What Can You Learn About Your Deer from Trail Cameras?

My research reveals the first self-triggered camera used to photograph wildlife was developed for scientific studies of wildlife, long before hunters became aware of their existence or had dubbed the term “trail camera.” They can be traced back to the 1880s, when George Shiras used a camera and flash, triggered by a trip wire to study wildlife. He is credited with producing the first “trail camera” photo of deer, which impressed Teddy Roosevelt so much, he convinced Shiras to publish a National Geographic book on the subject, Hunting Wildlife with Camera and Flashlight: A Record of Sixty-Five Years of Visits to the Woods and Waters of North America.

I wasn’t around back in Shiras’ day, but I was hired in 1973 to develop a Wildlife Management degree program at the School of Forestry (now College) at Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, Texas. My goal was not only to develop the degree program, but to change the direction of my research from non-game to the white-tailed deer. Why? At that time, landowners were not interested in non-game; and we knew very little about deer. It was a charismatic species and deer hunting was increasing in popularity.

I viewed working with deer a good way to gain the confidence of private landowners and encourage them to manage their land for more than just timber. Since I also wanted to conduct meaningful research, my students and I decided to put together what today would be called “focus groups,” made up of landowners, hunters, wildlife biologists and foresters. At these meetings, we would ask just one basic question? “What do we need to know about white-tailed deer?” We identified two primary needs: 1. Can we plant something for deer?; and, 2. What are older bucks doing that keep us from killing them?

These primary questions became my goals for the newly founded Institute for White-tailed Deer Management & Research, and the first 20-year plan emerged. Today, we are in our 3rd 20-year plan!

Focusing on Objective 2, we organized research in which we captured deer and placed radio-telemetry collars around their necks. Using a special antenna I designed, we could locate the collared deer with fair accuracy. Other colleagues such as Dr. Harry Jacobson at Mississippi State and Dr. Larry Marchinton at Georgia were conducting similar research.

Those were glorious times for young men fresh out of Ph.D. school. Scientists were different in those days; we actually shared information! We had to make our own collars as there were no reliable commercial sources. During my doctoral work, I had designed and constructed radio-transmitters for everything from snakes to birds.

Then reality struck . . . It is easy to design a research project, yet another to carry it out. It always looks simple on paper. It was a big enough challenge to capture whitetails in the dense forests of eastern Texas, quite another to capture mature bucks. At that time, our deer population was very low, mostly a result of heavy poaching and open land hunting traditions. Our early estimates for deer densities ranged one deer per 50-60 acres; and a mature buck per 400 acres.

We tried several ways to capture deer in the forests of East Texas, including tranquilizer dart guns, drop nets, cannon nets and drive nets. I started with a dart gun and a very flimsy lock-on stand; risking my life every time I climbed a tree. It took 1,200 hours of waiting to finally capture a 4 1/2-year-old buck; but, I was excited to finally have one to radio-track.

My efficiency increased after that, and I finally had a statistically adequate sample size. Tracking these deer was essentially a form of “remote sensing;” since you had X-Y coordinates that could be overlain on an aerial photograph of the habitat. We then could estimate the amount of use each habitat type received, indicating deer preference.

I was working at Boggy Slough Hunting & Fishing Club, owned by the Temple Family who had come to East Texas back in 1893 to start a lumber company. At the time I began my research, Arthur Temple, Jr. was the president of the company, and he was an avid deer hunter. He took a liking to me, and not only volunteered Boggy Slough for my research, but assisted with much of my work. I owe a great deal to him.

As we gathered more location data on our collared bucks, two interesting things became apparent. First, almost every collared buck, one time or another would walk right by old trees with homemade iron stands screwed into them. The old hunters of the late 19th Century obviously understood how deer move about the forest, and why. Second, many of the bucks (and does) tended to spend a lot of time near a cutbank made by a creek in the Cochino Bayou along the Neches River.

Investigating the area, we soon found that cutbank and it contained all the evidence of deer and other wildlife eating the dirt. By then, we were conducting other projects on deer nutrition, and it was obvious that this site was a “natural deer lick.” I wanted to determine the extent of use, but the only way I had of finding out was radio-telemetry.

That was not good enough for me, so I asked some colleagues if they had any ideas. Dr. Mike Legg was our recreation specialist at the time, and he suggested I talk with National Forest scientists who were conducting a study on use of hiking trails as part of the newly passed Wilderness Act. They were using a device that could be placed along a trail, composed of two units: an infrared sending unit and a receiving unit that triggered a counter each time someone came down the trail.

It was perfect for my mineral lick investigation, and they loaned one to me. I quickly acquired lots of numbers, but I still could not determine how many were deer, and how many were other animals such as wild hogs.

I happened to see an advertisement by a company in California about a simple trigger for a 35mm camera. Just like the trail counter, it had a sending and receiving unit that, when the beam was broken, triggered the camera. At that time, I was totally unaware of George Shiras’ use of a similar device in the 1800s, but I quickly purchased some from that company. We worked up a unit, consisting of a Nikon 35mm camera, outfitted with a motor drive and 400 shot film magazine. And, bingo! We got photographs of deer eating the dirt in the mineral lick.

That began a research direction that continues to this day. Radio-telemetry gave us information about our deer’s movements, and cameras gave us information about what our deer were doing.

Citizen Science

As time passed, industry innovators like Dan Moultrie made scouting and research efforts much easier with the advent of products like Moultrie trail cameras. And as our experiences with trail cameras accumulated, I came to the realization that hunters were becoming more interested in studying deer behavior.

Whereas, a hunter normally used trail cameras as a scouting tool, more and more folks were leaving the cameras deployed year-round to learn what the deer were doing. At the same time, trail camera technology also was evolving, providing you with more information than a simple photograph or video clip.

Climatic information such as temperature, humidity, wind direction and other information such as moon phase and location are now commonly provided to the user. Many years ago, we used the cameras to develop activity/feeding patterns on a property. This opened the door for folks to start testing some of the information provided by deer experts on activity patterns.

I’ve attached a graph produced using the numbers of deer photographed by properly distributed trail cameras. Using this model of deer movement, we identified that there was a small, but important movement period in the middle of the day. Knowing this encouraged hunters to be out in the woods at this time, and we’ve seen an influx of trophy bucks taken since the advent of trail cameras, correspondingly.

In another study, we compared activity patterns developed from trail camera photographs obtained at two different properties, 1,500 miles apart (Michigan vs. Texas). Hunters were arguing that “their deer were different” in activity patterns geographically. Examine my attached graph below to see if this belief was correct.

The activity curves were very similar, with the exception that deer in Michigan moved earlier in the afternoon. Since this study was done in Fall, it makes sense that deer in a colder climate might move earlier in the day than those in a very warm climate.

Another study we did using cameras was to measure the difference in movement between hunted and unhunted bucks in a Georgia study area. Again, we counted the numbers of bucks photographed moving at one hour time intervals. I’ve attached a graph revealing some enlightening information about hunting pressure. There is no reason why the layman could not do a host of studies, including attraction of deer to commercial scents and moon phase effects on movements.

And, thanks to technology available within the Moultrie App, this technology is available “at the fingertips” of the citizen scientist. Thanks to programs like Moultrie’s “Game Plan” (discussed in its own article within this publication), it’s possible using Moultrie Artificial Intelligence to predict buck movement based on the historical data and weather conditions of past trail camera photos. Amazing!

Rut Activity of Bucks

Using a systematic distribution of trail cameras, plus GPS mapping of rubs and scrapes, my research team at the Institute conducted a geospatial study of how bucks use a specific property during the rut. We used a graphing technique that produced color-coded peaks over the property, where the highest and reddest peaks signified highest use.

The green areas are those where bucks were never photographed or there were no rubs or scrapes; indicating that bucks were not using the entire area. Using a network of trail cameras, coupled with mapping buck sign gives you a reliable map of how bucks use your property during the rut; greatly increasing your success at locating stands.

We even used cameras to monitor use in daylight versus at night. Moultrie is one manufacturer who has perfected cellular technology to provide more reliable capture of deer images, even in remote areas. You also can graph the number of bucks visiting rubs, signposts and scrapes over time to create yet another type of activity visualization. You can add in such variables as moon phase, temperature and wind data.

Deer Management Metrics

I have used trail cameras for many years to collect data on the tried-and-true metrics required to manage deer herds. In my previous article, I explained how to use trail cameras to calculate Buck:doe ratios.

We position one camera per 80 acres (minimum), distributed in a grid, either with or without bait (where legal) for a 10-12 day interval in late summer/early fall. Then we count the number of buck and doe photographs, add them up and divide the number of doe photographs by the number of buck photographs to obtain the buck:doe ratio. This is sampling with replacement, so it does not matter the number of times you photograph each deer. We use the same method to obtain our estimated fawn crop during the same time. You even can get a good idea of the buck age structure, numbers of trophies or management bucks coming into the hunting season, to target specific bucks.

At the Institute, we run two camera studies each year, one in late summer/early fall and another in late winter/early spring. This allows us to calculate the above metrics for the deer herd prior to the season, and then after the season and winter stress period.

This gives you an idea of how hunting and winter mortality has affected your herd. Remember, there is a metric for fawn crop. If you have a 60 percent fawn crop, that does not mean you are going to recruit these into the herd come the following spring. I have many properties in the North that habitually have high fawn crops, then low recruitment after hard winters.

Final Thoughts

In the last few years, I have seen a distinct shift in the motivations and activities of hunters who are either landowners or lessees managing their deer for antler quality. Many folks give names to specific bucks and keep track of them over time. Neighbors even are working together to protect certain bucks from harvest. This may seem too artificial or too tedious, but I have noticed an enhancement of respect for deer living on your land.

Thanks to innovators like Dan Moultrie and today’s suite of Moultrie cameras, we have come a long way since we first used crude triggers to obtain photographs on properties where we hunted, conducted research and managed for healthier deer herds. Although there are and should be ethical issues in their use, I must say up until now, trail cameras have had a mostly positive impact on deer management and hunting.

As a scientist, they have figured significantly in my discoveries concerning these magnificent creatures. However, as technology continues to advance, there will come time when we need to develop ethical standards for their proper use. In consideration of Aldo Leopold, there is a point where technology becomes a substitute for woodsmanship.

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