2025 Deer Season Preparations

[HenryFan]

Actually, I meant to say if I were a rabbit, high speed or otherwise, I would not trade luck for speed.

[cee_Kamp]

I have two "low glow" cameras, and while the deer seem curious about them, the coyotes and the fox get spooked and bolt.
The rest are all "no glow", and while they are invisible to my eyes, a lot of wildlife do seem to look straight at the camera at some point in the video, so that makes me wonder if they see something that we can't. They've been out or four years now, so I have a level of comfort with them too.

I have videos of the bucks and does hitting scrapes and licking branches, and the bucks are easier to identify when you can see them moving their head in the video, and forked or broken tines are easier to see. For some reason, I get a few seven pointers every year, they seem to not form a G1, or brow tine on one side or the other. I can tell which is which with video. I've also seen a buck with an arrow stub in his neck that I definitely wouldn't have been able to see for sure in a still frame. That buck's movement through the Queen Ann's Lace blocked most of it, but you can see the stub as he walked through it. A guy about a mile east of me shot that one last year on opening morning. All that said, powering those IR illuminators for 10 or 15 seconds for a video does eat up more battery power. I get almost a year from 8 AA batteries, but a windstorm that blows a branch in front of the detecting sensor, or that blows the weeds and such around creating movement in the target area at night, that will end up giving me dozens and dozens of nothing videos, and probably uses lots of juice from the batteries.

My no-glow cameras also record sound with the video, and I've recorded videos that included the conversation of two guys walking along the edge of a field where my camera was trained on a mock scrape I made. Actually got two videos worth of them standing there talking, every word audible and clear. I can't even count how many I get with bucks and does grunting.

Good luck tomorrow!

Many years ago I had the unpleasant task of dealing with trespassers on my hunting land. Several times.
My friend and brother-in-law advised me to go full bore nasty & unpleasant on them in each situation.
Including getting law enforcement involved.
He was also a hunting land landowner and had similar situations happen to him.

I guess he was correct, the word got around in the valley. Don't get caught trespassing ON THAT GUYS LAND, he's an Ahole!
With many years now having passed, no problems with trespassers.
Whatever it takes to make them not trespass.