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How to Set Up Motion-Sensor Cameras to Do a Deer Survey

Editor’s Note: Mark Thomas, vice president of the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA), an organization that Mossy Oak has supported since its inception, is both a registered forester and a registered wildlife biologist. Thomas consults for the timber and the wildlife industries and constantly evaluates and improves properties for hunting. One of the key tools he uses in his daily work is motion-sensor cameras, often having as many as 50 cameras on one piece of property doing various surveys. This week we’ve talked with Thomas about what he’s doing with his motion-sensor cameras and how cameras can help Mossy Oak Properties’ folk improve their lands.

Question: How do you set up your motion-sensor cameras to get the best information when you’re surveying a deer population? Thomas: I set up the areas that I’ll be censusing into equal 100-acre parcels. Then I select a site in the middle of each 100-acre parcel for my camera site and bait station. I go in five days before I’ll actually start photographing and pre-bait the area around the camera. I usually use whole kernel corn to bait the region. I want to get the deer coming to that place so that I can photograph them. I wear rubber boots to leave as little human odor as possible. I’ll also put a mineral lick out in the same area where I’ve placed the bait. Sometimes the deer will come to a mineral lick for the minerals more frequently than they’ll come to corn, at certain times of the year. I’ve got some photos that show the deer consuming the mineral lick and never feeding on the corn.

After I have my bait station set up, I set my camera to take one photograph every 10 minutes for 10 days. I’ll set the camera for 24-hour continuous flash usage. With a five-day pre-bait period and a 10-day camera census I estimate that you generally can photograph 95% of the deer on the land. I’ll set my cameras 4- to 5-feet high and aim them at the bait station. By restricting the range of your cameras to just the area of the bait station, you can usually get a really-high quality picture of the bucks that come in to feed on the bait. However, the older-age-class bucks, particularly those 6-1/2- to 8-1/2-years old, may quickly get leery of the sound and flash of the camera. But usually you won’t have many of those deer on your property. I’ve designed another way to photograph older-age-class bucks.

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