Ep. 658: Foundations - Time and the Trail Camera Connection

little bit. But we're not too serious about white tails right now. And that's okay. There's still quite a bit of time between here and the deer Opener, but there also isn't that much time. And time is the pretty much the whole damn point of this particular podcast, or more specifically, why you should use your time wisely this summer in relation to your trail camera strategies and your

overall scouting style. Way way back in nineteen sixty four, the Rolling Stones recorded two versions of the song time Is on My Side. If you don't know that song, you're probably pretty young. If you do, you know that Mick Jagger sings quite a few times that time is on his side. Yes, it is now. I'd argue that it probably was nearly fifty years ago, but maybe isn't now, at least in his case, because he's getting up there

in years. Most of us view this time of year in relation to white Tails, like there's sort of an incontrovertible fact that the time quite literally is on our side, since we have a few months to work with before even getting serious about deer. But I disagree, and I'm going to tell you why. But first I want to

just kind of talk about how weird time really is. Like, for example, did you know that a day on Earth used to be a hell of a lot shorter than it is now, like six hours shorter because the Earth used to spin faster than it does now, And eventually the days will be even longer than they are right now.

Although it's pretty likely that by the time there is any real appreciable change in the length of the day, we will have nuked ourselves right into non existence, or maybe gotten hit by a big old asteroid that clears out the space humans take up and leaves it for some other creatures to reign supreme for a couple million years. Time is also a matter of perception. We are living

in the past ever so slightly. It's impossible for us to perceive events that happen at exactly the same time they happen, so we are actually about eighty milliseconds behind no matter what we're doing or experiencing. This means that, in the strictest sense, there really is no now. We also experience time differently as individuals. Your brain, when it's fully immersed in a project, just has less horsepower to pay attention to time's passage, so time seems to move

very quickly. Then, Yet if you happen to do something like, I don't know, bowhunt turkeys from a blind from sunrise to sunset, you might find there are certain parts of that day where you are painfully aware of every ticking second. Or better yet, go for a long run when you don't want to, you'll realize that time can move awful slowly, even though it's technically moving the same speed as when you're driving a go cart, or jumping on a trampoline, or catching a ton of fish, or doing anything more

fun than a lot of the bs in life. Another wild thing about time that I'm far too dumb to really explain is astronomical time versus atomic time. Astronomical time is the one we are most familiar with, where one second equals one to sixtieth of a minute. This is also tied to how long it takes Earth to rotate fully on its axis. But then there is atomic time, where one second equals six hundred and thirty seven and

seventy oscillations of a ccum one thirty three element. This is the most accurate way to track time, if you can figure out a way to use it without cracking your eggshell brain. Time is also relative, which we can thank Einstein for figuring out. This means the faster you're moving, the slower time moves. This is why astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, who are twin brothers that were born several minutes apart, have actually become way closer in age, if

that makes any sense at all. This is because Mark spent three hundred and forty days in space on the International Space Station, so when he returned he had gained enough on his big brother to actually be only about five milliseconds apart. Because the International Space Station is really cooking up there to the tune of like seventeen thousand

miles per hour. Time is complicated, which you can experience if you work with people from multiple time zones in the US and Canada, for example, this is just a way of life. In China, which is a giant country, they don't have time zones. Everyone is on the same time zone, so people in certain parts of the country will experience sunrise hours before people in other parts of the country do, yet they're all operating off the same time.

Time is a lot of things, and it's going to keep marching right along, at least until we figure out how to travel at the speed of light. That if you know anything about space travel, is pretty far off in the realm of possibilities. So we are mostly stuck with our twenty four hour ish days and are roughly

three hundred and sixty five days a year. We are also facing a unique opportunity as whitetail hunters right now, because we can use the time between today and our season opener to learn an awful lot about what bucks do. And this is where trail cameras really shine. Before I get into the nitty gritty of that, I do want to talk about why I think this is valuable. I think we assume a traditional trail camera or a cell camera is going to give us enough intel necessary to

decide where and when we should hunt. Of course they might, but they also might not. This all depends on the data we collect. And just like when you're making any informed decision, the more data you have, the better you generally are. Think about it this way. What if you want to buy a new boat. A lot of people, and these are people who find themselves in financial trouble throughout their lives. Go, I do want a new boat, and I want it on the lowest payment plan possible.

I want the smallest payments I can get. Now, as someone who re simply bought a new boat, I can tell you that at least some places will allow you to finance a boat for fifteen years. You heard me right, So if you want low payments, you can certainly get them, but you're also going to pay a boat load, get it of interest in a loan on that lenk on an asset that is very, very unlikely to appreciate. If the only info you want is how can I get low payments, then you're likely to make a bad decision.

If instead, you figure out what you can scrape together for a down payment, then figure out what you're comfortable with for an overall price, and what you're comfortable with for monthly payments, you have the framework to make a good decision. After that, you might want to get pre approved for a loan at your bank and then shop around for better rates on your loan at other banks. The more information you have, the more details you can squeeze out of all parties involved, the better off you'll

be when you do pull a trigger. When it comes to deer hunting, the same rules kind of generally apply. You want information, a lot of information, so you can make good decisions. This is why this time of year is a great time to start putting trail cameras out. This is the time when they shine, when they can do the heavy lifting for you when you're out doing your thing in your new boat or whatever you do this summer. The reasons for this are many, but let's

start with the basics. The crops are coming up, the woods are all greened up, and the summertime patterns are absolutely falling into place. This matters because even a month and certainly two months ago, the patterns on the deer in your region might not have been anything like they are now. They probably weren't. But where we are now deer wise, is where we will largely be for the next few months, and for most folks, it's where we'll largely be when we slide right into the actual deer season.

This is about as early as you can get in and start learning stuff that will directly benefit you when the season opens, So acknowledge that because it matters. Having this much time allows you to start locating bachelor groups even if they aren't showing much in the way aheadgear yet it allows you to start dialing them in on specific food and water sources, and that's important. But it

also allows you time to make mistakes. I can't stress how much this matters to a good trail camera strategy, and maybe calling them mistakes is like a little bit too harsh, But the truth is, you might march on out to a bean field that is just starting to sprout and hang your camera up in a corner of that field and think, well, you got them now. It's all over except for a short blood trail in a couple of months. Yet you might not get the pictures

you want or expect to get. You might, and this is very very common, get like a tenth or a fifth of the pictures you expect to get. What if you put out a camera now and that's how it goes for you? Big deal? Right? You have time to move it and time to fine tune your scouting to figure out where the deer are more consistent than your original spot. You can leave that camera up and put out a few more to figure out what the camera

is missing. This is a good strategy if you can swing it, because there's a big difference a lot of times on whether bucks come from one trail or another, and whether they feed right on the field edge or they're twenty rows deep, and your camera might miss them. In the wind and rain and sun and randomness of weather and bugs all affect who comes out and when and where. So one camera for a few weeks might not get you the information you need. But that's okay

if you have time. You wouldn't. If you put out a camera in the end to August and your opener is in mid September, for example, you're going to get limited intel and then have to make your hunting decisions based off of that limited data. This is where hunters get into trouble because in that scenario, one picture of a buck in daylight might be enough to convince them to hunt a spot, mostly because they don't have a lot else to work with. This is dangerous ground and

it saves a lot of bucks every year. It's way better to have three months of intel to sift through from a couple cameras in strategic spots. When you have that, you can start to see real patterns merge, and identifying a real pattern is the key to killing big bucks in the early season. But their patterns aren't as simple as we like to think. I mean, sure, sometimes you get on a bachelor group that's just like clockwork. They show up every night and they are reliable right up

to the opener. Sometimes they use the same trail pretty much every day, but mostly they don't. Often, even what feels like a pretty tight pattern since they end up in the same spot, isn't and when it's not as tight of a pattern as we hope, we make mistakes like sitting on the wrong side of the field or

hunting during the wrong wind or whatever. A better bed is to start now so that you have as much information as possible to work with, so you don't hunt on the wrong side of the field, or you don't convince yourself to hunt when the wind is wrong. And this isn't just a field edge or a food plot thing either. If you want to figure out how to kill bucks, figure out how to scout where they like to walk in the cover. You've heard me say that

a lot, and it's because I believe it. Like a buck that beds on a specific ridge today to stay in the shade and catch a nice breeze it'll keep the mosquitoes down, is a buck that will probably bed there in early fall to stay comfortable while avoiding the gnats and deer flies. And when a buck does that, he is very likely to walk certain trails to get

to certain spots to that betting from that betting. And if you know what those trails are in addition to those certain spots, and then you know how frequently he seems to do certain things. Then you're really getting onto a pattern. The time you have now allows you to run trail cameras on trails, and you should. The same goes for water sources and fence crossings, terrain traps in the big woods, and anywhere that might concentrate buck movement and give you a real advantage when it comes to

sussing out travel patterns. In fact, I rank all of these spots in more as far more important than running cameras on the edge of a field, provided I can glass that field. I'd much rather watch deer where I can watch them and monitor them with trail cameras where I can't, And when you start getting pictures, try to keep track of them. There are different apps for this, but you can do it in a variety of different ways. What I like to do is just instantly delete every

picture that really doesn't do me much good. This varies on where I hunt, so I'm gonna explain this the best I can. So let's say I'm heading to southeastern Minnesota. I know down there my goal is going to be to try to kill a decent buck, So then anything that isn't a decent buck isn't that important to me? As far as trail camera intel, so it's going to get deleted. I want a paired down look at all

the images that matter to me in that pursuit. So the more I can get it whittled down to just bucks I'm interested in, the better it is for me to figure out how consistent they are and just sort of visualize those patterns better. Now, if I'm hunting northern Wisconsin with my daughters, my standards are vastly different. I want every deer picture because we're hunting all deer, the does,

the fawns, the scrappers, the big bucks. They're all important to us there, so I want to know when the dough groups come through just as much as I care about any decent bucks. In fact, with them, I tend to really focus on the scrapper bucks because they are some of the most patternable deer and us Peterson's like to shoot spikes and four kis. Your mileage might vary,

but the same rules apply. Figure out how to make your images work for you so that you can start to divine out of the many the patterns of the few. This takes time, which reminds me of one more thing I want to mention on this topic, how long to soka camera in a specific spot. This kind of all depends on how well the camera is performing. If I have a camera on a trail that is getting consistent images every day, it's a winner and I don't really

see a whole lot of reasons to move it. But if the image are sporadic and inconsistent, at least over enough weeks, then I feel like it's time to move it. But that's why I like starting this process now. If I start in August, I can't give a potential dud a whole month because that might be a lot of wasted effort. But now I can, and I think a month is a really good timeframe to leave cameras out now. This is a little different when you're running cell cameras

because they send pictures right to you. But with traditional cameras, if you start now, you'll have at least three one month windows to work with on your spots. With cell cameras, I tend to get a little impatient because I can see more or less in real time whether I'm getting any images. This is kind of a trap, though, and

you got to be careful. You just try to avoid this because It's easy to believe that a spot is amazing or really shitty when you get pick sent to you, but you have to look at it the same way you look at a card pull on a traditional camera. What does the whole month tell you when you look at it objectively. This is kind of like what so many people get wrong about investing in for retirement. They pay attention to the daily ups and downs of the market and the good and bad news that floods their

lives every day. But the best bet is to invest to just your risk tolerance and then stop paying attention, so you can cut out that daily emotion from seeing the ups and downs. Sure, you should check in every once in a while, maybe if you feel there's a good need to rebalance, but mostly you'll just take your emotion out of the thing and you can just trust the process so much better. The same kind of applies to trail cameras, so be careful with those cell cameras,

but also don't be lazy. It's easy to believe we're going to get the whole thing right right away, or that we don't really need to do anything other than put up a camera on the edge of the Alfalfa and then wait for the big velvet bucks to walk by. But what we believe about ourselves is bad ass hunters

often isn't reality. What we believe is a simple thing like monitoring a food source often isn't that simple, and it often doesn't give us a good enough look into a true dear pattern, and that brings us right back to making poor decisions based off of incomplete information. So

don't do that to yourself. Get out there now and start collecting valuable intel while you still have lots of time, and then come back next week because I'm going to talk about some of the trends in hunting gear that are probably causing us more harm than good and how not to fall into those traps and instead outfit yourself to hunt the way you need to, which you guessed it will help you kill more dear. That's it, my friends.

I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening and for your support. Really appreciate it. If you want some more whitetail content, you know you can head on over to them mediater dot com, slash wired read articles you Know by Myself, Mark Kenyon, Alex Gilstrombo, Martonic, Dylan Tramp, whole

bunch of white tail killers. You can also head on over to the meat Eator YouTube channel and check out our latest white tail series that Casey and Tyler over at the Element dropped called The Buck Truck. And you might even see you know your favorite meat Eater guys like Mark or Clay or myself on one of the shows, So go check it out.