Speaking of wgi cams, I just pulled my card this weekend. It was on a mineral block. 1050 pics in 60 days on 8 aa batteries and they still are half charged. Tons of does, a few fawns, and 3 dinky bucks. One shows promise if he gets to grow for 2 more years. I can ID a lot of the does based on tick bite locations on them! The thing takes good pics! Too bad the flash appears to have died in this cam. Day pics are good, night pics are nothing but eyeballs.
Edit:Heck you don't really even need to solder. Can use but connectors inside the cam. Use watertight ones if you want. You can use crimp on aligator clips or like I did and just twist the wires onto the 6v terminals. It's as simple as hook a wire up to the main pos and negative terminals that feed the camera. Drill a hole in the bottom run them out put a dab of silicone in there too to seal up from moisture. And then you can hook to the battery. I kept like 6ft of wire on the leads, ran wire down to the ground. I kept the battery in a small plastic like index card box. Ran wires into a hole I drilled in it and just electrical taped it closed. Worked till the camera gave up the ghost. Ran it like that a few years like I said till I left it in the woods too long, but that had nothing to do with the mod but more to do with just over exposure.
The battery life on the Browning cameras is unexpectedly long. They were out for 4 months last winter and never ran all the way down, even taking thousands of pics in cold temps with flash at night. I changed both sets out (6 AA each) before taking them to the licks here a month or so ago. I won't have to change batteries again until early winter. Now my spin feeder is another story. 10AA at a time and need changing about every two weeks in cold temps. I have had 6 volt spinners in the past and they didn't fare too much better. Cost of the batteries in the feeder are moot, just a pita having to change them and reset timers.
I do have one old Wild Game that won't take videos any longer and also won't take night pictures so I use it very little. I usually set it in one particular spot where there is not a lot of activity but I like to see what goes there. This one even takes C batteries but all others take AA.
We usually can see the buttons on them by September. Naturally some will grow more than others and by late October some can get rather large for button bucks. But, they are still fawns. I hate it when someone wants to justify shooting by saying, "But it was a button buck." Well, it was also a fawn, but they don't like to hear that.
Talking to a neighbor today he says he has some cameras with batteries he put in last summer. He does not leave the cameras out in the winter though; usually takes them up by Christmas. He does just take still pictures but I like to take videos so don't get the length of time from the batteries but still very good time in my book.
I have one cam taking stills and one taking video right now. Only took stills this past winter. I like to feed towards the end of season on through January & February. Will report if the video eats the batteries. I have it set for 10 or 15 second clips, I think.
Not too many customers this past week, but some interesting ones! Backwoods- The video Cam took 87 10 second images and was at 91% on batteries. Still can took 60 images and was still showing 100%. This was over a two week span. Went and checked something g else yesterday as well... Planted seed two years ago. Success!
This is a holdover I chased last year. Busting out the non-typical junk this year. Only 3 weeks away from opening day.
I know seasons down there start early but I doubt I'd enjoy hunting when it is this warm. I like it cool to cold when hunting.
Most of us that live here don't enjoy hunting when it's thus hot! It's the novelty of killing one in velvet or being able to kill them when there still in bachlor groups. The good news is that we finially went to a tag system this year. 3 bucks only and you can buy 2 more buck tags if you want . Also have to tag does. I think you get like 5 and can buy 4 more? We have seen a huge deer decline in the last 20 years from the constant pressure and them telling you to shoot does all the time, that and the last decade of cyote population explosion and the data released by Clemson from a study several years ago that showed over a 50% predetation rate on fawn recoupment!! One of those tags I think we get has to be 4 points or better? I have to look at them. BUT it's a move to the right direction from basically unregulated deer harvest. There was a limit before, even a season limit but the daily limit was basically the only thing anyone worries about.
That's good to hear as I know the numbers hunters can kill has been ridiculous down there. I can see why it would be a novelty getting one in velvet. Do they shoot something into the antlers so they hold the velvet?
I think from the guys I have talked to they freeze dry it. My buddy who is a taxidermist I never really talked much about it. And he only did a few in velvet since the upstate doesn't have that early of a season. The whole thing is basically politics. The seasons that is. The state legislature controls the season and limits and regs for the lower portion of the state I have heard with DNR (department of Natural Resources ) controlling the other game zones. Which is why for years you could not bait, hunt on Sunday, more conservative limits (if you call 10 bucks per county consevative) and no dog hunting . The sunday ref has been gone for 15 years or so except public land, you can now bait, as of a few years ago, still no dogs, and that one probably won't change . In the lowcountry I don't see that changing . That's part of the south and coastal plain heritage is the big dog drives down on the huge tracts of land that exist down there. Most of them are just moving farther away, there are whole subdivisions and communities places where they use to dog drive. Charleston population is double what it was 25 years ago.
