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. :)
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