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!