Organizing Game Cam Pics & Vids

[bigbendmarine]

Very curious to hear how others organize game camera pics & vids, and I am asking because I do NOT think I'm doing it that particularly well.

I just name cameras based on location, dump ALL videos (I moved to strictly taking videos about 2 years ago) into the location folders, and for captures of particular interest (nice bucks and other species such as turkey, bear, hogs) I change the generic camera file name to a file name that starts with the date and then a description I can easily search (names I've given a buck or animal type such as boar hog) and / or super short description of behavior. This allows me to sort by file name with all the files that start by date being easily sorted out from all other less notable videos as well as to search the files I rename by buck name / animal type / or interesting behavior.

Problem is that by dumping ALL files into folders I'm up to about 25,000 files nearly filling a 2TB portable Seagate drive.

Accordingly few questions I'm particularly interested in relate to managing the volume of file stored:

1) Do many of you save doe pics / vids? If so, just during hunting season or year round? What specific intel / data do you try to decipher from doe captures?

2) Does anyone try to analyze day vs night traffic trends? If so, just during hunting season?

3) For anyone else who may be dumping all their captures as I do, is anyone actually using the large volume to analyze any useful data or basically just filling up disks with no prayer of ever actually having the time to go back and decipher much or anything even if you dream you might someday?

Really interested to hear how other members organize / manage captures and hope there is fair volume of responses to this thread as I think it's a subject that a number of board members might benefit from by learning how other members tackle the task.

 

[j-bird]

I organize mine by folders....first by year, then location and then month. I then change the file names based on the date. Anything "special" I put a copy into another "general" folder. I also narrow down what gets kept and what gets dumped. Does for the most part get dumped....unless there is something interesting going on. Other critters tend to get dumped or sent to the "general" file. When it comes to bucks I tend to take only the best picture or video of the sequence, and then dump the rest. My cams are over mineral sites so I can get nearly 20 minutes straight of the same deer at times. I use my pics simply to see how the deer are doing. I monitor fawning, antler growth and things like that, but nothing where I am recording data. I am mostly looking for overall deer numbers and seeing what the buck crop looks like. I try to keep it pretty simple.

 

[yoderjac]

I first delete pictures of does taken within 5 minutes of each other on the same camera. I only keep the picture with the most deer in it. I keep as many pics of bucks at different angles as I want. I extract the data from the pictures and put it in a database (date, time, animal, sex etc...). I keep my pictures in folder, one per camera renamed with the date/time stamp and location code. I have a link to the picture in the database so I can always call it up based on any query. I use MS access for the database and a VB program I wrote in excel to automatically manipulate the files and extract everything except the visual counts of animals. So my tools are MS access and Excel.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[bueller]

I keep the best photos/videos in each sequence of my "good" bucks. Does and younger bucks usually get deleted after I view them. I do keep some others that I like such as fawns, bucks fighting, less common critters, etc. I have a folder for each year, sub folders for each camera location, and sub folders for our target bucks. That's about it. The days of keeping every photo/video I capture are long gone. About the only "analyzing" I do is taking mental notes of population trends, increasing or decreasing daytime patterns, rutting activity, and feeding habits.

 

[bigbendmarine]

Yoderjac, I truly envy your commitment to actually doing the database entry! I'll admit to being an Access and Excel nerd as I've used both tools regularly for business analysis purposes... but when it comes to time outdoors, I've struggled to either find or make the time.

About the only outdoor spreadsheet I utilize is one to track cobia fish catches I make, as I tag juveniles and send the tags to a coastal research lab out of Mississippi that identifies cobia migration paths when fish are recaptured. Started the spreadsheet just to keep count of how many fish I tagged and to be able to remember friends who were along with me and caught fish I tagged so I could let them know when fish were recaptured. Despite keeping the spreadsheet very simple, recording dates and lunar phase has made for some interesting observations over time as the data has grown.

 

[Eggman]

I file by year and name the pic based on location.

 

[SWIFFY]

I organize mine by folders....first by year, then location and then month. I then change the file names based on the date. Anything "special" I put a copy into another "general" folder. I also narrow down what gets kept and what gets dumped. Does for the most part get dumped....unless there is something interesting going on. Other critters tend to get dumped or sent to the "general" file. When it comes to bucks I tend to take only the best picture or video of the sequence, and then dump the rest. My cams are over mineral sites so I can get nearly 20 minutes straight of the same deer at times. I use my pics simply to see how the deer are doing. I monitor fawning, antler growth and things like that, but nothing where I am recording data. I am mostly looking for overall deer numbers and seeing what the buck crop looks like. I try to keep it pretty simple.

Same with me. By folders by year, then by location, then by date. I too have a separate folder for things like turkeys or "neat" pictures.

I like it this way because I can review all my bucks in each spot as the year progresses so I can see the change in antler growth, hair, etc. I maybe keep 1 of 100 buck pictures anymore. I just get so many that I only keep the high quality pics that show different angles of the antlers or are just really good photos.

Daylight patterns... stuff like that... ehh... I make a mental note. I dont rely on my pics for my hunting but do take it into consideration. I know I can manipulate how many daylight pics i get just by where I place the camera so, its relative.

 

[H20fwler]

I do the same with camera names, I save nice buck pics or interesting ones to my phone from card pulls delete everything else.
I sort through and delete a bunch after season saving just a few so I can watch yearly growth.
My cameras are just a monitoring tool that is off season fun and a way to show my boys what's on the farms. Lately I've been getting a kick out of watching my ponds with cameras, wish I would have started earlier this spring when the migration was going through.

 

[yoderjac]

Yoderjac, I truly envy your commitment to actually doing the database entry! I'll admit to being an Access and Excel nerd as I've used both tools regularly for business analysis purposes... but when it comes to time outdoors, I've struggled to either find or make the time.

About the only outdoor spreadsheet I utilize is one to track cobia fish catches I make, as I tag juveniles and send the tags to a coastal research lab out of Mississippi that identifies cobia migration paths when fish are recaptured. Started the spreadsheet just to keep count of how many fish I tagged and to be able to remember friends who were along with me and caught fish I tagged so I could let them know when fish were recaptured. Despite keeping the spreadsheet very simple, recording dates and lunar phase has made for some interesting observations over time as the data has grown.

Bigbendmarine,

It really comes down to what you are trying to accomplish. I would not recommend my setup for most hunters. I'm trying to do full QDM and I'm on the ratty edge of having the scale. We own under 400 acres. Fortunately, we have some large neighboring tracts that knowingly or unknowingly cooperate with our program. I'm using our game cameras as an integral part of our management system. I invested heavily in them years ago and got high end, highly reliable, wireless cameras that have been running 24/7/365 unattended for about 7 years now. The trending data is used to make management decisions and evaluate how our program is working. If I was just using the pictures for hunting, I would not have gone to all this trouble. The tools I'm using (including homebrew software in excel and access) are a good fit for what I need, but I doubt they are a good fit for most.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[useyourbow]

I save buck pictures naturally but I also created an excel spread sheet listing:
Date
Time
# of deer
Doe, Fawn, Buck
Location
I name the bucks so I can track their progression and attempt to categorize does by any distinctive marks (notches in ears, throat patch, etc...) I have gone to almost exclusively using video rather than still photos. Video captures more deer than what just shows up on still picture plus helps in counting as the deer move around.

I started to do this for inventory purposes. I was under the impression I had more deer than I actually had on my 192 acres. After the first camera check I realized I was counting the same deer over and over due to them showing up at different times on different cameras. Because of this finding I opted not to harvest any does last season. I don't bother with temp, moon phase, etc..... because during the summer deer just do "whatever". During the season I only check cameras if I pass them on the way to the stand in order to reduce human pressure on the property.