Doing trail cameras wrong.

[std7mag]

I came accross a study done on game cameras and their effect on deer.

The study concludes that deer just seeing a camera has a negative effect on deer, especially mature bucks. Once they see it, even if it's inactive, buck was never seen again.

Study recommends setting cameras high, 6+ft, and set to video instead of pictures.

Thought i'd pass it along.

 

[Mobuck]

I don't think a deer knows a trail cam from any other knot on a tree trunk BUT a wise old buck recognizes the odor Bubba leaves behind.
I have a couple of cards full of pics of deer of all sizes and shapes literally nose to lens with my cams. The same medium size 10 point was working a scrape directly in front of the trail cam 3 nights in a row.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

It’s also been fairly conclusively proved that flashes, even ordinary infrared, has the same effect. Cameras should have “black flash” only.

Setting cameras high also keeps them out of ordinary view of thieves.

 

[NoSecondBest]

I've been doing trail camera for going on fifteen years now and have a lot of them out year round on my place. I don't believe for a minute that a deer seeing a camera has ANY effect on them. I get thousands of pics every year of deer, bear, bobcats, coyotes, fishers, etc and out of maybe all the pics I ever took I might have had one or two deer acting startled at the camera going off, and that might not have even been the cause. It could have been something else that spooked it. I have pics of bear running in on deer and startling them. I have black infrared, low glow infrared, and white light and it doesn't make a difference to the deer. The only advantage to black infrared, and it's very minor, is that humans can't see it if they're looking to steal your cameras. Even with low glow they have to be looking straight at it in order to see it. White flash.....well, you're going to lose a camera there. The single biggest mistake people make with cameras is going in to check them all the time and leaving their scent all over the place. That puts all game on high alert.

 

[MTT TL]

The study concludes that deer just seeing a camera has a negative effect on deer, especially mature bucks. Once they see it, even if it's inactive, buck was never seen again.

Bucks can wander quite a lot depending upon the time of the year and the availability of does. He may have just been wandering through.

 

[Rembrandt]

This borders on anthropomorphism......(giving animals or inanimate objects human characteristics). While animals can be trained and have extraordinary instincts, seeing a camera as a danger is giving them more human brain power than they deserve.

 

[Brian Pfleuger]

This borders on anthropomorphism.

I'm not sure that saying that animals are able to recognize an object as dangerous is akin to giving them human mental powers.

It has long been known that deer and many other animals can recognize not only unnatural shapes, such as a human silhouette in a tree but can also recognize inanimate objects, such as tree stands, as dangerous.

There is also the tendency to prioritize information obtained by personal experience. Because "my" deer don't respond to cameras, no ones deer respond to cameras, or vice versa.

I've seen deer in some places that seem to be oblivious to roads and vehicles. The deer go about their activities as if there are no roads and no cars. If they happen to be walking in a direction that takes them into the path of a car, they get hit. If they do or don't, it's pure random chance. I've also seen deer (Cayuga Heights, NY) that will literally walk up to a road and stand there watching cars, waiting for an opening in traffic before calming walking across. Someone who had seen one behavior without seeing the other might easily scoff that some deer exhibited the opposite.

I don't have a dog in the fight but I wouldn't be so dismissive of information just because my personal experience doesn't back it up.

 

[MTT TL]

unnatural shapes, such as a human silhouette in a tree

A human in a tree is not at all unnatural. It would certainly be perceived as a threat in some areas. A tree stand will be covered in human scent and other unusual scents such as paint, oil, metal. But the big thing is human smell. Around here people put up a stand in the summer time. By fall it has weathered and the smells are gone.

When I leave my house for a few months the deer are more than happy to come play in my yard and eat out of my garden walk around my shop and garage. I'm gone so there is no threat.

Some deer don't care about human smells, tree stands, or unnatural objects. If they live in a no hunting area like the suburbs they can become downright pests.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Once they see it, even if it's inactive, buck was never seen again.

Let me get this straight. There are these inactive game cameras. Bucks see them. Then are never seen again.

If the game camera is inactive, what is the witness medium that is documenting that the buck has seen the inactive game camera and then never returns? How is it documented that it is the inactive camera that is the cause of the buck not returning.

The lack of cause and effect here are rather striking. Obviously, there must be more going on in the environment other than just a singular inactive camera. So how do we know that the impetus for avoidance isn't due to something else in the area, such as the other documenting media? Surely this isn't something being witnessed by a human on sight, right?

I don't have any doubt that deer can recognize "unnatural" objects, not that they distinguish between natural and unnatural. More than likely, what they are distinguishing is between normal and not normal for where they are. At MTT TL indicated, deer will play in his yard, which no doubt, is in very close proximity to many "unnatural" things, but they are normal things for that area. So yeah, if you introduce something new to an area, expect the animals to react to it until they get used to it being part of their environment.

 

[NoSecondBest]

I came accross a study done on game cameras and their effect on deer.

The study concludes that deer just seeing a camera has a negative effect on deer, especially mature bucks. Once they see it, even if it's inactive, buck was never seen again.

Study recommends setting cameras high, 6+ft, and set to video instead of pictures.

Please share or provide a link. I'm beyond skeptical. One of those "everyone says" statements? Who's everyone?

 

[std7mag]

Link...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVQUSR5BdIk

 

[NoSecondBest]

An interesting video, and thanks for sharing it. I, myself use mostly Cuddebacks (as in the video) and have them set for one still shot and then they go into video mode. I have yet to see deer react like the ones being portrayed in the link provided. I also use a few Browning cameras set on video. The few times I've ever had deer react to a camera were when the camera made noise when the filter would be changing from day to nighttime pics. When that happens, some cameras make a noise when the filter changes. I know I can hear it, so I'm sure the deer can. I had that problem a few years ago when using Primos cameras. They made a very audible clunk when they did that. None of the cameras I use now days make that noise and I've had literally thousands of deer, bear, bobcats, foxes, coyotes, etc get their picture taken without any alarming moves on their parts. I suspect there's more to the animals being alarmed in the link that just seeing a camera. If not, I'd be seeing some of it myself. Taking one still and then going into video mode gives the animal plenty of time to react and get caught on camera reacting. I"ve been running around nine cameras each year and this year I picked up four more. I'll continue to watch and observe, but I doubt I'll end up seeing what's being reported......you never know.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

The video talks about "negative reactions." The deer sees the camera, sees it is something it has not seen before, moves a few steps away...and then you know what, they get used to it. They realize that is poses no threat anymore than the sound of s skittering mouse up the side of a tree.

 

[std7mag]

Except for the bucks, which just run away.

 

[bamaranger]

wrong

Trail cams are all the rage. But "wrong" in my experience looks like this:

About bow season, all the trail cam guys hit the woods, dump out corn piles, and put their cameras up to see if they can get a pic of a buck. If they get a pic, then that's there scouting done, and they'll label that a good spot. Problem is, bow hunters are already hunting, and hunting within 100 yds of corn is illegal. You go in to hunt on a good spot, one that's produced in years gone by or has readable natural sign on it, and there's a pile of corn and a camera. Or worse, you get up a tree before light, and once daylight, there, 40-50 yds away,is a corn pile and a camera. Drives me nuts.

Of course, these guys have to check their cameras once a week for a month or so 'till they get to gunhunt, so they ride in with their ATV, tromp around with the same clothes and boots they wore to work and pumped gas with on the way there, and stink up the place. And spoil a good spot for everybody, long before gun season. Oh, they get a pic and can show it off, but nobody sees the buck again all year.

Then there's the whole business about when they get a deer on camera, give it a name, and take some kind of ownership of the the thing before it's been killed. And if they don't kill it, and somebody else does (like me), I shot "their" deer.

I wish cameras, bait/feed were totally illegal, and strictly enforced. You see a camera in the woods, you can destroy it.

Not a troll, .....and now rant over.

 

[dahermit]

I don't have a dog in the fight but I wouldn't be so dismissive of information just because my personal experience doesn't back it up.

It depends upon the quality of the information. A link to a study actually done on the subject is one thing, a statement that "it has been proved that..." is quite another.

 

[std7mag]

True, was more a point of education. I know i've had pictures of bucks looking into the camera, and never seen them again nor on any of my other cameras.

My cameras go out end of June, first of July. There has never been a kernal of corn nor an apple core or any such thing.
With 500,00 acres of state forest to hunt i'm searching to find a good area as far away from other hunters as possible.

 

[Art Eatman]

I have too many decades of deer-watching to believe that a camera flash creates a zone of "Danger!" in a deer's mind. They seem to operate on a "no harm, no foul" basis in getting used to all manner of strange things. That includes military jets going to after-burner directly above feeding does and noises of kids and chainsaws in a subdivision only 200 yards from the does.