Do you think deer can sense trail cameras ?

[Feelslikefar.]

Drats!. We didn't win because we didn't use the magic words he wanted to hear to make it count. Shit. If only we'd known the special rules ahead of time!

It's fair chase.

What about now? Did that change anything?

 

[Feelslikefar.]

Fair chase is in the eye of the beholder.

I watched a video the other day and the guy made a comment like... "it doesn't matter what you use, in the end it's all about putting meat in the freezer." I kind of laughed because again, that's one person's view. For ME, for about 75% of my deer hunting career, it's was ALL about what I used, and "putting meat in the freezer" (getting anything at all) was the least important part.

 

[BenA]

Interesting fact after reading the daggers i knew would come my way none of you can say it's fair chase proving the point. All spin

Of course it's fair chase. It's 10.5 hours away from me. It's not even chase.

 

[Mtyhunter]

I do not believe they know what it is nor ever have or will. Unfortunately deer are not that smart. I believe it is the absolute worst non fair chase item so called deer hunters use during the season. Why more hunters lack the courage to call out this scourge is telling. Ethics falling to new lows. To me anyone using a cam during the season should remove his man card. Get off your lazy ass and scout. It's an absolute joke and only getting worse. Total embarrassment.

You come across as a self righteous know-it-all dick to me. Challenging almost everyone on this forum is the real embarrassment here. I've been hunting all my life, and I promise you, cameras or not, I'd stack my hunting skills and effort against yours, for money, anytime, anyplace. Fishing too. My man cards right here in my calloused hand, come get it keyboard warrior.

 

[SwampCat]

You come across as a self righteous know-it-all dick to me. Challenging almost everyone on this forum is the real embarrassment here. I've been hunting all my life, and I promise you, cameras or not, I'd stack my hunting skills and effort against yours, for money, anytime, anyplace. Fishing too. My man cards right here in my calloused hand, come get it keyboard warrior.

I bet you have been cleaning your fish all wrong, also

 

[Mtyhunter]

yep, you caught on to that. going on a cam thread to troll/insult those on the thread about using cams=TOOL.
Hate to see those docks at Quacita, one of my favorite lakes in Arkansas! But I bet the striper bite is on today!

 

[SwampCat]

yep, you caught on to that. going on a cam thread to troll/insult those on the thread about using cams=TOOL.
Hate to see those docks at Quacita, one of my favorite lakes in Arkansas! But I bet the striper bite is on today!

My son’s houseboat was one of them in that mess. Pretty handy place to stay when I go up there fishing. I bet the stripers never noticed. Docks, chicken houses, and hay barns down all over AR

 

[SwampCat]

When I first started using trail cams, they were all white light - great night time pics. I would get multiple pics of the biggest bucks standing ten feet in front of a white light camera, feeding in a food plot, at night. But I do believe it was a learned behavior. I think bobcats and coyotes are much more camera shy than deer

 

[Ikeman]

Interesting fact after reading the daggers i knew would come my way none of you can say it's fair chase proving the point. All spin

I consider a rifle less fair chase than being a public land bowhunter that uses cameras.

I consider food plots to be equally baiting as a corn pile.

I consider a box blind to be less fair chase than spot and stalk, tree stands/saddles, or ground hunting.

And I consider any “sportsman” who spews such derogatory rhetoric (as you did) at fellow sportsmen (participating LEGALLY in our shared sport) as the outdoors version of a cyclist on the road.

If someone is legally participating in hunting, I wish them well. Just because I don’t do things the way they do doesn’t mean I am in any way more “moral” or “sportsman” than they are.


And to top it all off, you couldn’t even defend your opinion… just deflected.

How about you articulate exactly how you hunt, and we will let you know what we think about the comparative ethics of your methods…?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Mtyhunter]

I consider a rifle less fair chase than being a public land bowhunter that uses cameras.

I consider food plots to be equally baiting as a corn pile.

I consider a box blind to be less fair chase than spot and stalk, tree stands/saddles, or ground hunting.

And I consider any “sportsman” who spews such derogatory rhetoric (as you did) at fellow sportsmen (participating LEGALLY in our shared sport) as the outdoors version of a cyclist on the road.

If someone is legally participating in hunting, I wish them well. Just because I don’t do things the way they do doesn’t mean I am in any way more “moral” or “sportsman” than they are.


And to top it all off, you couldn’t even defend your opinion… just deflected.

How about you articulate exactly how you hunt, and we will let you know what we think about the comparative ethics of your methods…?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

well said. reading these rhetoric/insults this morning made my right hand twitch. In my defense, I'm from the south, and in my world, ppl who condescend like that to a full grown man are looking for a fight, and they'll get it. Luckily it happened on the web, and not in person.
Regardless, I'd like to apologize to the forum for taking these insults a little more personally than I should have, and adding more negativity to the deal. I love the conversations in this group, and highly value the opinions of everyone, even if they don't align with mine.

 

[roymunson]

I'm convinced they smell the battery/electricity, or sense the cell signal.

They react very differently to my spartans than to my cuddelinks

 

[Tamarack]

When I first started using trail cams, they were all white light - great night time pics. I would get multiple pics of the biggest bucks standing ten feet in front of a white light camera, feeding in a food plot, at night. But I do believe it was a learned behavior. I think bobcats and coyotes are much more camera shy than deer

Coyotes especially are hilarious when they first get the light from my cams on video. They can't get away fast enough. Then eventually they end up ignoring it. Happens each time I move a cam.

 

[PatinPA]

Wow. So sitting in a heated portable house, over a bait (be it dumped or planted), is more ethical than me knowing a deer walked by a spot at 2AM, three days ago?

Yeah, if someone's getting a picture of deer and grabbing their gun and running out in the woods to shoot it, I'd agree. But I don't think most are.

LOL I'm usually sitting at my desk at work when I get a pic of a nice one walking by my stand which leads to a lot of swearing.

 

[PatinPA]

I've had some deer freak out when they see them and others completely ignore them. I have one screwed into the side of my camp. One thing I've noticed is they really seem to notice it at night but I think it's the flash showing up against the building. Putting them up higher than usual even 5 to 6 feet seems to help a lot.

 

[farmlegend]

Bottom line - whitetails are prey animals with highly evolved predator avoidance instincts. If something is a bit off, they're on guard.

I use a lot of stealth in accessing my cameras (I use non-cell cams, 10-14 deployed at any one time. Will switch to cell cams when there's a quality product out there that meets my requirements. As of 2025, there aren't any). When I swap out cards (all over food sources), I do the following:
1. Wear a clean Scentlok suit that is specifically for card pulls. Knee high, clean rubber boots, and I wear nitrile gloves.
2. I swap out my cards no more frequently than four week intervals, frequently longer.
3. I choose days where the weather is miserably blustery and/or pouring ass rain. Preferably mid-day. Once the firearms season begins, I pull 'em at night.
4. I do it fast; a speed run with my quad, round trip takes around 40 minutes.
5. I use black flash cameras. I mount them at ground level. I have not noticed any difference from mounting them higher.

IMO, deer are big time spooked by the red flash low-glow cameras even more than they are by the old white flash models.

I've been doing it like this for the last dozen seasons or so, ever since I retired the last of my low-glow cameras. I believe I get excellent quality surveys of the neighborhood herd.

 

[MN Slick]

Bottom line - whitetails are prey animals with highly evolved predator avoidance instincts. If something is a bit off, they're on guard.

I use a lot of stealth in accessing my cameras (I use non-cell cams, 10-14 deployed at any one time. Will switch to cell cams when there's a quality product out there that meets my requirements. As of 2025, there aren't any). When I swap out cards (all over food sources), I do the following:
1. Wear a clean Scentlok suit that is specifically for card pulls. Knee high, clean rubber boots, and I wear nitrile gloves.
2. I swap out my cards no more frequently than four week intervals, frequently longer.
3. I choose days where the weather is miserably blustery and/or pouring ass rain. Preferably mid-day. Once the firearms season begins, I pull 'em at night.
4. I do it fast; a speed run with my quad, round trip takes around 40 minutes.
5. I use black flash cameras. I mount them at ground level. I have not noticed any difference from mounting them higher.

IMO, deer are big time spooked by the red flash low-glow cameras even more than they are by the old white flash models.

I've been doing it like this for the last dozen seasons or so, ever since I retired the last of my low-glow cameras. I believe I get excellent quality surveys of the neighborhood herd.

What brand of standard cams are you running? I've had good luck with Reconyx standard cams. Reconyx cell cams have been good overall but I'm convinced deer on some farms are spooked by cell cams....including Reconyx.

 

[Howboutthemdawgs]

I’ve stated I’m 100% in the camp deer don’t get spooked by game cameras. I think they may get startled initially but soon get used to it. I think everyone’s experience is anecdotal, including mine but I have the luxury of watching bucks most all summer at my farm. That can be upwards of 30 bucks in a summer of all age classes…except old cause hunters suck at managing lol. I’d say over three months I catch every buck thats using my general area regularly. In turn I catch all those same bucks on camera regularly as well. The only time that I may see a buck that i don’t know is a random excursion rut buck…even then they likely swing by a camera. Do yall have bucks where you may see them personally but over the course of a year they never wander by a camera? For me that isn’t impossible I guess but it’s highly improbable.

 

[Mortenson]

12 or 15 years ago a buck could spooked by a camera, and then go hang out more on nearby farms that didn't have cameras. Now every property has them and has likely had them since every deer was a fawn. Different times.

 

[PatinPA]

I think it's a deer preference. I've had deer stare and back away startled and I've had mature buck walk by them so close they almost brush up against them. Even in WV over a bait pile in a highly pressured area they'll stand right in front of them and not care. The biggest buck I've ever gotten a pic of on my property took one look at the camera and was never seen again. Now it was the only pic I ever got of him and he may've just been passing through anyway, not sure. I typically check mine every two weeks. I'm not really worried with the incursion as there is a lot of human activity around me. The neighbors walk/bike through their land with dogs often.

 

[Mtyhunter]

before I used cell cams, i was exactly like farmlegend in regards to checking my cams. I'd never drive anything motorized in my hunting area tho! Once I had about 10 non-cell cams out, it would take me a couple of hours to hit them all, swapping cards.
I hated that, because no matter how hard I prepped, I was still attracting attention to the cams spending that much time in the area. Scent free as I could be, nitrile gloves, sneaking in/out, hot gluing leaves/branches to the cams to hide them, etc...imo, it was all futile. Deer found the cams every single time, I COULD NOT FOOL THEM, 100%. The closest I could get to hiding the cams was to mount the cams high, like at least 8 ft. However, the detection slot gets pretty small the higher you go.
That's why I went to the cuddelink system. I didn't even do the cell feature for the first year. I had the home unit where I parked my truck, and then I had to only pull one card, and spend an hour in my truck on a laptop checking it all out. It was a supreme bonus of not stomping up my hunting area like I did all the years past.
Because it bugged me to have to pack my laptop with me when I hunted. I went to the cell feature the next year, and I'm satisfied with how it all works now.

I've mentioned this before, prob in this thread, but there's a pretty cool video of a guy who uses a drone to cover a 300+ acre hunting area. They did a test where they mounted 5 cams in a pentagon configuration, about 150-200yds apart. The guy monitors the entire property with a drone, all day, and maps the deer activity in relation to where the cams were located. His results were something like this: he'd count the number of deer within picture taking distance from each cam, and what his results revealed was the cams only took pics of about 20% of the opportunities when the deer were within picture taking distance. Some deer were behind the cam, some ran by the cam, some were in front of the cam, but somehow the pic never took. His study has too many variables to consider it completely solid, but, it was very surprising to me that those 5 cams only had a 20% success rate of taking a pic.