” will show up if you have does. But I still enjoyed the old days when you saw a glimpse of horns while in the pasture but never really knew how many or how big they were

I do enjoy the photos of the other wildlife that it catches

example: had a porcupine under my protein feeder every night that I have never seen in person
and all the bobcats, foxes, turkeys etc

just wondering if any of you old guys had lost some excitement of hunting due to lack of trophy deer on your cameras.

[cehorn]

I'm currently in the same boat with nothing that really excites me on camera. With that said I've also experienced the exact opposite to keep me excited. When we hunted in Uvalde, it was common to not see anything while sitting until well after Thanksgiving. The only thing that kept me going was the big deer that came in at 1:00 in the morning. If it wasn't for cameras I would have sworn there were no deer on the whole place and possibly given up. So for me, it has gone both ways. It does suck when you feel like you have seen every deer on the place and you wouldn't shoot any of them...

[Txhunter3000]

I'll go 1 step further, when I started hunting we didn't even have feeders. Scouting for rubs and scrapes was all we had.
Answering the lost excitement question-- I never really hunted where the deer were considered trophies so kinda used to it.

[Big pig]

It’s probably a lot to do with the stage of my hunting life.
Killed quite a few deer, and then a couple of real trophies and now the only thing that excites me is a mature deer.

I have found outside of a fence old deer are very rare on smaller places. Especially in hard hunted areas. Age structure here is terrible. However, the Genetics are very good. We have held off shooting these pretty young bucks for three yrs, but they roam too far in the rut to survive.

This year I was hoping for an old buck for my patient wife.
Maybe next year if one of these young ones survive. The meantime we will hunt hard and hope one of those older deer slipped thru the gauntlet and shows up. Not looking for a “ “trophy” rack , just a more mature, big bodied buck.

Good luck to everyone. I am enjoying the photos of those of you that have taken nice ones already.

bp