OUTDOORS -- Mike Marsh column

By Rudy Coggins
Published in Sports on April 29, 2017 11:06 PM

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There was a time when the images from a game camera, or more technically, a scouting camera, were not of adequate quality for most publication work. However, that has changed in a day when even a smart phone takes images that will work for print newspapers or internet magazines.

I have been to seminars about using game cameras to generate wildlife photography for sale. However, I prefer to do it the old-fashioned way -- a Nikon D90 camera and Nikon auto-focus lenses.

Nevertheless, game cameras have their place. As a matter of fact, in the past decade I would surmise that more deer hunters are using scouting cameras if they hunt over bait than do not.

I have used them to see if bears are working a pile of sweet potatoes or deer are working a feeder filled with corn. Like other hunters, I want to see if the animals are arriving during legal shooting hours and if they are worthy of investing the time it takes to have a chance at them.

I have also used them to spy on wood ducks and teal, to see how and where they may be landing in the ponds where I hunt them. The latest game-cam setups came recently, when I was having a problem with a wary old gobbler that simply will not fly down to a call. He wants to see feathers moving on a real hen.

Once, he was up in a tree for more than an hour, gobbling his wattles off in response to my R.H. Jensen chestnut wood box call. A hen pranced right by me, headed to the gobbler. He flew down, strutted and gobbled.

The hen came out of the woods just out of shotgun range. He had gathered an entire flock of turkeys, including a half-dozen hens and a jake. He even gobbled up another gobbler. I may have taken the jake, but I was caught between two fired up gobblers listening to real-world stereo.

I left for South Carolina to try to finish up the last of my three turkey tags. I set up two game cameras to keep tabs on the local North Carolina gobblers while I was away.

Most seasons, I look back and figure I would have been about as well off if I had simply waited out the gobblers I have taken, overlooking clover fields and remaining stationary, without making any calls. Hens, which we never harvest, learn about fake turkey sounds. They appear to have a propensity to lead gobblers away from them, whether from jealousy or having seen their boyfriends dropped right beside them by shotgun patterns over what can be a 10-year lifespan or longer.

After I watched the big gobbler prance away, barely out of range, I set the camera up at the natural bottleneck where he seemed to want to go.

I set up another camera on my son's new property about a mile away. We planted some oats and crimson clover as a test crop in a small food plot last fall. Fertilizing the soil this spring turned the oats dark green and the crimson clover was practically glowing like a field of embers.

The first day I camped out in South Carolina, the big gobbler walked briskly past the camera lens. I imagine he was on his way to meet an amorous hen. I wish I had been there because he had an exceptionally long beard.

The camera at my son's food plot captured a different surprise.

Several times, during the night, it had activated without capturing the culprit who tripped the sensor. However, on a sunlit morning, the bobcat stopped at the entrance to the field, apparently to scent mark the spot.

I had seen three bobcats while I was deer hunting last season. However, none had given me the opportunity to make them into bobcat rugs or mounts. It was fun to finally get a shot at one, even if it was only with a game camera loaded with an SD card.