---

It only takes seeing a couple of big bucks to get me into the mood to put the trail cameras out again. Trail cameras are triggered to take digital pictures whenever there is movement in the direction they are pointed. A person never knows what will have its picture taken until the memory card is played back on a computer. Over the years, I have obtained pictures of skunks, squirrels, raccoons, turkeys, a bob cat, a few eagles, several thousand does, and a number of big bucks. I also have a number of pictures of me looking directly into the camera with a puzzled, "Is it working?" expression just as I get my picture taken.

This year, I also got what is called a plot camera. It will automatically take a picture in the area it is pointed, every thirty-seconds during daylight hours, and uses its motion detector at night to take single pictures. It is an interesting concept and an easy way to monitor an area too large to be covered by a motion detector alone. It also takes forever to review the thousands of photos taken over several days.

For several years, it has become a weekend ritual for my wife and I to place several cameras and go back the next weekend to switch memory cards. Since I am the knowledgeable hunter, I always chose the trails and locations to place the cameras. My wife would offer suggestions, but knowing best, I placed them where I knew we would get the most buck traffic. One day, the UPS man showed up with another camera. When I asked my wife about it, she said it was her camera and she would put it where she knew the deer would be. It did not take too many cycles of placing cameras and checking results before I discovered I had hundreds of pictures of does along the main trails, along with a few raccoons, opossums, and extraneous other wildlife while her camera had only a few pictures, but they were almost all bucks. She would put her camera in places I would not even consider, and usually came back with better pictures.[[In-content Ad]]

Our first camera trip of the season was last weekend. I had seen a pair of big bucks down by the willows. I placed one camera on the trail they would have to follow going in and I put the plot camera to cover the entire area, just in case they did not follow the trail I was certain they would use. My wife told me exactly where she wanted her camera. It was about a half mile away, on a fence line where the timber met the pasture. Since it is her camera, she can put it anywhere she wants, no matter how wrong she is.

We went out Sunday morning to bring in the memory cards. We picked up my two and decided to leave my wife's camera out for a few more days (since it would not have any pictures). I reviewed the plot camera first. There were does, fawns, geese, a raccoon, and the neighbors cow from across the fence. I did not have one buck picture in several thousand photos. The camera along the trail showed two does and three fawns going toward the hay field in the morning and coming back in the evening. It was a well worn trail apparently made by these five deer.

Today, my wife and the grandsons went out and got her camera. It did not have many pictures, but most of her pictures were of bucks. There was one picture of the two grandsons and my wife driving up the trail with a look of expectation happy to be on the trail again.

---