HUGE BUCK COUGHT ON MY TRAIL CAM!

Just kidding! but its a buck!

ok..... I lied about the huge part... hes just a spike! but hey, its a buck! more and more deer are showing up for the party every night! today, I set up a second trail camera on the same spot to test it out, as well, because the rut should be starting in about a month or perhaps a little less, I sprayed a little doe estrus scent around the area to see if it brings anything new in... like this guys daddy. :)

How I manage deer herds on public land.... Yes. I do this...

Let me Preface this post by saying this: I am COMPLETELY against hunters hunting by sitting in tree stands, blinds, or other cover while sitting next to a feeder or any other type of bait. I think that hunting in this way gives an unfair advantage to the hunter and I do not understand why anyone would be proud of a kill while sitting next to food that the deer need. I believe that it is not deserved or earned in these cases. I believe that a hunter should stalk its game fairly with no outside intervention during the hunt. However, the use of attractants and bait are useful to the hunter and very healthy and good for the deer herd as a whole if used properly and ethically in my eyes. This is how I do it, and I believe that it is a major benefit to the entire deer population in the area, while at the same time helping me to pattern the deer and plan my hunts.

    As you have seen in my previous posts, I have a trail camera in the woods near my hunting area in unit 35A in southern arizona. In order to get deer on camera successfully and regularly, Attractants are used. approximately 10 to 12 feet in front of my trail camera, there is a mineral attractant product mixed in with the soil that both attracts deer, and provides much needed vitamins and minerals to the deer. The need for these food and vitamin sources is magnified by the fact that a very large area of the coues deer habitat in the area has recently been burnt down in a massive wildfire a few months ago, which robbed them of food and bedding grounds. many of these deer had to relocate closer to the city where it is unsafe for them to be. My hopes,as I describe my off season management plan, is that I can assist in returning the deer to their natural habitat in the canyon I hunt, grow the herd to be healthier with higher fawn survival rates, and bring back the joy of hunting while increasing herd numbers at the same time.

This is the Deer Cain black magic attractant I use in front of my cameras....

The Offseason Management Plan:

As of January 2012, all deer seasons will be over with until late 2012. It is during this time that I have developed a plan to draw more deer into the areas I hunt (a very very large area, that fills a large canyon in the huachuca mountains.), help them survive in an area which has been devistated by wildfire, and prepare them to grow big ol' healthy racks that make chads happy come hunting season!

     ok. im going to attempt to put the steps im taking into a bullet list, but I know damn well im not going to be able to keep them short and sweet....

• Mix black magic deer attractant in with the dirt in 8 spots throughout the canyon. in each spot put a 10 pound mineral lick block (used to provide nutrients essential to healthy antler growth.) and set up a trail camera at each spot. each spot will be placed off of the beaten path away from eyesht of those traveling on hiking paths, roads, etc. each spot will also be cleared of major brush piles, bushes, etc. to ensure clear pictures of all deer in the area may be taken.
• I will be spreading seeds for things like clover and other plants that are main food in the deers diet. this will be accomplished just prior to monsoon season to ensure proper growth of the food plots. with luck, these plots need not be maintained during the whole of monsoon months right into early bow season.
• I will be tracking evey picture of every deer and attempting to identify even the does to keep track of movements throughout the year. my goal is by the time the first hunting season starts I want to have the ability to go out on a hunt and target a specific, mature buck rather than a younger, smaller one if i just happen to see it. This increases the dificulty for me, increases the size of my trophy (and the amount of food in my freezer) and allows younger bucks to grow old while I am assisting the area and grow larger racks.

     now, many people will be thingking " wait... you said you diddnt agree with people that sit around and wait for deer to come to food when they are hunting! what are you doing with all that deer food then!?" well, I will NOT be sitting in one place on as food plot waiting. I will be doing my standard walk, spot, stalk style hunt. I normally hike up a mountain ridge and spot from the top with binoculars, and if i find nothing, i simply move up the ridge more and spot again, once a deer is sighted, a stalk starts. Thus I walk up, spot, and stalk. Thus the reason I call it a walk,spot, stalk hunt rather than a spot and stalk hunt. spot stalk walk hunt spot stalk walk walk.... gah!



This is the "trophy rock" deer mineral lick I use in conjunction with the black magic deer minerals. EVERYTHING I use is 100% safe and a very healthy supplement for the deer.

    

ahh ha! 3 Does! and one of them is PISSED this time! PMS?

The Plan today was to simply check the trail camera, switch it back to photo mode instead of video, and head on home to evaluate the nights findings.... however, I got a very pleasent surprise....one pissed off female deer kicking the shit out of another one.... please....press play below... :)

The above video confirms that deer have PMS just like human women..... thank god human women do not have hooves....



Another thing you may have noticed is that there are 3 deer in the video... this makes one fo the questions I had in the last post easier... i now can completely confirm that there are at least 3 does in my hunt area... and hopefully one of them is sexy enough to bring in a 150 inch non typical coues deer.. :)

More trail cam deer!...er...same deer? DEER PATTERNING TIME!!!

Time For another Pre-Season Scouting and patterning lesson.brought to you by ME. yeah. your welcome....

     The above clip is a video taken from my trail camera in southern arizona on the 4th night that it has been out there. In the vdeo we have 2 deer. These deer are coues whitetails. coues deer are smaller than most other varieties of white tail deer. also, they have very different attitudes that irritate me almost as much as when my wonderful fiance' brings home another bag of clothing from the store....

     Most white tail deer bed down in thick forest, and tend to venture into more open and grassy areas to feed and socialize.... no so with coues deer. Coues are known to very very rarely be seen in an open space for more than the fleeting moments it takes to cross it and get to cover again. This makes it stupid hard too spot and hunt them. In fact, many hunters feel that coues deer are the ultimate north american trophy deer because they are skittish and very hard to hunt. Anywho...enough about all of the things that frustrate me...

     In this video clip we see 2 does. I dont have a doe tag. so why would I give a damn about getting does on camera? Simple.... its about 3 weeks away from the rut, and these does may, and probably will, attract bucks. Coues bucks FOLLOW coues does during the rut, thus, that buck that has been a half mile from my camera this whole time, will be led to my camera by these does. now... the question is, are these the same does as the picture in my last post? Are they coming at the same time of night as the last post? Unfortunately, when the trail camera is set to video mode, it takes 10 second videos, but has no date or time stamp at the bottom, so in order to pattern the times they are arriving, I need to set the camera back to still pictures.  However, if I want to identify if the deer I am seeing are the same deer as the previous pictures I have from the camera, the video setting usually gives a better look over a shorter period of days out in the field. as I write this, it is set to video, and as of tomorow, I will be setting it to still pictures so I can pattern them a little better as far as time of visit, and moon phase (also indicated at the bottom of the still pictures.)

    So why do i want to Identify these does as the ones in the other pictures or new ones? simple: I want to begin to know exactly how many deer are in my hunt area, wether they be does or bucks, simply to gain a better unerstanding of the hunt grounds and help not only with the hunt, but with managing the grounds in the off season (yes thats right, i "manage" public lands in my own way..... but that is for a different post for a different day) eventually, I will begin to start following these deer backwards through ther nightly habits by reverse engineering their paths with the camera. this entails moving the camera to a different spot, or even better, putting another camera up, in the direction you think they came from, then simply looking at the times on each camera, and discerning their direction and path. Do this enough and at the right times and locations, and you can pattern a deer all the way back to thier bedding area..... which holds MORE deer and gives you the advantage for the hunt. this is especially helpful if you notice them coming out after dark early in the season, as you can assume they will be out earlier later in the season as it gets colder..... damn im a genius.

So.... These deer, while not shooters, and not anything necessarily special, are a welcome picture on my camera, and a welcome couple of animals in my hunt area... stay tuned for more pictures, videos, scouting stories, and general crap from my world of obsessive pre season scouting and planning doom. :)



Trail cameras... My new favorite thing.

If you watch hunting shows then you have seen them, and you are on one side of the fence or the other. The first side is "wow, must be nice to have all those sponsors to give you nice things like $200 trail cameras, screw it, i dont need that crap anyways." the other side is "DAMN that would be cool to have!". I was a member of the prior, until I broke down and got one the other day. and now, I think my thought is "I need more cameras so I can see everything that happens in the woods at all times! I need them so i can feel that excitement every time I walk up to it with my netbook computer to see what happened last night!, I need to take more pictures! GAHHHH!"
but I Digress...
     The fact is, I have owned a trail camera for exactly 2 days, and I will never be without them again. no, I did not get a $200 delux model, I went cheap and simple. the camera I got cost $80 plus the cost of an SD card and 4 AA batteries...and a movie for my fiance' so she diddnt freak out when I told her I bought it. it is made by TASCO and I have to admit, I had my doubts. NOT ANYMORE.
    This model camera had infrared flash that you cant see with the naked eye so it would not spook deer, and you can get pictures at night. well, thats just what I did.
     I decided to place my camera in a spot that I had hunted just ONCE in the early Bow season here in southern arizona. It is a little spot in the huachuca mountains. there was nothing special about this area except it seemed that the trees were not QUITE as dense as other spots, and there were a few tracks around. this area had been devistated by a massive wildfire just a few months before but the arizona monsoons helped get some greens growing again and did the job quickly. so the eco system had been disturbed. In fact, opening day of bow season is the day that that area of the forest at the base of the mountains finally reopened. thus, no scouting.
     After a few early hunts i decided to mix in a bag of deer cocain brand deer minerals in a spot in the forest.  did do and havent thought of it since.... until i got my camera.

     after simply attaching the camera to the tree and spraying the area down lightly with buck bomb"doe-P" I left and went home for the night. it was at home that i realized that every day from now on I would check my camera with excitement and anticipation in hopes of getting a big buck caught in my IR flash. well, it took only 2 days. on the second night, THIS is what I saw:

O.K. So They are not bucks, but the rut is gonna start soon and these does are gonna bring them in! When i approached the camera today, I told myself that if there were no pictures today, I would move the camera somewhere else and just hope. well, i diddnt need to.I downloaded the images to my computer, put the SD card back in, and went home to take a look. Now I feel like I have opened a new realm of hunting opportunity. more cameras will be purchased and used. I cant wait to pattern more deer! Come back daily to see more posts as i check my cameras and begin to prepare for both the muzzle loader season coming up on the 28th of october, and, if unsuccessful during that hunt, the nice, long Bow season starting december 9th when the rut is full swing. i have taken a week and a half off work to just hunt. im psyched!