After this weekend's four-day muzzle loader season is over, that will end whitetail season in Ohio for another year. Whether you bagged that buck of a lifetime or came up empty-handed, chances are, you're already anticipating next year's season. Either in your mind or in discussions with your fellow hunters, the "what ifs" arise. "What if" I had placed my stand in a different spot? "What if" I had gone out earlier? Or later? "What if" I'd been stand hunting instead of still hunting on the day I spooked that monster buck? While you can learn from these reflections, you can't relive them, but you can focus your efforts on next year.
What role does your scouting camera play in these efforts? It gives you information, and information is essential to successful hunting. Many experts recommend that hunters begin scouting for the next season immediately after the end of the current season. At that time, big bucks will still have their antlers and your camera will let you know which ones survived the season. Imagine your excitement and anticipation when you have captured an image of a trophy buck that is available for you to hunt next season.
The best place to get these photos of big bucks is at a food source. But at this point, especially if they have been subjected to hunting pressure, they will be primarily nocturnal. That fact was demonstrated to us very clearly last week as we tried an experiment with one of our cameras. We placed the camera over a feeding station and set the delay for 30 seconds, knowing that we would get multiple images of the same deer, but also aware that those multiple images would be taken from various angles, giving us a better idea of his true build and rack. Over an 8 day period, 640 photos were snapped. They showed a couple of coyotes and some rabbits, but were mostly deer. Of those 640 pictures, 3 were taken during legal shooting hours. It was interesting to scan through the images that had been downloaded to our computer and note the time stamp on each photo. They would show deer every two or three minutes from about 6:00 p.m. to around 5:30 a.m. and then nothing until 6:00 or so that evening. This pattern was consistent over the eight-day period.
Armed with this visual record, we sat down with the landowner, a hunter and wildlife management enthusiast, to determine why we were seeing this and what could be done to remedy the situation before next year. We had suspected for some time that while food plots were more than adequate on the land, bedding areas were not. It was clear that the deer were coming onto the property to feed and going elsewhere to sleep. The goal now is to encourage areas of thick underbrush to develop so that these animals can find everything they need in one area.
One final thought on camera placement at feeding areas. I've written before about entering pictures from your scouting camera in wildlife photo contests. If that is of interest to you during this post-season time period, you should consider placing your scouting cameras over bait piles rather than feeders. The deer really don't care and you avoid unsightly metal or plastic containers in your photos.
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