I have about 650 acres and run around 20 trail cameras. I have gone through 28k photos so far this year. The 650 acres comprises of 3 farms, all within 1.5 miles of each other. Recently, I have been glassing two 5 yr olds..150 and a 170, I have the matched sets from both of these bucks last year, I have ZERO trail cam photos of either of these bucks this year. I also have had history for 4 years with both of these bucks. I stay networking with the neighbors and have been able to track "roughly" their core areas through the years. The smaller of the two hasn't changed his core area, while the bigger deer changed his home core from about a mile. I think what caused his shift was that he stayed on ours for the winter (lots of standing crops) and has now setup his summer home range on ours. Every single deer is different with different home ranges including the fact that a deers home range changes for summer, fall, and winter and for some deer nothing changes. I would hate to try and tell people a percentage of bucks my camera captures but it's impossible. A camera has a small detection range and think of the thousands of areas a deer can go. The chances of catching every deer on cam is wishful thinking. We have implemented about 10 water holes (15ft diameters) and I have done the QDMA deer survey (14 days) all while knowing that I have visually seen some bucks while scouting and they still haven't shown themselves on camera. They can see them, hear them, smell them, etc. The more I learn, the more I realize that cameras are only a PART of the total package. On a last note- they do not do you any good sitting in your house, truck, etc. I just had an 8 yr old buck just show back up on camera after disappearing all of last year. So with that being said... He wasn't dead, which means his home range changed or he avoids cameras????
