ORIGINAL: Schultzy
ORIGINAL: GregH
I have 4 Cuddebacks, 3 of them are the IR models. For the last three seasons I have put them out at the end of the season, usually around Dec 1st. They stay out until the end of March or early April. I do not bait the camera sites, I only put them out on trails.
I've prooved it to myself that the larger bucks do get camera shy. I've gotten 2 at the most, pics of 3 1/2s and 1 of any 4 1/2 or older. After that, they skirt the camera. They'll walk a semi-circle around it and sometimes create a new trail in the process. This is especially easy to see because we have snow here and the tracks are the proof.
Another thing that I see is that the older bucks are always looking at the flash and the IR or red light. I know they aren't supposed to see it, but they do. To back this up, I have set my 3 IR cams to video mode and have had big bucks come down the trail, spot the IR beam and stop dead in their tracks. They usually stare at it for a while then back up, turn around and leave. This makes for a very hard to detect pic of the buck.
I was checking my cams every 7-10 days to avoid the scent thing, but I may go to longer intervals or move the cameras more often. I may go so far as to set all of them to day time only but I know I'll cut the number of pics in half or worse.
I have never gotten a pic of a true monster that I know exists here. The biggest being up to about 150". It just proves to me that I've got to get better at camera hunting! [:-]
I've had the same identical results!!
This also mirrors what I have whitnessed. I do not know what deer do in other people's woods, but in mine most mature deer (bucks and does!) aviod areas that they previously encountered trail cameras. Most strickingly, I see this when I put them out when there is snow on the ground. After 1-2 weeks in a spot, the tracks in the snow tell the story....deer start swinging further and further from my camera...there gets to be a 100-200 foot circle around my camera that has few if any deer tracks in it. Do some deer, particularly mature bucks, alter their behavior more than that? I think they do - in the summer, I have yet to get a mature buck on cam in a location more than once, ever. I have to keep moving the camera around...I have not made up my mind if the deer can regularly detect
and avoid cameras in a spot without first learning about it through trial and error....but once they know, mature deer in my woods avoid the area. Also, they continue to avoid it after the camera is gone - the tracks, or lack thereof, never lie.
Based on all the evidence I have seen, I no longer put my cameras, at any time of the year, within 100 yards of my stands....and never within the same funnel, or up/down a trail from my stands. Good places for cameras are often not good stand sites, and vice/versa, anyway.