Where to Hang Cameras & Place Feeders

I work annually with wildlife cooperators, who represent over 200,000 acres from Mexico to the Great Lakes; and I also visit and consult on dozens of small properties to provide management advice. They represent habitats ranging from desert shrublands to dense forests to open prairies.

And landowners have a lot of questions regarding deer management. However, no matter the geographic location or the type of habitat, owners and managers always ask these questions: 1. Where should I place my feeders? 2. Where should I plant food plots? 3. Where should I put my trail cameras? And, 4. Where should I set up my stands?

The answers depend on how your property currently is set up for meeting the needs of your deer, and how you lay out your deer landscape to improve productivity.

To answer these questions, you will need a good map of your property — something that’s now available at your fingertips via the Moultrie Maps feature on the Moultrie App!

When I began my career, the field of “remote sensing” was just beginning to move from military applications to practical land management applications. In the “old days,” we had to depend on state and federal agencies for aerial images produced by high and low altitude flights on film. I remember going to what then was the U.S.D.A. Soil Conservation Service county office to look through files of square black & white prints, trying to locate one that included the property we were conducting research on or managing.

Later, satellite images became available through these same agencies, including true color and other formats such as infrared and false-infrared. It was both costly and time-consuming to acquire such imagery. Today, a landowner can go online and, in a few minutes, locate and download the latest images of their property through a host of commercial and agency sources for free. Or, as mentioned, you can simply use Moultrie Maps on the Moultrie App, an incredible feature which also allows you to pin stand locations, trail cameras, feeders, deer sign and more.

Map it Out

I first became interested in using maps and imagery to conduct research and support deer management back in the 1970s. The Institute for White-tailed Deer Management & Research (at Stephen F. Austin State University) in Nacogdoches, Texas, was founded in 1974 to conduct meaningful research to answer basic questions revealed by “focus group” meetings made up of landowners, foresters, wildlife biologists and hunters.

Clearcutting did not become common in eastern Texas until the mid-1970s. My study areas had been managed for years using an antiquated technique called “selection harvest.” It was designed to create sustainable forests, when it turned out to be nothing more than “high-grading.” Since I was already studying the movements and habitat preferences of whitetails under these conditions, the change to clearcutting offered me the opportunity to answer the basic question: “What is the Minimum Management Unit (MMU) size for whitetails?”

Each species of animal has a built-in instinctive need for habitat elements that assure survival. Each of these create what I have come to call the wildlife landscape.

At that time, the average home range for my study deer in East Texas forests was around a square mile (640 acres). There is more than one type of home range estimate, one being the resident home range and the other the breeding home range. In my research, I studied and calculated both, but my true interest was in where deer spent the majority of the year.

I learned that most home ranges of deer could be described by an ellipse, with a core area where it spends most of its time. I discovered the reason home ranges were elliptical was that, when you enumerated all the habitat needs of deer, there almost always is one that is farther away than the rest. That forces deer to travel to reach this limiting factor. It may be water, forage in the 4.5 feet high “deer forage zone,” or cover. Since I was lucky enough to be studying deer when clearcutting first became common, I could examine the impact of various sized cuts on deer movements.

I overlaid home ranges over habitat maps developed from aerial imagery. I quickly discovered the more diverse the habitat, the smaller and more circular the home range. This led to studies involving manipulation of habitats to see just how small I could make the basic home range?

To my surprise, I could never get the deer to occupy less than 80 acres during the non-rutting season. I labeled this size area as the Minium Management Unit (MMU) for whitetails in eastern forests. Later, I would study drier climates, discovering that the MMU could be as large as 160 or 320 acres in more climate-limiting areas.

Using satellite images or the Moultrie Maps feature on your Moultrie App, you too can easily overlay your hunting area’s MMU. Of course, if your property is less than 80 acres in size, you’ll simply overlay neighboring properties and analyze what habitat features they possess, such as: food, water or cover.

Answering the Four Basic Questions

I have experienced considerable success using the concept of the MMU to maximize deer production potential on many properties across North America. Although there is no such thing as a “cookbook” deer management plan, there is a standard way of analyzing your property using the concept of the MMU.

Some areas of the property can provide all of the needs of your deer, while other portions need significant improvements. Once a habitat and herd management plan are developed, we can answer those four basic questions. Again they are: 1. Where should I place my feeders? 2. Where should I plant food plots? 3. Where is the best place to deploy my trail cameras? And, 4. Where should I set up my stands?

So, let’s look at our hypothetical example, which hopefully will provide answers to these questions for each of the two properties making up our hypothetical management area.

Model Example

Again, the management area is composed of two approximately equally-sized ownerships; one that has been intensively managed for deer (MU-1) and another that is being regenerated to pine forest (MU-2). In my earlier article on censusing deer with trail cameras, I overlaid the area with an 80-acre grid to locate trail cameras. Now, let’s use the same maps to illustrate answering the four questions. Zooming in on each MMU, we will first examine how each element is distributed within the MMU.

Remember half of the area (MU-1) is under intensive deer management, while the other (MU-2) until now has been managed solely for timber. A clearcut was conducted three years prior, using tried-and-true Best Management Practices such as leaving Streamside Management Zones (SMZs).

We overlaid the area with 5 80-acre grid squares in our camera census study. We will begin with MMU-1, which lies on the northern edge of the management area.

MMU1

This 80-acre unit lies on the northern edge of the property, containing less than 20 acres of the property. It contains a diversity of habitat types, including pine summer thermal cover (ST) that is 45 years old, oak-dominated hardwoods (blue lines) also 45 years old, a 2.5-acre food plot (green line), and a woods road lined with pines (white line).

The remainder of the unit is made up of young mixed pine-hardwood that provides browse. There is a water trough in this unit (blue box). Using the philosophy of landscaping each unit to maximize utility to deer, here are the answers to the four questions for this unit. First, the best feeder and a water station location is marked with a brown circle.

I chose this area, because it represents where the most resources meet, making it “one-stop shopping” for the deer, and it has access for servicing the feeder. The food plot (green line) is already developed and was located there to take advantage of a powerline right-of-way. The old pine stand immediately north on the neighbor’s property (P) is managed solely for timber production and provides little forage to the deer.

Ordinarily, you would want to locate a trail camera near the center of the unit; however, this unit contains only a small portion of the actual property. So, in this case, you would want to install a trail camera as close to the northern property line as feasible (red star). Finally, on-ground surveillance revealed a staging area (blue triangle).

Mapping out rub lines, scrapes and signposts suggest the best location for a stand with a SE wind would be at the red “X”, NOT within the staging area.

MMU-2

This MMU overlaps two ownerships, and contains everything you could provide for your deer, including 5 food plots (green line), totaling 4 acres (4.2 percent), pond (dark blue line), both summer (ST) and winter thermal (WT) cover, mature oak-dominated hardwoods (light blue line), free-choice feeder (brown), a Deer Orchard (DO) and the remainder in prescribed burned-managed understory deer forage.

The northern part of MU-2 has a 4-year-old pine plantation that was site-prepared to the southern edge of MU-1, which also could provide abundant deer forage. Later, the plantation should be thinned to maintain forage. Streamside Management Zones (SMZs) were left to protect the watershed, as well as to provide travel corridors through the plantation as canopies close.

There are three staging areas (blue triangles), located adjacent to common feeding areas. There is an oil well pad (O) on the southern edge, which cannot be managed, and requires access by the company. The red star shows the best location for a trail camera for census and deer study. The two red X’s mark the best stand locations, determined by mapping rub lines, again with a SE wind.

MMU-3

This is another area where deer management has been practiced for many years, and it also over-laps the NE portion of the neighboring pine plantation. There currently are 7 food plots, totaling 3.1 acres (3.8 percent), water certainly is not limiting with 4 impoundments (including a wetland, dark blue), summer (ST) and winter (WT) thermal cover, oak-dominated hardwood stands (light blue), with the remainder in prescribed fire-maintained understory deer forage.

There are two feeders (brown) provided, one near a designated sanctuary (S) set up to give deer protection from surrounding hunting pressure. The large young pine plantation makes up the SW corner of the MMU, providing additional forage. Two streamside management zones (SMZs) were left to protect watersheds and to later provide travel corridors through the pine plantation.

I designated a trail camera location along a well- establish travel corridor, and near the center of the MMU. There are two great stand locations, one along a rub line leading out of the sanctuary, and the other at the head of the lake leading into the SMZ.

MMU-4

The last two MMUs are located mostly over the neighboring pine plantation. The area had the timber clearcut in 2021, adhering to all recommended best management practices; which include leaving adequate Streamside Management Zones (SMZs). MMU-4 lies on the SW corner of the management area and contains a pipeline right-of-way. We recommend planting the green areas to food plots which will contain 3.3 acres (4.1 percent) of the MMU. The pipeline is an excellent location for a long food plot. In addition, a feeder location is marked in a strategic deer travel location in line with the SMZ travel corridors.

MMU-5

This MMU is almost perfect, as far as there are hundreds of feet of edge, and multiple potential food plot locations. A total of 3.7 acres (4.6 percent) of food plots are recommended for this MMU. There is an extensive SMZ system set aside on the property, providing travel corridors, as well as mast production. There is a 20-year-old oak stand (blue line); two potential Winter Thermal (WT) and one Summer Thermal (ST) areas.

There is a need for water (dark blue box) and one free-choice feeder. The red star marks the suggested location for a trail camera and the red “X” marks a prime stand location to intercept the deer moving through the SMZ travel corridor. The red star is the suggested location for a trail camera.

Positioning Trail Cameras & Feeders

I annually examine over 250,000 trail camera photographs for research projects and landowners. Over the years, I have come to have some pretty firm opinions on how you should set up and use your trail cameras, certainly as a hunting aid, but more importantly to me in managing deer effectively.

We begin with the proper location, and I have tried to give you some insight to how we go about picking a camera location. In some geographic areas, baiting is legal and there is more room for error, when you are “luring them to the camera.” When you cannot bait, then camera placement becomes an “art,” that depends on good woodsmen skills. I recommend you place cameras along trails and rub lines, edges and highly attractive features such as fruit and nut producing trees and shrubs. Water sources also provide highly productive camera sites, especially artificial watering stations.

A camera works best when it is fixed to a tree or post approximately 2-3 feet above the ground and not aimed in a direction in which the sun shines directly into the lens! A northern exposure is usually best, but this may depend on vegetation and topography. As to delay time between photographs that depends on your goal for the camera study and the nature of your deer herd. If you have a low population, there is no need for a delay, since you are not likely to obtain excessive images.

If, you have a high deer density, or your camera location is highly attractive for deer visits you may want to use a longer delay of at least 3-5 minutes.

The fact I have recommended a minimum of one camera per 80 acres does not mean that you cannot have more. You are interested in your deer herd, and there is nothing wrong with using them for your own personal scientific studies.

Placing Feeders

Now, let’s turn to locating your feeders. Remember, there are two types of feeders: free-choice and timed. They usually have completely different functions in a deer management program. The free-choice feeders generally are used to deliver a pelleted ration, specifically designed to improve deer nutrition. As the name implies, the deer are free to visit the feeder whenever they desire, so nocturnal feeding is not unusual.

The timed feeders generally are to lure deer to bow or gun range, at a time that is convenient and legal. How and where you locate these feeders is very important. In the above land analysis, I purposefully placed the feeder locations where there is a compromise between where the deer will use them and where it is convenient to service them. That means they must be where you can get to them with a UTV or pickup for adding feed. I always place a feeder in or near a designated sanctuary, along with water if needed, so that my deer have “one-stop shopping,” without leaving the sanctuary.

As to what to feed, that is for another time; however, if your goal is nutrition, you should feed a sound pelleted ration sold by a reputable dealer/producer. There are lots of “magic bullets” for sale out there, so please be informed in what you are feeding. Otherwise, corn remains the “go to” feed and bait for deer. I generally pair a timed feeder with a free-choice feeder, so I can add calories through corn to my pelleted ration. You would be shocked if I told you how many calories a buck growing antlers or a doe nursing fawns needs per day. Again, that is for another more detailed article.

Conclusions

As you can see from these examples, properties come into a management program in many shapes, sizes and previous land-uses. Some may need only “tweaking” to produce your Deer Factory, while others will take much more work. This is especially true when the landscape has been simplified by single land-use for years. Yet, with a little planning, even a simplified landscape can be diversified by considering the Minimum Management Unit approach to decision-making.

As we have learned, trail cameras can be a valuable asset in measuring the progress of your management program. Often proper placement and timing can make or break a sound total deer management program. Hunters, landowners and wildlife managers have come to rely more and more on these devices, and for good reason.

Supplemental feed, where legal, can be a great help in augmenting what your land or parts of your land cannot provide to your deer. In the next installment of this series, I will discuss how we use trail cameras to assess the effectiveness of our management program.

Make Your Own Maps With the Moultrie App

The images used by Dr. Kroll within this article are ones he’s created using GIS software for scientific research and land consulting purposes. However, the screenshot shown at right is one that our editors made with the Moultrie Maps feature on the Moultrie App. With this intuitive feature, it’s possible to create shapes, color-code areas, draw and measure line distances and mark points of interest with an incredible assortment of markers ranging from wildlife icons, landscape features, trail camera locations, feeder sites and more. The satellite images provided are high-resolution and controls are user-friendly, as expected from Moultrie.

---