Podcast: Advanced Trail Camera Strategies for Hunting Mature Bucks

There’s a lot of information out there about how trail cameras work (or don’t work), which are the best trail cameras, and how to mount them properly. But there isn’t enough good content on how to actually implement trail cams into a comprehensive hunting strategy.

I’m talking about developing a camera strategy that will help you make decisions about where and when to hunt. The point is to use these advanced camera tactics so you’re more likely to actually photograph that big buck in your phone’s photo gallery.

So for this episode of The outdoor living podcast I interviewed whitetail deer hunting enthusiast Josh Honeycutt, who shares his strategy for predicting a buck’s movement in daylight based on wind direction. I then interviewed whitetail researcher Dr. James Johnson, who conducted scientific trail camera studies that required him to use 300 cameras per year. Johnson explains how to hook deer up to your cameras (so you don’t spook them) and describes how he uses cameras for his own hunting every fall.

Pattern Daylight movement based on wind direction

One of the most difficult aspects of hunting a mature buck is predicting when and where he will move during the day. Honeycutt meets this challenge by logging every daylight (or near daylight) photo of a target buck. He notes the time stamp, location and specific wind direction for each photo.

“What that allows me to do is see what specific wind directions the buck likes to move through the area,” Honeycutt says. “I have noticed that with some money, patterns emerge. With others it is more random. But with the last few bucks I’ve tagged, there have been some significant correlations between the wind directions they liked to travel through the area, and there were wind directions they would never have.”

Honeycutt uses historical data about wind direction Underground again to ensure it has an accurate wind direction to match each daylight buck photo. Then, when he notices a pattern, he targets a buck based on the wind direction the buck likes in the location where he appeared on the camera in daylight.

Chase edge winds

Because dollars like to move with the wind in their favor (they typically turn against the wind), implementing this strategy often means “letting the dollars have the wind,” Honeycutt says.

In other words, you’ll end up hunting in places where your scent is wafting to approaching deer. You should place your stands so that your scent just wanders off the path. For example, if the deer is approaching from the northeast, your scent may be blowing directly east. And ideally, you shoot the buck before it enters your scent cone.

“I learned this from other hunters who are better than me, but I had more success when I started hunting winds that weren’t perfect for me, or even good for me. They are more in the deer’s favor than in my favor,” Honeycutt says. “That’s a high-risk, high-reward tactic…but the way I’ve reduced the chance of deer smelling me is by really knowing the property.”

By understanding how deer move through an area, you can be more confident in precise stand placement. The other key is implementing this strategy when you have consistent wind direction and speed. Changing edge winds cause problems.

You can, of course, use scent control strategies to avoid being picked up, but remember that you can never completely fool a whitetail’s nose.

The nice thing about Honeycutt’s wind direction strategy is that it can help you develop long-term deer movement patterns. You might see that with each wind direction, the dollar tends to move through a specific area during the day – year after year.

“The property is the property, and I think most of the deer herd on that property is learning how to use the wind to their advantage,” Honeycutt said. “What might be different in my experience is that some dollars kind of emphasize that [wind direction]. Some deer are a little more carefree than others.”

Give deer to your cameras

Dr. James Johnson, a researcher and wildlife biologist at the University of Georgia, has extensive experience with how deer respond to trail cameras. He was in the stand shooting deer (for research) when cameras shot and he saw deer focus on that camera. This has happened with both white flash cameras and IR cameras. But just because deer notice the trail camera doesn’t mean they will be spooked.

“Deer will notice the presence of that camera,” Johnson says. “They’ll know we were in there, they’ll know the camera is there. But deer are reactionary animals. And if there are no negative incentives involved [camera] interaction, they might get a little nervous at first… but the more they interact with it, the more comfortable they will become.”

Johnson says over time, cameras become part of the environment for deer. Whitetails become conditioned to the camera’s flash and shutter. However, changing those cameras can make deer alert again.

Johnson has an anecdote in which he and a friend targeted an old buck on a property they were hunting in Georgia. The only place they could logically hunt the buck was over a feeder in a swamp, and of course they had a trail camera trained on it. The camera had been in photo mode all summer, and without much thought, Johnson switched the trail camera to video mode when they started hunting. After an evening of sitting, he was shocked by how deer responded to the camera when he reviewed images the next morning.

“When I looked at the app the next morning, I realized I had left the camera in video mode and… the [buck] ended up in that food trough [later that night] and I had a video of him, but he was absolutely shocked,” Johnson said. “The way they were acting and staring at the camera, it was pretty clear to me that this camera was emitting a sound or they could feel the lighting or something. They were definitely wired. They weren’t eating, they were brooding about 30 yards behind them [the feeder] and then they left the area.

Interestingly enough, Johnson had no problem disguising the camera when it was in photo mode. The takeaway here is that once deer are conditioned to a trail camera, even a small change – like switching settings in this case – can scare them.

Use stationary cameras and roving cameras

During the fall, Johnson becomes more aggressive with his trail cameras. He takes a two-pronged approach. He leaves cameras in key feeding areas all season: food plots, productive oaks and fields.

Then he has a flexible set of cameras that he moves to determine the movement of the buck.

“If I get a photo of a mature deer in a food plot at night, I use roving cameras to work back to try to determine where he is. [enters the food plot and beds],” says Johnsons.

Johnson sometimes changes cameras every week until he comes up with money. When Johnson moves cameras, he tries to be as odor-free as possible and avoids touching vegetation.

“Just keep that camera moving around until you know where they’re entering the food plots and leaving the beds.”

Read next: Best trail cameras

During the rut, the point is to identify key feeding areas for does. Yes, this strategy has drawbacks: the more you move cameras, the more likely you are to startle deer – but during the rut, when deer change their movement patterns, the risk is worth the reward.