Getting Ready For Fall

It’s hot! With heat indexes soaring near triple digits in much of the country, that last thing on your mind might be the fall deer hunting seasons. Preparing for them shouldn’t be, however. Regardless of the heat and humidity, if you expect to have success this fall, then you’d better get busy checking off the boxes on this summertime to-do list.

Trail cameras are a big part of your summertime to-do list:

As each day finds the buck’s antlers adding more inches, setting up and placing trail cameras is important if you want to know what kinds of bucks you have running around. They will also let you know where they are – and are not – frequenting.

If you want to make your cameras a larger player in your summertime to-do list, be sure to place them strategically. Water sources are always good places to set up a camera or two. Beyond that, of course, look for well-used trails and set one up wherever you find one, especially if you find an area where more than one trail converge. This will increase the number of pics you get, as this is an indicator that deer are coming from all areas your hunting property to this spot, or that it is a focal point in different travel routes for deer for some reason.

If you are lucky enough to find a licking branch, this is an absolute must for a camera. And if you’re ahead on your summertime to-do list and already have all of your cameras set, pull one from somewhere else to place here.

If there has to be one thing to avoid on your summertime to-do list of setting out trail cameras, it would be to avoid putting them out in windy or weedy places. If you do, every time the wind blows the weeds in front of your camera, or a leaf in front of it, it will snap a photo of nothing, and those get boring really fast.

One more no-no about trail cameras when thinking about your summertime to-do list is to try to avoid putting them in areas that will cause you to be too invasive in order to check them. You don’t want to spook deer or allow them to pattern you before the season starts.

Scouting is a big part of any summertime to-do list:

Scouting doesn’t start as the season draws near; it should be a continuous process through the year. Scouting in the summer is as good as any. It allows you to identify travel routes and feeding areas that the deer are using when there is no hunting pressure, which can be invaluable for early season sits.

It also enables you to see how many, and what types of bucks, are hanging around. Often, they are in bachelor groups this time of year, making getting an eye on them easier.

There is no need to go deep all the time on your summer scouting trips. A lot of the time, you can spot bachelor groups of bucks and does feeding in crop fields from the road. Or consider parking and walking a short distance to a fencerow, hill or other easy to get to spot where you can glass the area without tromping through the woods.

You’ll be surprised what a little scouting can do to improve your summertime to-do list, that even trail cameras can’t do for you. Putting boots on the ground allows you to see well-worn trails, old rubs, and scrapes, identify water sources you may not have known were there and observe deer in areas where your cameras aren’t. It also helps you pinpoint bedding areas, fence crossings and the like.

Treestand preparation and placement should be a part of your summertime to-do list:

A lot of people put it off until closer to the opener, but when going through your summertime to-do list, putting your treestands up and preparing them now should be on your list.

There are valid points to wanting to wait until closer to season to hang stands. Deer patterns can change between summer and fall, requiring you to move a stand or two after putting them up, but overall, where you place your stands now will still be the right decision come fall. For those always occurring instances where you notice deer using an area during the season where you don’t have one hung, keep an extra or two in the garage for just this reason, but you don’t want to wait until season approaches to hang them all.

If you have properly done your scouting and studied your trail cameras, you should already know where you need to hang them.

Sure, it may require torturous hikes through standing crop fields to hang them now versus later, but the extra work now will not only make you more prepared come fall, but it will also allow you to leave the area less disturbed as the season approaches.

Hanging stands, and all of the trimming, etc. that goes along with it takes a ton of time; time that really isn’t available as hunting season approaches when there are other things to do and get ready. Doing it now may be hot and sweaty work, but will be so worth it come fall.

Besides just hanging a stand and trimming shooting lanes, think a bit deeper. Add clearing brush, weed-eating or weed-killing entry and exit trails to your summertime to-do list also. Obviously, this isn’t necessary for stands on field edges and the like, but for those hung in the timber, think about getting rid of as much of the debris as you can along the trail in order to make those calm morning entries as quiet as possible.

Food plots should be on your summertime to-do list:

That’s right, depending on what you intend to plant, summertime is the time to plant food plots if you intend to have any.

A wide variety of crops can be planted this time of year, so along with all of the other things, there are to do, planting food plots are another item on a summertime to-do list.

Plants such as beets, oats, tubers, alfalfa, and greens like brassicas are all best when planted in the summer heat. They are heat and drought-resistant and come up in time to coincide with when you plan to be hunting over them.

Safety, the most important thing on your summertime to-do list:

With all of the important things to get done on the summertime to-do list, none are more important than safety. Remember that. Whether scouting, tending plots or hanging stands, practice safety first. Never ascend a tree without the proper safety gear, such as a Muddy lineman’s belt, and never check or sit in stands without a Muddy safety harness. Once stands are in place, secure a Safe-Line to the tree so that on your first hunt of the year, you will be tied in the moment your feet leave the ground.

Conclusion:

There really is no off-season when it comes to serious deer hunting. In fact, if you do it right, there is a lot more work to be done now than once it’s time to be out hunting, so don’t let summer slip by without taking some time to create and knock out a summertime to-do list for a successful fall.

Running trail cameras can no doubt be one of the most exciting things to do as a whitetail hunter. The feeling of inserting an SD card into a computer and anxiously waiting for the card to load so you can start flipping through photos is almost as good as the feeling of seeing a big buck headed your way while in a treestand. It’s often described as better than Christmas. Partially because of this, it can be easy to run a lot of trail cameras. Trail cams have their place when it comes to deer hunting and can be very beneficial to you in terms of helping you be a successful hunter.

The question that always seems to arise when discussing the aspect of using trail cameras is how many should you be using? Some hunters don’t like to use trail cameras at all, and some run them religiously. When it comes to how many you should be running, it’s not a black and white answer, but more doesn’t always equal better. It’s very dependent on how much hunting property you own or have access on, and what you can handle. That may be five trail cameras, it might be twenty spread across multiple states, or it could be seventy on a large farm.

Below are a few points outlined that can be a product of running too many trail cameras. If you find yourself in any of these predicaments, odds are you’ve bitten off more than you can chew when it comes to trail cameras. So, take a look at these points and ask yourself if you’ve found yourself in any of these scenarios.

There Isn’t Time For Other Projects

If you get to a point where you find yourself not being able to complete other whitetail projects because you spend too much time heading afield to swap SD cards, it may be time to consider how many you are running. There’s a lot that needs to get done in the whitetail woods throughout the entire year and if you start putting things on the backburner or find yourself not completing what you want to get done during a day or a weekend of whitetail work because of having too many trail cameras to check, that can signify you simply have too many. If you get to this point, take a look at how many you are running, and what you’d be able to get done if you cut the number of trail cams you have in the field.

You Can’t Stay Organized

When you start running a lot of trail cameras, things can start to get hectic when it comes to staying organized. There’s a lot of other stuff that goes into it that one may not worry about when only running a few cams. But when you start to run a big number of cameras, there’s a lot of batteries, SD cards and trail camera maintenance that you have to worry about. When you run a couple, it may not seem like a big deal, but when all of a sudden you have thirty cameras, it can be very challenging to keep all of this organized. It can be a good idea to label SD cards for specific cameras, create spreadsheets on where your cameras are and to number each trail camera. This can help, but when you get to a point where you’ve simply got too many and can’t stay organized, or forget about cameras, you’ve got too many.

You’re Always “Behind”

This is a big indicator of running too many trail cameras. When you run a large number of cameras, a lot of times you end up relying on the information they provide during the season by default. When you have a large fleet of trail cameras out and find yourself not hunting areas during the season unless you check a camera that has a shooter on it, this can put you into dangerous waters and often times lead you to chasing your tail. A scenario would be you check five cameras in a day in the middle of October, and on one of them over a bean field, you have a shooter that showed up five days ago. Because that’s the only camera you had a shooter show up, you hunt there and don’t see him. Well, that buck could have easily shifted food sources in those five days, and you should be scouting for the hot food source, not just checking trail cameras. If you find yourself doing this too much, it might be time to reduce how many cameras you’re running.

So How Many is Too Many?

Well, that is dependent on you and you only. What it comes down to is are you able to stay organized, can you still get everything else done that you need to and are you not chasing your tail because of trail cameras? For some people, they might be able to run thirty trail cameras on a large farm and be able to still hunt effectively while keeping all of their trail camera data organized. If you hunt multiple states, this might mean you can only keep track of a couple in the out of state areas.

At the end of the day, trail cameras are meant to be a tool to help you succeed at deer hunting. When you use them properly, they can most definitely provide you with information to make you a better hunter. But when trail cameras become relied upon, or when hunters get ahead of themselves and run too many, it can detract from other things that you need to do in order to be a successful hunter. If you get to a point where trail cameras take away from these other things or create stress because you can’t keep up with them all or stay organized, then it’s time to consider reducing the number of trail cameras you have in the field.

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Summertime To-Do List For Hunting Season