Checking Cams Today...

cohunter14

cohunter14

Administrator
Jul 10, 2017
5,431
I am going to get a chance to check my game cams today. I don\'t have spare SD cards, so I will have to take a picture of my camera if there is anything of interest. We\'ll see! I also might be relocating one or two of the cameras based on what is found on them. But since my hunt isn\'t for another two months, I\'m not really sure what to do with that. The elk might not be there now, but could be in a couple of months. Anyone with trail cam experience have any suggestions on this?
 
Derek, what you find on the cameras may not be there in two months(obvious observation on my part). I\'m no expert but here\'s my take. What I generally see on cameras this time of year are cows/calves together with a few smaller bulls. Cows/calves should be moving up to higher elevations as the offspring get stronger.

I\'d check for migration routes and see where you\'re at in correlation. Come October with the rut pretty much over, they may be in a transition area between summer and winter ranges. I\'ve read where the StartMyHunt maps have good intel so that might get you a little direction also.

SD cards are pretty cheap so might consider just picking up one or two extras or take in your laptop and copy the SD card in the field.

Best of luck!
 
Derek,

Put them on spots you know the elk will be using regardless.

Trails to and from food/water, outside bedding areas, or just wherever you want.

Trail cameras are great for a few reasons, but one nice this is when you don\'t see elk on there......it just eliminates a spot so you don\'t waste your time there.



Do you have a cheap laptop?

I bring a laptop out with my in my pack. I upload my pictures to the comp and put the SD back in.
 
I take my Nexus 7 tablet and load the pictures onto it using an external card reader. Since I swap cards, I wait until I get back at camp to load the tablet. The tablet and card reader do not weigh much, therefore, I have taken it with me to the cameras when I did not have extra cards.

None of my cameras had elk on them in July which is what I mostly expected. It had some bulls in June before the snow level went higher. The snow level was at 11,000 in June. My cameras were around 10,500.

I no longer place my cameras higher in elevation where the elk are in July. I prefer to find out where the cows are in August. Fortunately, most archery hunters in my area go to where they see elk sign in July which works for opening day hunting, but not much for the days that follow.

Don\'t get discouraged if you do not see elk pictures on your cameras. Place them where you think they will be when you will be hunting. However, pictures now may show elk possibilities in your area even if you don\'t hunt those locations during your season. Hunting pressure and weather will likely move the elk around.
 
Well, let\'s just say it went very well except for one minor hiccup! I got some phenomenal bulls on camera, way bigger than I expected. Unfortunately, I read Dan\'s post before getting to my location, so I decided to take my computer along to upload pics. Well, being the smart person I am, I fired up my computer at the first camera and ran up a game trail real quick while it was booting up. 15 minutes later the skies opened up, pouring rain on my computer, which now doesn\'t want to work very well. Thanks Dan! :lol: What a dumb move on my part :oops:

Oh well, the pics of the Bulls have me so fired up that it doesn\'t matter! I just need to get my computer working so I can share some of the pics. As soon as it\'s working, I\'ll get them up!
 
\"iccyman001\" said:
:( :( :( I am no longer giving advice
Click to expand...

LOL I wish I could blame it on you! Not the sharpest move on my part. Oh well, the good news is I get a replacement tomorrow!
 
\"cnelk\" said:
Question for you Derek....

How did you explain that one to the \'boss\'??? :dk:
Click to expand...

Simple...just spilled some water on my computer. I just left out the fact that it was rain water! :lol:

Since we are all friends here, I\'ll go ahead and share with you my next epic fail since I can\'t share my pics yet. So I get back to my hotel room last night (I was on a quick work trip) and since my keyboard wasn\'t working, I decided to be \'smart\' and try to dry it out as much as I could...with the hotel blow drier. So there I was, thinking I was McGyver when all of a sudden I noticed the blow drier was hot...real hot! Like hot enough to melt a keyboard! So yes, now my computer doesn\'t work right and it has four melted keys!!!

:haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha: :haha:

It was one of those days, but oh well. The pics made up for it! Hope to have them up tomorrow.
 
:haha: Sounds like you had quite the day Derek. Can\'t wait to see the pics.
 
Here are a few that got me excited...
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Unfortunately, the camera that I got most of these pics on stopped working right around July 19th. It said the card was full, which it was nowhere close to being full, so not sure what happened. It\'s too bad though, because it was located right on this game trail that looked like it had been used a ton!

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Either way, I am very happy to see bulls in this location right now, and really excited to see bulls of this quality around as well. If the bulls come back to this bachelor area post-rut, it could make for a lot of fun!
 

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Now that I\'m going through this, I think I got pics of 5 different bulls. Here are two more pics:

This was right before the picture that has two bulls and is the front one hidden in the tree in the pic above:
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Nice Derek. Hope they are still around for you come season.

Brads right that top bull has some whales.
 
Derek, really cool photos - they certainly get one excited! Hopefully you can find them rifle season!
 
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