It’s amazing how fast things can change during this time of the year. Literally overnight, you can go from no shooters or all nocturnal activity, to a jailbreak of bucks you’ve never seen before chasing does under your stand while you’re at home on the couch! Don’t fall victim to lapses in information during the rut; put to use one of simplest, yet most effective tools deer hunters have access to in the last three decades – the trail camera.

Less than a decade ago, you could probably pick out 1 in every 10-20 deer hunters who owned trail cameras. Nowadays, that is likely closer to 1 in 3-5. The growth of trail camera uses has been explosive. Hunters, for little cost, can now have eyes in the woods 24/7.

If you are like me, running trail cameras becomes a whole separate hunt from actually deer hunting. It’s like Christmas when you pop in the SD card to see what is on your camera. But far too often we cruise right through the pictures without picking out the most valuable information.

This couldn’t be any truer than during the rut. Before now, I check my cameras every week or so. But if I were to do that now I might miss a huge opportunity, or worse yet, my only opportunity at a great buck. Why? Things can change in a flash during the rut. From no activity, to full-out chasing, to lockdown; it all can happen in a matter of a couple days.

If you have hunted long enough you know that you can see bucks ramping up, plan a hunt a couple days later, only to end up seeing nothing – I mean nothing! The brief chasing leads to a usually longer lock-down period when a buck will tend to a doe. This could last upwards of 96 hours!

How do we break this? Use of high quality trail cameras, like those from Moultrie, get us the most recent information as soon as we get to the camera. Often checking every two days can be what’s required to know when thing are about to let loose, or when you’ve already missed the explosion. Trail cameras give us the opportunity to learn more about the deer than we ever could through sitting in the stand alone. With minimal disturbance, especially on infrared (IR) and Black IR cameras, the trail camera has absolutely changed the way we hunt.

It’s amazing how many bucks we would never know existed without the advent of the trail camera. With so many available at affordable prices, make sure you have at least one in your arsenal!

For more information, check out www.moultriefeeders.com/products/cameras.

+++++