Trail Cam Lessons Continue

Well I went and pulled the pics from our metro area trail cam again today.  I'm not impressed.  The Evolved Habitat Rut-N-Apple attractant we put out is gone but it doesn't look like it attracted a lot of the right crowd.  We had a couple does, a fawn that loved the stuff and a raccoon.  Now I did miss the last 6 days because apparently the "new" batteries I put in the cam the last time I went out, weren't so new.  They were dead when I got there today.  We have only gotten one buck to pose for the camera in the 4 months we've had it out there.  I know there are big boys in the area as I have seen them personally.  Clearly we haven't found where they are walking just yet.

Here are some of the pics we did get:

  

NEW PICTURES!

After a grueling couple of weeks of long hours in the office, I was finally able to make it north to get the memory cards out of the trail camera's on our main property.  Unfortunately it looks as though we either had some bad batteries or one of our cameras may have malfunctioned, as it was out there for weeks, and the memory card is blank.

I was able to get 72 pictures off of the camera that is placed in front of my stand. The deer have been hitting the food plot that we planted extremely hard, as many of the pictures have them standing there eating the foliage growth. This is a great sign and will hopefully lead us right into the bow hunting season! Check out the pictures below. This is a small sample, I hope to get more up later today as well.

EXTREME CLOSE UP!!!!!

A female and two fawns





Possibly the same female and two fawns



What we believe could be a 6 point buck. The antlers are still growing. We believe this was the buck that we caught on the prior trip up to get the pictures.

A nub buck.

I will get more of the pictures up later today. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we have to make a couple trips up to the property to build/reinforce the stands that are on the property. We are heading down the back stretch to the hunting season. I am really getting the itch and it should be a fun ride this year seeing how everything works out.

~E

Monday Morning Recap

Another Monday morning is here.  We are less than two months away from kicking off deer season here in MN.  Trail cams are out, food plots are planted and scouting has begun.  Here are some things I saw over the weekend that caught my eye:

Hallowed Ground -  Episode 3 of this show is a great watch.  I enjoy the way these guys film their hunts as well as the hunts themselves.

Midwest Whitetail  -  The guys over at Midwest Whitetail put together a great show with the guys over at Muddy Outdoors.  We don't get to use decoys here in MN of course, but the way they examine each tactic can be applied across the board.

What blogs do you watch on a weekly basis for great info?

Metro Trail Cam Let Down

I went over last night and pulled the trail cam pics from our metro hunt location.  This is the camera that was infested with ants a few weeks ago.  It took me a lot longer to get it back up than I wanted but it's up again.  I checked it after only 5 days in the woods to be sure we were getting a good angle and not a lot of non-deer pics.  The results were less than positive.  

A week ago I was cruising through the Bargain Cave at Cabela's and found some Evolved Habitats Rut-N-Apples and Acorn Frenzy.  They are on sale for $9.99 a bag, so I bought one of each.  

This fits into our philosophy of hunting on a budget but only if they work.  As you remember, we used the Hunter's Specialties® Vita-Rack® 26 Lick Site at our other location and it worked like a champ.  We set up the cam in a spot we had been getting great pics with no attractant and put down the Rut-N-Apples.  As you can see from the pics, it did get some attention, but not as much as I thought it would.  Maybe it needs a little more time.  

Eric is getting the pics from our northern two cameras today.  It has been agonizingly painful to wait the two weeks to see what we have there.

Summertime Blues

Seeing that we are all busy with work and family events and trips, we have not been able to make it to any of the property's the past couple of weekends.

BUT FEAR NOT!!!!!

I will be swinging through the property outside of Sandstone on Friday morning to get pictures from the trail cameras that we have placed over the food plot and mineral lick sites. We are hoping to see continued use of these sites, as well as possibly some growth out of the bucks that we have already caught on camera this year.

I will be posting the pictures next week.


Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable 4th of July, and we are nearing the home stretch for the season to begin. The countdown is on!

E

Monday Morning Recap

Some of the great stuff I read over the weekend:

Muddy Outdoors - Midwest Whitetail TV -  Ok so this is a watch and not a read, but anything done by Bill Winke and the MidwestWhitetail.com crew gets my attention. 

When Food Plots Fail  -  The folks over at QDMA Works have a nice article on the "what's" and "why's" of food plots gone wrong.

We also put the trail cam that was infested by ants back onto our metro property location with a little help from our friends at Cabela's.  I will get you an update on that in a few days when we pull the first batch of pics to check our handy work.

Kill Plots

Bowhunting.com has a great article today about a different kind of food plot that they call "kill plots."  It is basically the same thing we are trying to establish at our Sandstone hunting area:

When someone mentions a food plot, one’s mind tends to think about a one to five acre area with lush greens full of deer foraging on high protein brassicas or grains.  While these plots are great for feeding deer, they tend to be destination areas and not great spots to hunt mature bucks.  Lets take a look at these big plots’ little brother, what I call, the kill plot.