Game Camera Management

[Raleigh]

A little advice please,

With the onslaught of Game Cameras on one of my leases I feel I need to do a better job of how we manage these things. Last year I had hunters putting out alot of cameras which I have no problem with. The problem is they want to check them twice a day and moving them form feeder to feeder. There is now a tremendous amount of traffic on the ranch roads. This addtional traffic made the deer more skiddish and drove some nocturnal.

How do you guys manage your camera on your leases? Do you have any rules on how often they are moved and how often they are checked?

I'm about to outlaw these dang cameras if I cant find a solution. You guys are smarter than me so help - please.

[texas bound]

Tell them they can only check them once a week. And can only move them twice a month. And limit them to how many they can have out there. And make them mark them with there names if not already marked

[tuthdoc]

We don't. We run about 15 and we check them in the middle of the day or when leaving a blind and change cards. We don't see any detrimental issues. We have 8 people on 2300 acres. Maybe our deer are used to a lot of traffic, because we have no problems seeing and killing deer. We don't feed our roads and try to keep the deer skiddish to trucks. It makes them harder to kill by someone in a truck with a rifle. They hear a truck, they run. doesn't keep them from coming to stands and feeders and cameras.

[Breezy]

someone who checks their cams every day and moves them to me is a flat out idiot! why??? come up with some sort of timeline, say once a week, if they dont like it, get rid of em.

[tuthdoc]

I'm an idiot.

[buck_wild]

Brandon, I saw that coming LOL

[tuthdoc]

LOL. I also don't play the wind. But I manage to kill my share of deer, so God must take care of idiots.

Typical hunt for me. 5 days almost every week and a couple of 10 day hunts. I get to the ranch, usually late morning and I get chum corn and get in the Ranger or Truck and go check and chum my potential spost. May be half a dozen spots I'm considering, depending on the buck I'm chasing. As I go to my spots I chum and pull cards, exchanging with a new one. After I run my spots, I turn on the computer and check and see what's going on. From that and what I know about the buck I'm hunting I'll decide where I'll hunt. Next morning, after my hunt, I'll pull cards and rechum. There won't be any corn on the ground because they know what I'm doing and can't wait to get to it and pose. After the morning hunt, on goes the computer and I see what happened overnight, and so it goes. Call it idiotic, but it works very very well.

[buck_wild]

Tuthdoc, you have other threads begging for your attention

[tuthdoc]

LOL There aren't that many hunting threads and so there aren't many for me to open.

[Bobcat]

Go to Noble.org, I believe that is the Noble Foundation's website.
Search trail cameras or game cameras on the wildlife page.
Use the standard outlined in that study.

Basically set them out for two weeks at a time.
Limit the placement locations to actual feeding locations.

One question your hunters have to answer is "what are they trying to record"?
Activity, herd dynamics or specific bucks?
One thing for sure. If all of the photos are given to you then you can really make a lot of use of that data. Therefore, you should require copies of the photos to build data for management as discussed in the Noble article.

[Chance Love]

LOL. I also don't play the wind. But I manage to kill my share of deer, so God must take care of idiots.

Typical hunt for me. 5 days almost every week and a couple of 10 day hunts. I get to the ranch, usually late morning and I get chum corn and get in the Ranger or Truck and go check and chum my potential spost. May be half a dozen spots I'm considering, depending on the buck I'm chasing. As I go to my spots I chum and pull cards, exchanging with a new one. After I run my spots, I turn on the computer and check and see what's going on. From that and what I know about the buck I'm hunting I'll decide where I'll hunt. Next morning, after my hunt, I'll pull cards and rechum. There won't be any corn on the ground because they know what I'm doing and can't wait to get to it and pose. After the morning hunt, on goes the computer and I see what happened overnight, and so it goes. Call it idiotic, but it works very very well.

I do pretty much the same thing, except I only get to hunt for 1-2 days at a time.

Tell everybody to get enough cameras so they don't have to move them. Just check the cards, swap them out, and ... awww heck, just read the above paragragh.

[Stupid]

Who wants to hunt with someone who tries to "outlaw" a camera? Boy, that could be a lonely world. I would just ask the other members to use common sense. Good Luck!

[tuthdoc]

Yeah, but it only takes you 1 or 2 days to kill a big deer. Takes me all season. LOL But, I'm an idiot.

[Chance Love]

Yeah, but it only takes you 1 or 2 days to kill a big deer. Takes me all season. LOL But, I'm an idiot.

Well, I check my cards everyday I am at the lease, but I don't move my cameras. Does that make me an idiot too?

[Heath]

I just have a lot of SD Cards for my cameras and I change them after every hunt. I guess I am an idiot too.