How to Use Trail Cameras for Turkey Hunting

“We positively heard gobbles someplace north of Digicam 5.”

That was the extent of my information about turkey areas as I arrived at an Alabama looking camp earlier this month. I had landed late and pushed a pair hours. It was now properly after darkish, too late to roost birds and formulate a plan for the morning. However the proprietor of the 4,000 acres of hardwood ridges, fescue hayfields, and cut-over pine plantations had a half dozen Moultrie path cameras unfold out in varied locations on the farm, they usually proved a surprisingly useful gizmo to plan our hunt.

My buddy Will and I headed out sooner than if we had a transparent vacation spot, however needed to be inside earshot of Digicam 5 when the primary birds fired up.

The one gobble we heard was approach south of Digicam 5 — most likely not the one my buddies had heard on the night roost, and Will and I burned to get arrange for fly-down. It changed into a type of magical mornings when every part labored, and I referred to as a lone longbeard by thick brush into vary of Will’s Stoeger shotgun simply because the solar peeked over a excessive ridge on the Georgia line. 

As we hunted by the remainder of the week, path cameras turned an more and more essential a part of our technique. Relying on the way you turkey hunt, they could be a crucial software so that you can. Right here’s easy methods to use path cameras for turkey looking. —A.M.

Ideas for Turkey Looking with Path Cameras

Use Cameras to Roost Toms

Step one in establishing a helpful path digital camera technique for turkey looking is to place your cameras in the fitting spots. It’s a good suggestion to start out with possible roosting areas since turkeys will frequent these areas a minimum of twice per day.  

Considered one of our cameras was arrange on a firebreak under a ridgeline stand of old-growth longleaf pines. It was an apparent roosting location, however we solely hunted it on mornings after it registered late-afternoon footage of birds. It’s an instance of utilizing cameras to focus your exercise on high-percentage alternatives. —A.M.

Learn Subsequent: The Best Cellular Trail Cameras, Tested and Reviewed

Find Strut Zones

One other key digital camera location is potential strut zones. These are the areas that toms will head to mid-morning so as to strut, gobble, and entice hens. Seemingly strut zones are inexperienced fields, meals plots within the woods, and logging roads in open timber. One of the best zones normally can’t be seen from a street, and that’s the place cameras come into play. Search for tom tracks and wing drag marks earlier than committing a digital camera to a possible strut zone. —A.R.

Perceive Flock Dynamics

It’s essential to know the place toms prefer to go, however you also needs to determine how the chicken you’re looking is interacting with different turkeys. So whenever you begin getting path cam photos of turkeys, pay shut consideration flock dynamics. Does a boss tom at all times present up on digital camera strutting with a bunch of hens? Or is there a subdominant tom that comes slinking by solely after a gang of jakes passes by? Is there a pair of buddy toms that at all times arrive after a hen walks by? All of those situations require barely completely different looking methods, so plan accordingly. —A.R.

Know The place Turkeys Aren’t

Cameras can verify the shortage of exercise. A number of the most helpful intelligence we gleaned from cameras wasn’t the presence of sport, however somewhat the absence of it. That’s worthwhile information — realizing the place to not hunt — and helped us deal with the farm’s most efficient areas. —A.M.

Turkey Pictures Solely

Since you’re possible setting path cameras decrease to the bottom for turkeys (since they’re shorter than deer) they’re going to be triggered extra typically by squirrels, raccoons, and all types of different ground-dwelling critters. However you don’t have to scroll by lots of of non-turkey photos. Within the Moultrie Cellular App you possibly can set your cameras to transmit turkey images solely. The app’s AI can inform the distinction between a turkey and a squirrel or deer. 

This protects time whenever you’re operating quite a lot of cameras and it additionally saves battery life (transmitting images takes quite a lot of juice). —A.R.

Take Tom Stock

Path cameras may also be helpful administration instruments. Operating a handful of cameras on a property gives you a good suggestion of what number of toms, jakes, and hens are within the space. 12 months to yr, this may also help you determine what number of toms to reap (or not harvest) from a bit of floor. 

As turkey populations proceed to struggle across much of the country, all hunters ought to contemplate themselves turkey wildlife managers.  —A.R.

Watch the Climate

The Southeast has been rocked by extreme storms this spring, and pictures from the half-dozen Moultrie cameras on the Alabama farm allow us to see how turkeys responded to numerous climate situations. A digital camera on the west facet of a subject had zero exercise on calm, storm-free days. Nevertheless it turned stuffed with turkey exercise on days with afternoon thunderstorms, presumably as a result of a block of timber shielded the sphere edge from westerly winds and rain. Considered one of our group hunted it on a wet afternoon — historically a horrible time to bag a chicken — and killed a 3-year-old tom. —A.M.

Don’t Grow to be Overly Reliant on Your Cameras

Cameras aren’t magic. Sure, they will provide crucial intel, however they will additionally mislead or present solely partial info. Even when turkeys seem on footage, you possibly can’t know which course they’re headed or what they do after they’re out of body. And, cameras can simply miss capturing turkeys which are simply out of vary. So simply since you’re not getting a ton of images doesn’t imply that toms aren’t round. Depend on turkey hunting skill and woodsmanship over tech. —A.M.

Cell Cam Ethics

I went into this hunt with a perception that transmitting path cams stress the bounds of honest chase throughout a turkey hunt. If I can watch my digital camera’s feed and look ahead to an animal to point out up, then instantly go kill it, how is that any completely different from utilizing a drone to hunt? However in our case we didn’t use live-time feeds to hunt turkeys. As a substitute, we used the cameras’ picture rolls to be taught day by day patterns. That’s a standard scouting approach. —A.M.

Learn Subsequent: Is Hunting with Cellular Trail Cameras Fair Chase or Cheating?

Again within the Hunt

The remainder of that day again in Alabama was spent prospecting this unfamiliar farm, with predictable outcomes. We bumped birds. We had shut calls with roaming gobblers. Throughout a day lull, our photographer, Jake, pulled up the Moultrie app with a shared gallery of the farm’s cameras. He scrolled by photos of a digital camera arrange on a firebreak in a patch of dense timber.

“Seems like all week a gobbler has been on that digital camera between 2 and 4 p.m. Is sensible. It’s on the northeast facet of that ridge, so it will be cool and shady within the afternoon. And look,” he famous a small creek on the app’s digital map. “There’s water close by and that firebreak leads right down to that subject.”

We had seen strutters within the late morning in that subject. All of it added as much as one of the best prospect we had, and since neither Will, Jake, nor I needed to return to camp for lunch, we headed towards Digicam 7.

I’d like to inform you it labored out as swimmingly as our dawn hunt. As a substitute, we had been careless throughout our walk-in and busted a gobbler about 100 yards from the digital camera location. Was it the identical one which had been photographed by the Edge 2 Pro digital camera? Most likely. However now it was spooked and completely uncallable.

That night time again at camp, we traded notes with our different companions, after which checked digital camera footage to both verify turkey sightings or to dismiss hunches. We may even see when our dejected social gathering handed inside triggering vary of Digicam 7.

One digital camera, overlooking a winter wheat subject, confirmed frequent dawn exercise. A bunch of three to 5 gobblers was displaying up constantly. It was exhausting to inform if these had been 3-year-old longbeards, as a result of they had been at all times photographed going away at full strut. However their full followers confirmed they weren’t jakes, which was ok for us.

The subsequent morning we arrange on the base of a giant oak tree in the midst of that subject, about 30 yards from the timbered edge. It wasn’t ideally suited since there was no obscuring brush across the oak’s trunk, however it allowed us nice visibility of all the subject and woodland border. We swiftly made a  brush blind and three of us tucked into the gnarled base of this large tree, congratulating ourselves once we heard dawn gobbles.

Thirty minutes later three strutters entered the sphere simply because the solar began baking off the heavy dew. For one more 20 minutes they by no means got here out of strut, however they may inform one thing wasn’t fairly proper about our tree, and began getting twitchy. Lastly, as two magnum gobblers entered the sphere, the three 2-year-olds labored their approach towards us. Collectively, these had been possible the 5 toms we had seen on the cameras.

My buddy Benny is, like me, a southpaw, and we had been each arrange on the tree within the expectation that birds would strategy from the fitting, making a reasonably simple shot for a left-hander. However this trio was coming from the left, nervous about our presence, and each Benny and I had been badly out of place, irritating our plans to double if we obtained the possibility. We’d must scooch our our bodies to shoot, and because the birds entered the woods and walked towards us I knew that it must be a quick shot earlier than the gobblers busted us.

Sadly for Benny, I had one of the best shot, and moved my gun barrel barely as I twisted my trunk. When the crimson dot of the sight met the chicken’s dome, I fired. The opposite two toms didn’t look ahead to Benny. They had been off into the woods earlier than my chicken began flopping.

Past the exhilaration of taking a mature Jap gobbler in good-looking new nation, the expertise was an training in utilizing path cameras as a vital scouting and decision-making software.