It was a hockey weekend this weekend here in the north country.  Of the five nephews and nieces on my in-laws side of the family, all of them live two hours or more away, four of them play hockey, and each one of the four had a tournament this weekend.  One nephew was actually in town for his tournament and another was just an hour away.  With that much going on that close to home my opportunities to check my trail cameras this weekend were going to be limited.

It was a balmy -4° F when I walked out the door Sunday morning. Luckily the wind was only about 5mph so there wasn’t any wind chill to be concerned with.  The sun still wasn’t even considering getting up, but yet there I was getting behind the wheel of my truck to make the short trek to the woods during my only free window for the weekend. 

Besides the obvious fishing addiction I have, my second love is the woods.  I have 160 acres of hardwood forest and I run a string of six motion/heat activated game cameras.  I’ve been a hunter as long as I’ve been able to shoot a gun and always spent as much time as possible in the woods.  But it was just five short years ago that trail cameras became part of my relationship with the woods. I’ve totally fallen in love with them and it has greatly enhanced my time in the woods.

The fairly recent digital camera revolution drastically changed camming and it is what eventually pushed me over the edge.  You suddenly weren’t limited to a 36-exposure roll of film; you could take hundreds, even thousands of photos before the camera needed attention.  You didn’t have to take your film to a developer and wait for days for your photos only to see 36 photos of the same squirrel eating acorns.  You had the ability look at the photos right in the field on the camera.  And even better yet, bring a little card home with you and download them directly to your computer.  Or if you’ve got a laptop…  It was during this digital revolution that I decided I should take the leap into trail cameras.  I had always wanted a trail camera but the digital technology just made too much sense for this spectrum of photography.

My initial interest in cameras was to scout for the big buck or verify that it really was the recently introduced wild turkey eating out of the feeder.  I only had my first camera out for a few weeks before I decided I really needed another.  My very first photo from my first camera was of a buck.  He was a smaller buck, but had antlers none the less.  And observing one little spot on 160 acres just wasn’t enough.  What other things were going on just fifty yards away, much less a half mile away at the other corner of the property?  There was just too much territory to cover.  I had to have another.  And it was shortly after having a pair of cameras out in the woods that my “sickness” developed. 

During a weekly cam check as I was flipping thru the photos on the camera before I put a new card in, there was a solitary photo of one of the nicest bucks I had ever seen locally.  He got “shot” broadside, head held low, from nose to just behind the shoulders, not more than seven feet from the camera.  His rack didn’t have a lot of mass, but it had some great height with two very nice very long tines.  And his distinguishing characteristic was a set of “crab claws” (an unusual fork that looks similar to the claw of a crab) at the end of each of his long sweeping beams.  Including the pair of brow tines and the crab claws, he was a ten pointer.  I had gotten photos of some nice deer in the months prior but this one was really over the top.  Outstanding quality and the crab claws just put him over the top giving him lots of character.  I headed off to the opposite corner of the property to check my other camera excited about the great shot I had.  My jaw just dropped while scrolling thru the photos on the second cam.  There was Crab Claw again!  This time a full body broadside shot but with him looking right into the camera.  He was an even nicer deer than the first photo had indicated!  His rack extended at least a half an ear in length past the tips of each of his ears.  His body was deep from sternum to spine.  Not only did he have the rack, with some great character, he had the body to boot.  An absolute mule.  Two photos, less than twelve hours apart, about a half a mile apart, of the same animal.  That was the day, and the deer, that changed my life.

C&R isn’t just for fishing.  Camming is the Catch And Release of hunting.  Or at least it’s my Catch And Release.  I can “catch” the same animal multiple times.  I can watch them progress from young animals to mature ones.  I can capture animals that could take a lifetime to see in the woods with the naked eye.  And best of all, now I can “hunt” all year long.  No seasons, no licenses, no regulations. 

And…by the way…I build all my trail cameras myself.  But I’ll save that for another blog down the road some time.

I hope you all enjoy TackleTog!

Action Shot