00:00:01 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast, your guide to the fundamentals of better deer hunting, and now your host, Tony Peterson. Hey, folks, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. This week's show is all about understanding the technology behind trail cameras so that you can take your digital scouting to a higher level. After last week's excursions into the summertime white tail jungle, it's time for a little retail therapy at your local sporting goods store so you can stock up on some trail cameras. While we almost all use these digital scouters to some extent, a lot of us don't really understand all that modern trail cameras really offered. I had an AHA moment, not really that long ago, include me into the fact that I don't treat trail camera us like real cameras, and I should and I think you should too, because you'll get better pictures, better videos, and better overall intel if you do that, and that's a good thing in the deer woods. My friends. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Wire to Hunt Foundations podcast. I'm your host, Tony Peterson. I hope after last week you rubbed some calamine lotion on your mosquito bites and you've spent enough time rooting around in your various body crevices to know whether you found all the ticks that hopped on when you were out there burning some boot leather last week. I promised you that things would get more fun, and this week they will. This episode is all about trail cameras themselves. In the next couple of episodes, I'll get pretty far into the trail camera weeds, with strategies and where to place them, how long to leave them out, and why you'd opt for a traditional model versus a cellular option. But for now, it's time to think about trail cameras and what you should buy to maximize your scouting efforts. The good news on this front is that you no longer have to go broke to get a quality model, because this is one category that has just absolutely exploded in recent years. There are dozens of trail camera companies, and like most new hunting technology, these things started out mostly in a small market of super serious white tail bow hunters, but as more options became available, they've moved into the general firearm world and have absolutely overtaken all other scouting methods for deer hunters from Canada on down to the shores of the Gulf. That in and of itself isn't bad for the average weekend warrior who just wants to see what bucks are in the woods. For the die hard hunter, trail cameras can be an amazing tool to having the kit, provided that they don't convince you that you no longer need to actually scout. And if this hits a little bit too close to home, don't fret. We've all been there. I went through a phase in my life, particularly when I had two babies at home and I was hunting a lot of small, twenty acre type of properties, where I convinced myself that two seven digital scouters were just good enough. The problem I found after a couple of seasons was that I could still kill deer regularly on traveling public land hunts, but I was getting my ass absolutely whooped during home game hunts where I should have had the most advantage because I was using trail cameras. Now it doesn't bother me to get beat by the deer, because I've been beat by the deer nearly every time I've ever hunted them. I don't get mad when I lose an argument with my wife either. What actually bothered me during that time of my life where I was leaning too hard on cameras was that I wasn't hunting as much because I wasn't getting encouraging pictures. It kept me from going out and sitting in observation stands or doing a little in season scouting to figure out where the fresh sign was. Not only was I waiting for the deer to come to my spots, I was waiting for them to walk past my cameras in those spots. That's a losing proposition. I've since then realized the error of my ways and have altered my strategy, which, as I already said, will get covered plenty in the next couple of shows. But before them, I think it's probably a good idea to break down camera choice and accessories. Now have you ever just looked at an advertisement for a trail camera? Of course you have. You've seen plenty of marketing speak and some flashy numbers thrown around, not unlike Bow companies touting Ibo aerospeeds that might sound impressive but probably really don't mean much. To you and your individual drawway, draw length, aero choice, or hunting style. When it comes to trail cameras, do those numbers mean anything to you? Should they? Maybe? Take the megapixels advertised with a camera. For example, you can find reasonably priced options that boast twenty to even thirty megapixels, which simply boils down to image clarity. The more pixels they cram in their higher resolution and the photos will be to hire the resolution, the more you can zoom in and see clear details versus just a buck looking blob of grainy bullshit. Higher megapixels might matter, or if your cams are typically set on a mineral site or some other deer positioning attractant might not be a big deal. You might be thinking, so what is the ideal megapixel number? That's a great question and one you should direct message Mark Kenyon about because I don't know. I don't think anyone in the world would see a difference in trail camera recon between a camera that is built with twenty megapixels versus thirty. You'll definitely see image quality degradation if you can find a camera with a really low number of megapixels. But in reality, the latest models that aren't total clunkers are going to deliver crisp enough picks for the average deer hunter's use. You'll see the same thing happen when it comes to video quality. Many models offer four K quality video clips. Now, this, my friends, is bananas and also pretty awesome. If you run video, and you absolutely should in certain situations like during the rut or while monitoring an October community scrape, then higher quality clips are always better, especially for nighttime captures. There's a catch here, though, with this quality imagery and videos that you're going to get if you go this route, you should really consider your SD card choice as well. The Cheapo's that they sell next to the trail cameras that Cabela's probably aren't a great choice. You're now dealing with a real camera that actually needs a quality SD card, So headed the electronics store over to tar j and buy a card that not only offers the amount of gigs you need for the storage, but also a decent right speed. And what this means is that some cards can write up to like a hundred megabytes of data per second. If you're capturing one or two minute clips of four K video amped up right speed is real important, and there's good news here too. Just like with the cameras, quality s D card options are cheaper than they've ever been, but it's still important to shop for a decent one that won't fill up in three days or bogged down when it's supposed to be capturing amazing footage of a buck rubbing his forehead all over a licking branch. Trail cameras often have a maximum size SD card they can handle, which is what I usually go for these days. That's often something like a thirty two gig model, but in a not too distant future it will likely be sixty four or even And to take it a step further, especially if you might run it in video mode, look for a class ten s D cards in the appropriate storage size. These feature a minimum data right speed that will serve all your trail camera needs. Another camera consideration will involve flash. Most newer models offer nighttime flash that will be either infrared or a no glow option. If you're a camera shopping and you see one that doesn't offer this, it might have a white flash, just like a wedding photographer setup. I've had a few of those doozies in my day, and it might as well have been out in the woods yelling at the deer as they walk by, while making threatening movements in their direction and occasionally throwing mountain lions at them. White flash is no boy, no, my friends, especially if you hunt pressure deer. Fortunately, the market has called out most of those options, which is a trend I hope we see through to the very end. When it comes to infrared versus no glow options, which are also called black flash, sometimes you'll see that more cameras offer infrared than anything. This red light flash is visible to the deer at least on the camera will light up, and that is a consideration, especially if you're hunting spooky deer or plan to hang your cameras at eye level. This is why I tend to lean on the no glow options, although they might cost a little bit more. I'd rather spend up and have the deer oblivious. But there are plenty of hunters out there who put infrared flash cameras to good use and have absolutely no problems with them. There are other features that may or may not matter to you on cameras. Time lapse is one of them. It's a useful tool for monitor during food plots. Burst mode is another, and this is something I use almost always if I've got my cameras set solely for capturing images and not video. Burst mode, which tends to offer anywhere from like two to maybe nine images per triggering event, is a great way to capture all of the bucks in a bachelor group that might pass by, not just the leader, or to capture a dough in November and then the buck that chases after her a few seconds later. If you've got the space on your memory card, there's no reason not to let your camera shoot away other than it's a little more of a pain to go through the photos when you check your camera. It's also a good idea to pay attention to recovery time of your camera. Sub one second times are standard, but most cameras allow you to choose if you want a longer break between triggering events. Again, with enough storage available on your SD card, you probably want as little downtime as possible on your camera, so choose wisely, and in regard to specific situations like rut time recon. You might very well notice that you're camera often captures decent pictures of deer noses and butts. This is almost as frustrating as hanging a camera and then forgetting to actually turn it on, only to return a month later to find that you've basically hung an expensive paper weight in the woods. I've done this roughly three thousand times in my life, and every single time it's made me appreciate the fact that the government lets me drive a car and use scissors without supervision. Some cameras offer just one trigger speed, which is whatever they build in. Others let you choose and you can cater them to different situations. If you're capturing running bucks, the quicker the better. If you're monitoring a food source or a mineral site, you might not need a lightning fast trigger, and you might, in this case just get the very bow of the deer with no hope of seeing the stern again. There's good news here, because you've got a pile of options, and most of them are pretty reasonably priced. I say that with a whole bunch of terror, however, because every time I write about products or talk about them and I say something like that, some random person out there in anonymous tough guy land will say something like, yeah, I bet those erroos are worth it. For the guy who makes your kind of money, or or I'm sure it's nice to have all those free bows and not have to pay for them. Listen, folks, prices price, but value is subjective. When it comes to trail cameras. The most common question out there is what's the best camera I can buy for X amount of money. No one can answer that question for you, because no one knows. The better question is what do you really want out of a camera and which models deliver that. If there are five on the list, are any in your price range? If not, pretend it's the last day of the season, your freezer is empty, and then there is a fat forky walking in lower those standards. Bro, If one or more of the cameras does fall into your budget, you've got options. I'd say you could probably look up some reviews on your perspective models, but also that it sure seems like quality out there has leveled up drastically in the last five years. It wasn't that long ago when if you bought a cheap camera you might as well just hit yourself in the head with it before throwing it in the garbage. That way, you might learn your lesson, and it would have ended up there anyway. If you haven't noticed, one of the things I'm doing is a writer's trick we call weasel words. I'm being really sneaking and telling you what to buy without committing to tell you what to buy. So I'll say this. Brand wise, you're on your own. There are a lot of good trail camera brands out there. Price wise, the sweet spot for a solid camera that isn't a cellular option seems to be about a hundred to two hundred bucks right now. And if you do drop a Benjamin or two on a camera, think about it like it is in fact a camera. As someone who routinely hauls expensive camera geting into the woods and on the water, I've learned a lot of lessons about how to handle technology in the field. For example, if you think you should just throw your expensive DSLR camera in the backpack without it being in a case because you're only going out for a morning December muzzle order hunt on the farm just down the road, don't set your pack down too hard on the cold front steps to run back in and grab the coffee monke. You forgot. Trail cameras are built for the woods, but they are also worth taking care of. You're already going to leave them out in the field for weeks, months, or maybe years at a time, try to keep them stored in a dry, warmish place when they're not in duty. When you do actually hang them in the woods, consider what you would do to get an actual picture in that spot at all times of the day. If it's facing toward where the sun rises or sets, you might be in trouble either in the morning or the evening as the sun blazes away on the horizon. If your camera sports a test mode option or features a built in LCD screen for viewing, use them to make sure you're set up is spot on. To take this a step further, I also like to use an adjustable mount and hang my cameras above my head, angling them down. This keeps them from getting stolen sometimes, and it provides a better look at bucks as they pass a deer's eye level. Camera hang only works if the deer has their head about level with their back as they walk through. Oftentimes they stop and pick their head up, or they put their nose to the ground to sniff away. I'd rather capture the entirety of the deer every time versus hoping I get lucky when they pass through. This is, of course dependent on the setting. It's also easy to think about camera angle in the same way we consider shot angle with cameras set up on food picture of the camera taking a broadside shot of deer travel, just like you'd want to with a bow in your hand. For a trail or a travel route, you might want to point your camera down the trail for a quartering two or quartering away shot to get a better look at the passers by. Camera angle and mounting considerations are important for another reason too. Some deer just seem to be wise to cameras, or at the very least not big fans of them. In northern Wisconsin where I hunt, the deer have a very low tolerance for trail cameras. They spook from them often. And I'm only speculating here, but I think it's tied to the fact that baiting is legal in the county I hunt. I think those deer are so across them to danger around corn piles that they associate anything else that's usually around those corn piles, like cameras, which are always there with danger. Now I know there are plenty of bucks that get shot up there while munching away on the Golden secret and having their picture taken. But I also know the prevalence of images I get with dear spooking that aren't anywhere near abait pile is really really high. Pay attention to the images you're getting, and adjust your cameras accordingly. That is, if you're putting cameras out. Yet some people like to wait until later in the summer, reasoning that bucks will be closer to a killable pattern. Then that's up to the individual and probably not a terrible strategy, even if it isn't as much fun as getting out now and setting up some cameras. And on that note, I think the best way to dive into this type of scouting correctly is to circle back to your East scouting and your boots on the ground efforts and start planning out camera spots around that earlier work. Look at your way points there in the places you can't watch or clearly figure out by walking in and looking for sign start there, or in the places you've already looked at that have tickled your curiosity but you're not really sure if they're going to be worth some stand time in the fall. Those are the places worth starting with cameras, and that can happen any day now, because if you get it right, you'll have weeks or months of good intel building up. And if you get it wrong, you've got time to reset your camera strategy, which in the next episode is about to get a hell of a lot more detailed. I'm also going to go down the cellular camera rabbit hole to make the case for and against them. So if you're interested in taking your scouting game even further and really maximizing your trail camera advantage, you're gonna want to listen next week. That's it for this week, my white tail obsessed brothers and sisters, be sure to tune in next week for more deer hunting wisdom. I'm Tony Peterson and this has been the Wired to Hunt Foundations podcast. As always, thank you so much for listening, and we will see you right here next week