The Gun Blogs

I've been having fun the last two years running a couple of game cameras behind my lakehouse. I own a five acre share on a private lake. The land fronts the lake on one end and a large beaver-flooded swamp bottom on the back. It bisects a natural corridor for game crossing my property.
I had older film game cameras, but they were tasked with elaborate timing schemes to allocate the 36 photos on a roll of film over a several day or weeks time span. The new digital cams don't have that limitation. Instead of 36 frames I have 500 frames so 60 photos of raccoons eating corn just isn't an issue. There is no film processing and I use rechargeable batteries so the cost and convieniance are low.
The history of hunting is basically an information processes: Where are the animals? My lakehouse sits on a sandy ridge that is covered with pre and post-colombian Amerind home sites. Men have hunted off this land from the start of human occupation of the New World. For the first time in the history of that hunting I can collect the data.
I check the cameras every two days. It takes 12 minutes to walk to the cams, pull the memory cards, service the feeders and check sign. One cam is an older moultrie that works very well- averages over 100 photos in two days, the other is a disaster that may have 0-50 photos. It's a later version Moultrie 100 sold through Wal-Mart for 100.00. It's been exchanged at Wal-Mart and sent back to Moultrie. It's better, and Moultrie sent me some free rechargeable batteries for my trouble, but basically its still a piece of trash. I'm going to update it, but with a cam that uses the same batteries and card.
I keep a notebook of photos of the local deer. I've got names for all the bucks and most of the does. When we see an animal now, generally it can be identified specifically and has a history over a couple of seasons. Last year there were eight shootable bucks and a couple of little spikes that looked like they ought to be taken. I rattled up one nice buck and shot him before he got in the blind with me.
I've shot deer with my Ruger #1, a Garand, and an Argentine Cav Mauser.
The land next to me is owned by a rancher who doesn't hunt but has a keen eye for game and land conditions. I gave him a duplicate notebook of deer/coyote photos and update it by putting new pages in his mailbox. Across the swamp the land is owned by a large extended family and so I do the same for them. Both guys are absolutely blown away by the information, but its cheap-printed on plain paper and inserted in plastic sheet protectors and I get better neighbors and good information flow back from them, plus they own most of the land these deer circulate across. The guy across the swamp had to give up hunting due to glaucoma but can see the large printed images.
This week, the deer are not moving much. There's an older resident buck that is in velvet about eight inches out. He's hanging out with a doe, which is a little rare. The does are beginning to get ready to fawn, so they all look very pregnant. Range conditions are very good. The coyotes have rotated out of this part of their range for a bit. The hogs are up the creek but not here. I'm going to have to cull some raccoons, probably with a live trap and .22 pistol.