ORIGINAL: Siman08/OH
Greg, heres some food for thought:
If you have been putting the cams out for 3 years now, how many 1.5 and 2.5 year old bucks do you get pictures of?
Say you got a bunch of pics of a 1.5 year old the first year you put it out, then the 2nd year you got more of him and so on. Now its the 4th year, and he would be 4.5 years old. Do you think he would "start" to avoid the camera, or do you think he would be ok with it?
It is way more complicated than that. Due to the fact that I believe many of the 1 1/2s change locations because of many reasons. I believe that does control the best places because rearing of fawns demands it. Usually doe family units will reside in the same generals for generations. Then the bucks come second. They usually pick spots that are out of the way for security purposes. They are not afraid to do a little walking to get some food. Besides, after the bachelor groups break up, many of the older bucks become loners while does do not. Some bucks do not even hang out in bachelor groups, they are loners for life. These are the ones that interest me the most. Anyway, due to mortality of bucks which is more prevalent than for does, buck home and core areas change more often than that of the does. This means it is a guess which bucks you will see in the same places year after year. I have seen more 2 1/2s stay and become 3 1/2s in the same area in consecutive years than any other age class. 4 1/2s change quite a bit also. Then I see 5 1/2s become 6 1/2s, sometimes. Anything older, they seem to start becoming nocturnal loners and let a lot of the breeding go to the younger stronger bucks. I'm sure they get their occasional fling in their, especially when a lot of the younger stronger ones have worn themselves to a frazzle. Then, way later in the season/rut, the last week of Nov to the first 2 weeks of Dec (second rut), I see some of the biggest bucks of the season. They are usually hounding some young doe or fawn around a food source in the evening.
So no, I don't believe that a buck becoming camera shy is a learned behavior.
In my experience, a deer can remember some occurances for 2-3 months. Depending on how dramatic the experience was to them. If left alone for the rest of the year, they all forget. A dramatic experience would be like being shot at. Getting wounded would be the most dramatic and you probably wouldn't get a shot from that same stand for the rest of the season, although it's not an "absolute"! [:-]