How to Incorporate Digital Trail Cameras in your Turkey Scouting!

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It's time to start thinking about Spring turkey hunting!

If you have not already done it, its time to start working your trail cameras for scouting the turkey woods. Most hunters are familiar with using trail cameras for deer hunting but it seems that few are utilizing them for scouting for turkey.



The Gobblers have been gobbling and strutting here in Florida for several weeks now and its time to start your recon to gather all the information you can to put you in the right spot to harvest a trophy gobbler come opening morning.

Of course all information you can gather with your cameras will be helpful when hunting season actually starts but the main info you will be learning is the number and type of turkeys using the area, where the roosting and feeding areas are and most importantly, where gobbler strutting zones are!



The digital scouting camera is ideal for this. This can minimize your time spent scouting and eliminate spooking turkeys. Your camera does not need to be an infrared camera but if it is, you can gather some interesting pictures of other game at night when they are most active. The more cameras you have the better and the more information you can gather in a shorter period of time.

Most of the attached photo's were taken over a three day time frame with a "Bushnell Trophy Cam". They are excellent trail cameras and take a pretty good photo. This camera is one of the smallest on the market but as you can see in the photo's it does not go un-noticed! Hogs are pretty well oblivious to the presents of the camera but almost every deer and turkey that walks by will pick it out, even if you try to hide it. I don't really recommend trying to over hide it as the material you use can get blown in front of the lens and trigger the camera or block the photo's. I have even had hogs rub the camera and push sticks in front of the lens. Be careful not to have hanging vegetation such as Spanish moss or high grasses such as broomsedge in the sensors range that can wave in the wind and trigger the camera. I recently ended up with over 2000 photo's of Spanish moss waving in the wind that filled the camera card.

Cameras should be set up on woods roads where gobblers might want to strut. Usually, this will be on a slight rise on a long straight grade. You should look for strut sign and set your camera trap accordingly to try to pattern when he is showing up at this location. Other areas to set you cameras up are open hammocks where turkeys like to feed and mill around when the sun pushes them off the fields in the morning. Pinch points in small fields can be another great spot ad well as gaps in fences, bottoms, fire trails, burns and new chops.

Where legal, you can even concentrate them at your cameras with some corn or cow peas. Here in Florida you cannot hunt around the corn but you can feed them and it can get you a lot of great pictures. Notice the times on the turkey photo's. They were there off and on 7-8 times on the 14th., pretty unusual. Note, the camera time is set incorrectly but you can see how often they kept stopping by.

I will be posting some more pictures as I have time but here are a few to get you started.

Good Hunting,
Larry Stephens

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