Well thanks to y’all I got my timer straightened out and the feeder is running like a champ, but now trail camera mishap.

So today me and the misses were out tending to our calves and she looks down to the feeder and says “that group of does if down at the feeder”. So I go to my truck and grab my binoculars and she meets me back half way and says “G, there’s a huge buck down there.” Now at first I was skeptical, she’s a hunter and has been her whole life but she’s never seen a of deer and has said several times that her and her dad would hunt hard all season and see just a handful of deer, thus the reason for my skepticism. She wanted to look first and was absolutely pumped about whatever was down there, so I let her look first. She reconfirmed that is was the biggest deer she had ever seen in person and that all five deer were bucks, now I’m really courious because it is very uncommon for our little place to have a bachelor group of bucks. By this time I’m chomping at the bit see what’s down there and she finally passed over the binos. I looked down there and saw two small young deer, two decent deer, and monster of a deer for our area, by far the biggest deer that’s ever been on the place. I could not believe my eyes. We spent the next 10 minutes fighting over the binoculars for a chance to look at him. We finally agreed to go get our chores done and go pull the cards out of the two cameras I have running.

Fast forward to going to pull the cards out, we pull up to the first one and it’s been knocked to the far left and is facing some brush, my heart sank a little, but no worries maybe it got some pictures before it got knocked out of view of the camera. I proceed to walk over to the second camera and I cannot believe my eyes, it’s facing the ground. I pulled the card and was hopeful that between the two camera we would have some decent photos of the group as we had been seeing them for 3 or 4 days now.

We get home eager to see the close ups and to my disbelief, there is a combined photo count of 1,800 photos of brush and grass that the wind caused to trigger. The only photos of animals were our replacement heifers smelling the cameras and knocking them over. I cannot catch a break pre deer season it seems.

That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.

1st world problems.....

That which does not kill you...still makes you angry.

keep on going man...

been there, done that ... cows & horses seem to be attracted to game cameras. I had over 3600 pictures of cow/horse legs/feet and birds on the ground on one of my cameras out in Ozona. Seems like the first day after changing batteries/card, a cow started sniffing/rubbing on the cedar tree the camera was mounted. Since I only go out there about once a quarter to fill feeders & check cameras, it was very frustrating to have 3 months worth of useless pictures.

You can take a piece of 2x4 welded wire and make a round fence to put over the camera. Make it 8"-10" in diameter and tall enough to hide the camera. Does not need a top or a bottom. Then take wire cutters and cut the stays in front of the lens and sensor eye...bend those cut stays outward to give the camera more protection. Done this in west texas to keep cattle off my cams. You can do it with a 4x4 cattle panel also.

Wisdom.

Anything that goes wrong until 11:59pm on December 31st should be blamed on the year 2020.

We experienced this at the Pitch from the cows........we sink an 8' 4x4 about 2 ft. and fill the whole with foam and cover with dirt. You can mount it high enough at a slight downward angle that they can't reach it......

I would either mount both cameras higher up pointing down or put them lower (about a foot from the ground) but hide it next to a bush or stump. Maybe even mount the camera to your feeder barrel.

All great suggestions. Just curious, what part of the state? You said it was unusual to see a bachelor group. Is your herd expanding? I'm a biologist wannabe. Love to hear about deer moving into new areas.

This particular place is 17 acres in Guadalupe county roughly 4 miles from the Comal county line and about 7 miles east of the city of New Braunfels. Our place through the years it has been routine to see 20 different bucks of all ages from spikes to mature deer all semi regular through the deer season. However, our place forums a natural funnel that deer travel through and most of the time we don’t start seeing the vast majority of our bucks until the rut and because we plant oats for cattle every year they start to frequent the place more and more as the winter gets colder and other food sources become scarce. But for us to have the same 5 bucks coming daily to a deer feeder this time of year isn’t very common for our place. Most of the time it’s a majority does and a buck here or there on the trail camera at night.

Now there are lots of neighbor hoods being built about two miles as a crow flies from this place that has pushed a lot of deer to us. And we are dry. Very very dry. The bucks were all out tonight along with 2 does and they all looked like they could hold an easy 25 pounds, so I’m thinking the lack of natural food source could also be playing a factor here.

Don't know what your mounts look like, but ditch the straps if you're using them. Grab yourself the right size hose/pipe clamp and put a socket bit on your driver. Get that thing as tight as you can before you break plastic and they won't move it.