Deer Hunting – Spypoint Trail Camera – Jacob Hacker

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Deer Hunting – Spypoint Trail Camera – Jacob Hacker

I’m very happy to have Jacob Hacker on. He’s the Regional Sales Manager for SPYPOINT. What’s Spypoint? You are going to know all about it, but more important than that, we’re going to be talking about preseason prep with your trail cameras of which Spypoint is one brand. Jacob, welcome to the show and let’s roll up and talk about the development of the use of spy cameras. Security cameras had been around forever, but all of a sudden motion sensors, whitetail deer and we’ve got a huge industry, don’t we?  

It’s everywhere. You can’t be in or around the hunting industry without seeing trail cameras everywhere.  

Do you know the history of when this whole thing started? Who was the first guy to figure out, “If I can use this in my office, I should hang it on a tree?”  

I can’t answer that one for you but I bet he’s sitting pretty and he’s killed some big deer with it, that’s for sure. 

I’m trying to think about how long trail cameras are being used. It’s got to be several years, don’t you think?  

I know 1999 was the first season that I started hunting and we had trail cameras then. They were 35-millimeter flash cameras, but we used trail cameras then. That’s been many years now. It’s well before that I’m sure.  

Some older and more mature hunters used to take silk strands. They would put out silk strands on deer trails. They would have to check the silk strand, but they didn’t have it. They could tell which way the deer was going and they could tell the twelve-hour period or whatever. We have been using those devices, rudiments as they are, to see if deer are using a certain pathway. Military use it all the time way before trail cameras. They had tripwires and stuff like that so they knew when somebody went by. Having said all that, hunting has used some way of saying, “Something passed here at some point in time and that’s all I’ve got to know.” What’s the stuff you can get off the trail camera picture?  

You can get whatever went off there. Our cameras have a basic feature that’s showing you the time, date, moon phase as well as the image itself. A picture is worth a thousand words. You can learn a ton from analyzing individual trail camera photo. The data and information stored within the picture file itself are light years beyond what we used to see in trail cameras.  

We’re talking about you can get barometric pressure, you can get wind direction, and we already talked about the moon. Do they pick up moisture if it’s raining, foggy, clear or any of that?  

Our cameras do not as far as a data point, but you can look in that picture and see that much information that you’re looking for. Is it raining? What’s the weather, cloudy or overcast? That’s another clue you can pick out of your trail camera photo. We as hunters tend to focus on the subject in that picture. We tend to look at the deer, the raccoon, the turkey or whatever is in our picture. We skip on past it when there are so much more data in there that we can be looking at, with weather patterns, with shade, with plant growth. There’s everything that’s contained in that picture beside the animal that we can look at. 

One thing that has helped quantify barometric change and cold fronts coming through are trail cameras. We all knew the cold front of 20 to 30-degree difference in temperature, the deer will move. You never knew how much they move. Will they move in a little bit earlier than sunset or sunshine or were they moving all day, all those types of things. To me, other than the rut, if I want to see deer, I want to hunt a cold front.  

That’s for sure. You can look at your weather forecast or look at what the trees and the other wildlife are doing and plan that hunt out. You can hunt within 24 or 48 hours of that cold front moving through or hunt on the front edge of that storm front. Couple that with your cameras and the pictures you’re seeing and you can set yourself up well for a hunt that way. 

It’s important what Jacob just said, “Hunt in the front of it.” You can hunt on the back end also. It depends on the veracity of the storm. All the critters know something is happening because the barometric pressure is changing. They know if they want to get groceries, they better get groceries. That’s why they’re moving. If you have to take off to work when you see a cold front coming, time it out, figure it out, call in sick, and get in your stand. 

We’ve got tons of storms here in late spring and early summer. You see these storm fronts rolling through and you start seeing the deer out in the bean field at 1:00 to 2:00 in the afternoon because that storm front is coming through. With my trail cameras, what I like to do is monitor a particular deer. If I can start telling which particular buck it is and I say, “In two days I’ve got a storm coming in, according to the weatherman,” which who knows if I can trust that or not. Let’s take notes this time of year on when that storm comes through and compare that to when that deer starts moving. When November rolls around and a storm front is coming through, I know this specific ten-point buck, back in the summer he moved eighteen hours before the storm. That’s when he fed. That twelve-pointer fed six hours before the storm. That’s when that deer started feeling that pressure and that’s what pressure activates that specific deer. I can go to my trail cameras and start watching that and patterning that with the storm fronts that are coming through and use that as a time frame and a calendar come November. 

You don’t need fancy equipment to do that. If you’ve got a smartphone, you make a note. You start building a log on your deer. You hit those logs because you should start thinking about it. We’re coming out of winter. Their horns are starting to grow. You’re going to get an idea who’s around and who made it through. You’re going to start building your hit list because Lefty did make it through the winter, you know that. He found his shed and you’ve seen a deer that might be him already on your camera anyway. Even this early there’s bone being grown. There’s no question about it. 

When you start keeping a log and you have to think about it, you go, “Log, eight hours before, I think I’m going to sit that stand. I’m going to be there.” That’s how much this technology has helped us become better hunters because we’re more observant. I’m big into long-distance scouting and sitting and watching what the deer are doing, when they’re doing it, why they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it, and what all the other factors are. It isn’t just going out and sitting. If that’s what you want to do, great. Go sit in your stand and enjoy it, that’s wonderful. Mature buck hunters take it a little step further. 

If you’re a mature buck hunter and you’re not keeping a log, you’re not a serious mature buck hunter, in my opinion. That log for you is the life of that buck. That’s why he does what he does. My trail cameras are a huge part of how I hunt and why I hunt. I killed some big deer but that picture is only showing me part of it. I know this buck is here. A few years ago, I killed a 187-inch whitetail and I knew that buck was in the area, but until I understood why he was in the area, when he was there, I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when to hunt him. By looking at my pictures, my weather patterns and my log that I’ve kept meticulously on this buck for the last couple years, I can start putting together that puzzle of why this particular buck is in an area. When I figure out why he likes an area and why he’s there, then I can figure out when I need to go in and hunt that buck. 

On a mature buck, how many days are you hunting that buck? 

Hopefully, one. Sometimes we’re not that lucky. In the last few years, there’s been a particular deer I’ve been hunting. He’s well up north of 200 inches. I’ve hunted that buck a lot of days. I’ve spent twenty days in the stand on that buck but he’s outdone me. I haven’t been able to piece together exactly why that deer does what. That 187-inch deer was the second day that I hunted him. It was in late November. I didn’t hunt that spot at all until late November because the conditions weren’t right and it wasn’t when that buck wanted to be there. The first time that I guessed he would be there, I was wrong by about three hours. When I got in and checked my cameras, that buck had been in there three hours before. The second time I hunted, the conditions and everything felt perfect and that buck was in there about twenty minutes after I climbed in the stand and I put an arrow in him. The first time that you sit an area is your best chance to kill that big buck because once you’ve been in there and put your stink and your scent in there, you’re starting to change the game then. 

I heard a lot of things about that 187-inch news there. He missed him, checked the card, went back, and twenty minutes after being in the stand. He got into the stand quietly and his whole set up was quiet because the buck didn’t know he was there or he would have never seen the buck. Is that true? 

That’s true. It was a cat and mouse game getting into that stand because what I found is if I would go in too early, if I’d get in there at 5:30 AM or an hour before sunup, I would bust the deer out, going in. I had to find that sweet spot where the deer was no longer out feeding in the fields. They were in their staging areas going back to bed. They headed back to their bedding areas at 6:30, 7:00 in the morning. I’d sneak right in there at daylight so I knew I wouldn’t spook anything. It’s likely that when I walked in there, I was within a couple of hundred yards of that buck while walking into the stand. 

Why didn’t you spook him?  

In this particular spot, there’s a nice logging road getting into the stand. The stand location partly where I picked to put that stand in there, I was on the right side of the wind. The buck was upwind of me. He wasn’t going to wind me, which is ten times more important than their sight or hearing or anything else. I can get away with some movement as long as he doesn’t smell me. I go in quiet on this old logging road, stay on the right side of the wind, and get up in that stand. A lot of that goes into making sure I got the right wind direction when I hunt in that stand and hunt that buck, that I’m not going to bust him out of there when I’m in that tight and that close with him. 

Many times people just walk into their stand and see what’s going to happen. I used to park a quarter-mile closer to my stand than I do now. Now I park at the farm and walk over half–a–mile to get into my stand. I had no lights on. I didn’t slam the door. I didn’t do anything, but they knew I was there. 

They are a lot more observant than we give them credit for. When it’s dark and we can’t see them, we assume they can’t see us a lot of times but that’s not the fact. We can bite our self in the backside pretty quick doing that. 

You said you do a lot of things to make sure you’re zeroed in on that deer. What are some of those zeroing things or things of elimination? What are some of the things that get you to that point?  

I like to learn and study the personality of that individual deer. I’m at the point in my hunting career where I pretty much pick a deer at the beginning of the season and that’s the deer I want to hunt. I passed up a lot of 140, 150-inch deer because I want to kill a specific 170 or 200-plus like I’ve been hunting in the last couple of years. I’m going to start studying that deer and the patterns. It’s usually not difficult to find those deer, especially if you’re in an agrarian area. Anywhere there are soybean fields, you can get out and start glassing on your buck and then go in and put your cameras out. I want to learn the habits and the likes and dislikes of that buck. Does he like being around does and fawns? Does he like being around other bucks? Is he agitated all the time in the pictures? Are his ears always laid back? Is he always covered in flies? What does that buck like? What doesn’t he like? That starts to let me narrow down where I can look for him when he sheds that velvet and he moves.  

We don’t get to hunt velvet bucks here in Ohio. Once they shed, they’re changing. They’re going from there. They’re an open cover, which is what I call it in the summertime. There are beans and open thickets where they don’t want to hit their antlers and everything. Once they lose that velvet, they’re going to the thickest, nastiest, heaviest cover they can find if it’s a mature buck. What does he like to bed in the summer that he likes to bed in the fall? Can I learn from my pictures and learn from scouting that buck what he likes in November, in August? The answer is usually yes if I put enough time into it. In that specific particular buck, I want to pattern him. Each deer has got his own personality. Each deer has got something they like. You will see bucks that like bachelor groups, bucks that hate bachelor groups. You will see bucks that like to group up with big bucks. One big buck likes to group with little bucks. Anything I can learn about that buck starts helping me figure out what kind of deer he is and how I need to hunt him.  

Every deer has a personality. You’ve got to figure that out. That takes a lot of observation time. That’s what it’s telling me.  

It takes a lot of observation time and a lot of studying. I study and observe a deer a whole lot more than I hunt them. That’s part of the reason that I’m successful in harvesting deer, especially when I’m not being too picky chasing something 200 inches. Once you get that six to eight-year-old deer, that’s a very difficult deer to hunt and they’re usually smarter than I am. For most guys going out there, if you want to hunt a three to six-year-old deer, you’ve got to put in some hours to study and understand that deer if you’re going to kill him without getting lucky, which not to downplay luck. We all need to be lucky in our hunting scenarios. To be educated hunters and educated people and understand whitetail behavior, understand animal behavior in general and deer behavior by observing, looking at camera pictures in the summer, taking every little piece of information we can is how we build up that case to go and hunt that deer.  

We see the deer, we heard the deer, we’re writing down all those angles. Now you’ve got to make a choice. When is the gold time for this deer? 

That depends regionally where you’re hunting. If I’m hunting in Kentucky, which isn’t too far from me, I’m going to be up there the first weekend season opens because the deer are going to be on the summer patterns and in velvet. If I’m hunting in Ohio, I usually don’t go after a deer until late October or late November. It depends on what that deer, what that area, what the does in that area are doing. I might give up a month the season so I don’t bust that buck out in October. I’m not going to kill a mature buck on October 10th, October 12th when he’s in that nocturnal nighttime phase in the thickest, nastiest cover he can be. He’s only got to move 100 yards a day to have food cover and water. If that’s all he needs and he had to move, I’m not getting in that cover and kill him. I want to bust him out. I’m going to wait until the conditions are right on my side based on whitetail behavior and based on what’s going on in the environment before I go in and hunt it.  

The rut starts around Halloween. The peak times could be the 7th to 12th. It depends on where you’re at. If you’re hunting late November, that’s the tail end of the rut or maybe the rut is gone and you’re waiting for the next estrous cycle to come through. Why late November?  

Late November is a sweet spot for me where I’m at. One thing about the whitetail rut that I’ve noticed and observed as something I’ve stayed over in years hunting whitetail is what I call the 28-day cycle. The whitetail deer’s estrous cycle is 28 days. Every 28 days is when she’s going to come into heat. Mid-October to late October, I might be in the woods a little bit. I’m starting to look for those little football scrapes that the young bucks kick up when they get that first whip of pre-estrous, the cycle before that doe come in estrous. It’s going to whip those young bucks up. I’m going to base my hunting time off of that. If I start seeing those football scrapes pop up October 1st, I am going to hunt November 1st. I’m going to hunt that one-week period, that 28 days after those football scrapes start popping up. That’s where they tend to be where I’m at. This particular herd seems to move more and rut more in late November than they do early November. 

If I go in and drive an hour north in one of my other hunting spots, Halloween mornings are a great time to hunt. Get out there October 31st to November 2nd. It all depends on what that doe cycle is doing. That goes back into understanding whitetail deer behavior and genetics and how they work even more. We can generalize when the ruts are going to be every year. I can look at a calendar and pencil in now for the next few years when I think the rut is going to be and be pretty accurate by going October 31st through the first seven days in November. I can bet pretty well that that’s going to be good hunting. If I’m only hitting on those most mature, hardest to kill bucks, oldest bucks that are in there, I want to crunch down exactly the days. A four-day period is what I look for. The four-day period is when I want to hunt that specific buck. I’m going to do that by finding when the does are in estrous, when they’re in heat in the area I’m hunting these big bucks at. That seems to be late November is when that herd comes in. That’s due to the 28-day estrous cycle of a doe.  

October 1st, you’ll see football-sized scrapes or guys learning what the whole thing is. The 1st of November can be a little bit different because now you’ve got two–and–a–half, three–and–a–half-year-old deer, mixing it up and your rub lines are out there are scrapes bigger than a football.  

A lot of those movements are two–and–a-half and three and a half-year-old year, which don’t do anything for me. I love seeing them. I loved watching them but I’m not going to go put human scent in the woods and mess up my hunting spot after a two–and–a–half or three–and–a–half-year-old deer. I’m going to wait for everything to be perfect. That biggest mature buck, he’s not going to run himself any harder than he has to be. He’s been around. He’s seen how the game works. He’s not going to chase a doe that’s four days away from being in heat. He’s going to get on that 36 to 48 hour period before she’s in heat and stays with her through that. That’s when I want to be hunting. That buck is smart enough to know, he can smell in the air, “She’s not quite there yet. I need to wait a little bit longer or I wasted my energy up there chasing her and going after another deer.” That’s how I’m basing off a particular deer when I’m hunting.  

Now you’ve got your four days. What stand do you decide that you’re going to use? What’s your set up?  

I’m hunting the does. If I’m feeding corn somewhere, I might be hunting within 100-yard perimeter where that corn is, where those does are going to stage at. What I’m going to do is look for bedding areas. If I know where my does are bedding at, which I usually do, because I can find where my does are fawning at, where they are having their fawns, where they are tucking them away at. I look for those areas where the bedding areas are going to be. The does’ patterns are not going to change as much as the bucks are. I’m going to figure out where those does are bedding and then come November, I’m going to wait for the conditions to be right. I’m going to hunt about 100 yards on the downwind side of that bedding area. That’s where I’m going to pull that big buck from. That big buck is going to walk down there. He’s going to scent check that bedding area from about 100 yards down to see if anything is hot in there, to see what’s been in there. He’s still going to come in and cautious with the wind and I want to be right there on him where he’s going to come in with that wind. Hopefully, there are some terrain features there that help me follow him a little bit better. Generally, you’re going to find that big buck come in within 100 yards downwind to the bedding area. 

He circles around, scent check. He’s not even going to mix it up. If he finds the doe then he’s going to go to work.  

He’s going to go in and check. If he can smell there are no does in here, you’re not going to see seven–and–a–half-year-old buck out there chasing a doe that’s not in heat. If he’s chasing her it’s because she’s in heat. He’s going to come down, scent checks, see if anything is worth his while. If it is, then he might go in and bust that or he might go in and start tracking that doe or finding her if he knows that doe, where she’s going to feed at and where she’s going to bed. He’ll start hanging around that area more and more as she gets in heat. If he comes by that area and checks it and nothing’s in there, he’s going right back to his core area and wait for go time.  

It’s a mystery. It’s hard because I’m thinking some of the bucks that we haven’t gotten. You see him on the trail camera in August. You would go, “There’s some big deer here,” then they flat out disappear. What you’re saying makes sense because they’re not moving at all.  

That has been my experience with it and through a little bit of case study with older mature bucks that I haven’t wanted to kill. I will go into their core areas and I will put up one of our cellular trail cameras, which I’ll lead into a little bit. It’s called the LINK-S and the reason I like this camera is it’s cellular and it’s solar. I never have to change batteries and I never have to check the card. I can take this camera into a buck’s core area when he’s not using that core area because it’s too thick and it’s too nasty and he didn’t want to bump his antlers. I can go in and set that camera up. I might not get a picture for a couple of months because that buck’s not going into the core area. Because I’ve hunted and I understand the way whitetail works, I can pretty much find where a core area is going to be on that whitetail, what major and minor trails are coming in and out of it.  

I’ll put that camera out, come watch the rut and see how much that buck leaves that core area. It might not be very much. He might wait for a doe to come to him, he might venture out after a doe if once goes by bring her back into that core area and stay there. Those big mature bucks are smart and they know the sanctity and cover that that core area provides them as somewhere they want to stay. By putting those cameras in there, we can watch and monitor the deer in those core areas later in November without going and busting them out and giving human scent, kicking them out of their bedding area at 2:00 in the afternoon or whatever our strategy was to get into that core area. We can now leave it alone and our cameras made itself part of their core area without them ever knowing it.  

In the intro, I mentioned that we were going to talk about that topic. When do you stop checking your cards? You don’t have a Wi-Fi system. You don’t have an upload system. When do you stop pulling cards?  

It depends on where it is and what the particular camera purpose is. If it’s this camera that’s on a core area, I’m never going to check it. I will go in there a year from now. I put out three cameras this weekend that I will not touch until summer of next year. They’re going to stay out there all year long. They’re going to send me pictures to my phone so I can monitor my deer activity. When I’m done with that area, I’m not going to hunt it. It is strictly to monitor what the deer are doing and watch those specific deer’s behavior. As far as checking cards, if it’s a place I’m feeding, I will put out non-cellular cameras because I know I’m going to go back in there and put out more corn or put out a salt block. I will put up one of my non-cellular cameras and I will check it every time that I go in and feed. If it’s a camera over a trail or a camera leading into a bedding area or a natural feeding area, hopefully I’ll run a cellular camera, but if I’m in an area where I’m not running a cellular camera, I don’t get cell coverage or I bought our Force-10 camera which is our workforce non-cellular camera. I’ve got a ton of those things out and I will check those right up until about the second week of October because, by that time, I’d figured out probably when those small football scrapes start popping up. Once those scrapes start popping up, I’m not hunting it until it’s been 28 days from then.  

You’ve mentioned the second time about the football-size scraped. They are the size of a football and the rubs are big and small. You will see them pop up. That’s when you take out your notebook, take some pictures and throw it into your journaling or keeping your log in your PC, “Here’s the date, time, and location.” You can pin it on Google Earth. It doesn’t get any easier than that. Those are your immature deer, a year–and–a–half, maybe two–and–a–half years old. I don’t think three–and–a–half, four-year-old guys are out about quite yet doing that stuff. It’s the first wisdom. The pheromones and testosterone are going, “Oh my goodness.”  

Young guys remember how exciting last year was. Before it goes to an amusement park, he’s excited and he’s got to get some energy out. He starts making those scrapes. One of the telltale things about those little scrapes that I’ve talked about a few times now is they never get revisited. We’ve all seen these. We go out in the woods and we see the scrape pop up. We hang a camera over it. We put some mock scrapes stuff in it and sit there and watch. It never gets touched again because that’s not the purpose of that scrape. That’s not why the deer makes that scrape. It’s an antsy honoree little buck who got his first whip of almost estrous and he’s getting some aggression out. That’s just his behavior. That’s what he’s naturally driven to do. It can be a very unproductive place to hunt or put a camera, especially if your goal is to kill something bigger than one–a–half and two–and–a–half-year-old deer. 

It does let you know that there’s a buck in the area which is good. There’s nothing wrong with that. You know that 28 days later, things should get serious. I should see those scrapes opening up and not just scrapes on the field. One thing, scrapes on the field are typically at night. I’m not going to say 100% because nothing is 100%, but typically you’re licking branches and scrapes, even a good-sized scrape is made at night and you will never see that deer.  

I’ve put but cameras over hundreds of scrapes over many years and it’s almost all night-time activity. If you want to find a scrape to hunt that you want daytime activity, look for something off the side of a trail that leads from food to bed or secluded wooded meadow. Those little 200-yard pockets of field edges or something small, something secluded that’s going to give that deer cover, security and sanctity in the middle of the day when it feels it’s most vulnerable.  

What about community scrapes? Let’s stay on this scrape thing. I think of community scrapes being in my living room. You go, “What happened here?” If you’re in a hot country you will go, “They rooted up this whole thing.” I wasn’t in a hot country and the community scrape, you’re going, “Oh my word.” What’s going on there?  

I’ve always called those Walmart scrapes because they’ve got everything. Everybody goes there. We all go to Walmart at some point. For what reasons, who knows? You might want to buy camo or laundry detergent. The reason that particular deer is at that community scrape, it can be a doe walked by or big buck’s showing off. It could be anything. The telltale signs that are in there are in the scents and glands and everything else that a whitetail leaves behind when it walks and when it visits a scrape They’re communicating everything to each other in those scrapes. It’s the Facebook of the woods. They’re showing everything that they got right there in the middle of that scrape. The deer are social animals. They like to talk to each other. They like to communicate. They’re secluded to a point where they do not herd animals. They’re not hanging out in big herds all the time. When they have the opportunity to talk, they’re going to pass by there and they’re going to talk. When I see a big community scrape like that, I know I’m in an area where a lot of different deer are traveling. A lot of different deer are showing up from all different attitudes, all different habits, all kinds of deer passed through this Walmart.  

Is that a good place to set up a stand?  

It can be. I’ve seen in some of my experiences where I put a camera on it. That’s one of my first things. I’m putting a cellular camera on it when I find this so I can start monitoring right away and I don’t have to go back in there. I’ve seen those community scrapes where a deer is in there at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning and that’s the only time. I’ve seen other times where they’re in there all day long. The rut is going on crazy around it. It goes back to deer behavior, which is the number one reason people kill deer because they understand deer behavior. If we can understand why these deer are visiting the scrape, then we can understand if it’s a huntable scrape, a daytime scrape, a night-time scrape. Who knows what it is until we start learning our particular deer. I mentioned that 187-inch buck I killed a couple of years ago. There was a big community scrape right on the edge of that property and I put a camera on it. I’ve still never had a daytime picture on that scrape. It’s a scrape that’s there all year long. It’s always active. I’ve never had a daytime picture there.  

I hope our audience is getting as much out of this show as I am and Jacob. We’re having fun with this thing. You think about all the signs because here’s the thing, all the signs are there. It’s up to you to figure out what that means. The deer is telling you everything you need to know to kill them, but it’s up to you to figure it out. When you say, “I can’t find them. I can’t do this. I can’t do that.” He has already told you where he is. You’ve just got to figure it out. That’s what makes whitetail hunting to myself great because all of a sudden, you figure a little of this out, a little that out, then you’re on them. I know people, they’re good hunters and they killed a lot of deer, but they don’t always hit them. One buddy in Kansas, he was in a stand. He gets out of the stand and goes back. It’s the same stand because it’s a good stand. Ten minutes after he left the stand, a very large deer walked right underneath the stand. How does that work? 

That happens to me all the time. It seems like whenever I leave a stand a little bit early, he’s always in there right after I go.  

Was he sitting there just watching you?  

I don’t know. I’ve seen curious bucks. I was hunting public land one time. I was probably about seventeen years old. I had one of the old Bear Paw release. I had that release in my hand and I dropped it. It planked off the bottom portion of my old main climbing tree stand. It was a huge loud metal on metal noise through the woods. A deer came in almost on a dead run to see what that noise was. That curiosity spurred him and he had to see what it was. I’ve seen times where I’ve shot a squirrel and had an arrow sticking in the ground and a deer has got to come up and sniff that arrow when it goes by. They’re curious animals. Who knows. Maybe we make a noise and the deer comes to see what it was. There’s no telling. Maybe it’s bad luck.  

To me, it’s amazing. For that deer to come within ten minutes, he could have been less than 100 yards from his stand when he got down.  

That’s amazing how they do that. That’s all part of the fun in the game of hunting whitetails. The frustration is half the fun once you’ve got one down.  

You underestimate how close you are for some good deer every time you’re in the field. A good deer, that’s a 150 above, a four–and–a–half-year-old deer or better. How close you are because they typically are there. You might have a farm that you rounded down and then never get that old, but if you look at your does, there are old-age class deer that you never see but they’re right there.  

If we treat the woods when we go in like we’re always around the deer, we’re going to see more deer. When we go in, you’re within 150 to 200 yards the deer probably almost the whole time you’re hunting if you’re in good whitetail country, especially around the hardwoods. There are always deer close by somewhere. A lot of times we make the mistake of going in thinking they’re out feeding or they’re not bedding yet. We think we have more freedom in the woods to make a little noise and get away with some poor scent control and stuff like that, and the deer is busting us that we never know are there because we never know they’re there. We might not know that when we’re hunting, when we’re doing everything right, they might be within 100 or 75 yards closer than that, depending on how thick the cover is. They might be close to us and we never know they’re there. We also got to consider that. How many deer are we spooking that we never know are there? I think the answer is probably a lot higher than the number of deer that we know we spook.  

It would be nice to, I know it wouldn’t be legal, but get an infrared camera and put it up on a drone. You sit in your stand and have your buddy launch it, and then make a 100 to 400 yards loop around and see how many blips you get on the screen. I think you’d be astonished.  

I agree with you completely, especially in a good whitetail country. You’re across the Midwest and anywhere there’s deer, there’s a lot of deer, whether you see them or not, they’re there.  

Let’s get back and talk about public versus private use of trail cameras. I live out west and more and more people are dropping cameras into their hunting holes for elk and mule deer, and for that matter, bears and stuff in the fall. When you look at that, there are pros and cons to it. Let’s spend some time and talk about DIY out in the west using trail cameras. 

I hung out west a lot and it’s always DIY public land. You sympathize with the struggle as somebody who’s going to take, there are $200 or $300 or $400 piece of equipment and leave it out there in the field. You want to get that information. That information is valuable to us. That’s why we put cameras out so we can learn when and where we’re supposed to be hunting and what’s there. We start talking about out west and or even public lands here in Ohio. The number one concern for anybody is going to be theft of your camera, theft of your tree stand, theft of whatever you got. Fortunately, there are some steps we can take to avoid that or avoid people even seeing our cameras. When they see a camera, it’s human nature to assume somebody is hunting here so it’s a good spot. 

When somebody sees your camera, they might leave it alone, but they might hone in on your spot that you hiked two or three miles back out west and found this perfect flat or an old barn where the elk and mule deer are. You’ve got your cameras up. Maybe somebody else is out there at the time where they’re not looking for animals. They’re looking for people signs. They’re looking for treestands or old hunting blinds or whatever else. They’re trying to take a shortcut and they see our camera. That might give them the inkling, “That’s where I want to hunt.” What I like to do when I’m hunting out west or even public land here, I get my camera at least ten feet up in a tree and angled down. 

I take three climbing screw-in steps with me into a tree. In some public lands, you can’t use screw-in steps. You’ve got to use these straps. I take those with me and put those three on the tree that I want my camera to be on. I climb up those and reach the top as high as I can and angle that camera down where I want it to be at. I point that camera and take those steps out. I’m eliminating the fact that people are going to see it because nobody’s looking ten feet up in the tree when they’re out in the woods. You might get that guy who’s looking up and sees it. It’s less likely that someone is looking ten feet up in a tree when they’re walking through the woods. I’ve got that hidden bit. 

I’m going to hide it from the animals a little bit. They might not see the infrared glow or whatever else. I’m still going to get a good view of the trail that I’m using. The odds of somebody else packing in three screw-in steps, go up and steal my camera are a little bit lower. Out west, I always use bear boxes, steel boxes. We make a universal box that fits all of our cameras. You stick your camera inside the steel box, run your python lock through it and get that up in the tree. I will keep the bear hopefully from destroying it. If there are big grizzly bears shirking, they can’t rip that apart. That’s part of the nature of the beast. Hunting out west, I go back to using these booster antennas.  

I’ve usually got Verizon coverage everywhere I go out west. It’s spotty but I’ve usually got it. Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, I’ve usually got Verizon coverage, but it might be no bars to one bar. If I put one of these sixteen-foot booster cable coaxial antennas on my trail camera, screw that into the side, it gives me two or three bars. That’s going to keep me enough to where I’m still going to get those pictures on my cellular cameras out there. We’re talking DIY public land. We’re back in the backcountry a little bit, a lot of times. There’s not that cell coverage back there, but I also don’t want to hike back there ten times a year and check my camera. If I can find any way to utilize cellular technology to send me those pictures, I’m going to do that for sure.  

When you’re DIY in Colorado, Wyoming over the counter tags or drawing tags, how do you make sure you get back to the same place? It takes a lot of work to put in trail cameras.  

When I hung out in Wyoming, I can draw with no points every year or 90% draw with no points every year. I can leave those cameras out. We did a mule deer and antelope bootcamp here in Ohio where we had 40 guys show up. We went over how to draw the tag, here’s the equipment you need, and then I say, “This is where I’m going to hunt. I will be there October 18th through 21st. Anybody who wants to come hunt with me is welcome. You put in and draw this tag. Come out to my camp. I will take you out and I will show you this area.” I’ve got my area I like there in Wyoming to hunt. I also go points in a lot of states and when the time comes that I draw one of those coveted limited entry tags, I’m going to go out there in June or July and put out a bunch of cameras for my hunt in September. It had those cameras. I’m in Ohio and that’s a sacrifice for me to go out there. When I get that good tag, I’m going to take my cameras out there. I’ll figure out where I think the elk or the deer or whatever are going to be and I’m going to have these cameras out start to send me information so I can learn a little bit back here at home working.  

People reading this are going, “What an investment,” but the payoff is you already got all your intel. If you’ve never driven all night, getting to where you want to get, gas the car, get all your groceries, you’re heading to a trailhead and then you look, the sun comes up and you go, “Where are we on a hunt?” Even though you figure it out, there are logistics of getting in and getting out. That’s why hunting out west without DIY is so tough because it takes years to learn where the elk are at one point in time. We talked about whitetail. In specific points of the year, elk are in one area. If you’re in ten square miles, 100 square miles of area where they’re hanging, then they’re in 10% of it at any one time. That could be five square miles. You’re hoping five square miles is or ten square miles because of the food source or whatever. That’s where they are. You have to figure out during your hunt where those elk are going to be in that 10%. That’s the hard part of elk hunting. It’s exciting and you get up on them. I’m not trying to be anything. I want to stay humble here but once you figure out where the elks are, then it’s the game like the whitetail. There they are. They will tell you where they are. Then you’re either going to blow it or you’re not. They’re going to make a fool of you or you’re going to close the deal. It’s still hard hunting but the hardest part of elk hunting is finding the elk, even in a limited entry, even when you know you’re within a half–a–mile of a gorgeous bull elk.  

I’m no master elk hunter by any means, believe me. I’m a pretty decent deer hunter but I’m nothing for elk yet. Finding the elks is the hardest part. Once you found them, then the hunt is on and that’s the fun part. Finding them sucks, but if I put cameras up there and there are no elks on them, at least I’ve eliminated a spot. My strategy to go elk hunting is to find five areas that I can go into during the course of this hunt and start eliminating where the elk are not at. If I can have the camera and eliminate three of those spots, “There are no elk here.” I know I’ve got to go in and get my camera maybe, maybe not, but I’m not going to waste any time on there because there are no elk there. The lack of information I’m getting at might be a vital piece of information.  

That’s good because the best elk sign is the squishy, scat, poop, whatever you want to call it. It’s green and it’s still simmering. It squishes in your hand and you put it on the boots, you become an elk because the hunt is on. They are no more than a quarter-mile away from you. It was round and hard Tootsie Rolls. They’re not good at all. You talked about mule deer hunting. Do you put up cameras where you mule deer hunt also?  

Yes, I do. I’ve got a couple of cameras boxed up. I met a guy out in Wyoming a few years ago. I was hunting with him. I’m shipping these cameras and he’s going to go put them out for me. It was a region in Wyoming. I rifle hunted it and we killed buck every time we go there. I was able to go on a scouting trip. I took my wife and my kids. We went up in the Bighorn Mountains for a little bit and camped up there and then camp down in the plains above Kaycee for a couple of days. I found some nice bucks in the summer. I’m talking 170, 180, 190-inch buck, which region-wise, it’s really good in Wyoming. I found these bucks and I found one of them again when we went back rifle hunting. It got shot right off the road on opening morning. My goal this time is to have these cameras out where I saw the groups of bucks last year. I want to see if they’re using the same trails. I’ve got an elk hunt mid-September in Montana and I’m hoping to drop down to Wyoming for two days. I have two days to mule deer hunt there but if these bucks are where they were last year, hopefully these cameras will show me. I can pop down there and hunt and fill an archery tag quick. 

Are you archery hunting in Montana?  

Yeah, archery hunt. I got a journal out tagging Montana. I’m on an archery hunt. I don’t feel that I will be able to go back later in the year in hunting rifle season as well.  

What region, east, middle, west of Montana? I want to know your hunting holes.  

I don’t have any hunting holes. Hopefully, maybe somebody will see us and tell me. Southwest Montana is where the population seems to be most prevalent. I found a few spots on there that are backcountry. It will take a day or two to get back in there to where I want to hunt. I’m still weighing my options. If I want to go back into these areas and have to pack an elk out of it, if it’s possible more than worth it, but I’m still weighing my options and looking around where I’m ending up on an elk hunt. It’s probably going to be somewhere Southwest, South Central or West Central Montana.  

Watch the bears.  

It seems like there are a lot of those but that’s all right. I’ve hunted around bears. Never grizzlies though. Grizzlies look bigger so that would be exciting.  

They’re just bigger. That’s all. If they want your elk, give it to them.  

If they want the elk they’re going to have it. I believe Montana gives you a document. If a bear gets on your elk, they will issue you another tag.  

Take pictures and do all this stuff and everything. This has been fun, Jacob. We talked a lot about hunting. Let’s give the audience some high points of SPYPOINT and why you’re one of the leading brands in the marketplace.  

SPYPOINT has always been the leader in innovation and technology in the trail camera market. We see that the trend for trail camera is everything is going cellular. From experience, I can tell you once you get one cellular trail camera, that’s all you’re going to want to have. The fact that I’m getting notifications on my phone while we’re doing this interview and I’ve got trail cameras taking pictures is cool. It’s cool to see that. It all goes back to understanding animal behavior, understanding why an animal does what it does. Spypoint trail cameras and the technology and the trail cameras. There’s no other tool out there that can give me so much information on deer without me being in the woods. Our front runner leading camera is the LINK-EVO, at $249 you’ll have a cellular camera. It’s up and running, free unlimited data for the first month that you got it. Get that out there and use that as a virtual hunting guide for you and show you when the deer are where, when the elk are where, whatever you’re hunting. Having that camera to send you that information is unbelievable. 

Once you start getting it, you won’t understand how you’ll hunt without having one of these cameras. It’s sending you the information, sitting at home and not having to go out and check your cameras. Our flash range, we’ve got the fastest trigger speed of any camera out there, .07 seconds is the trigger speed on our cameras. We’re catching pictures of birds in mid-flight, little songbirds that fly by the cameras and they’re in the middle of a wing flap and the camera will catch that right in the middle of the camera. Sometimes you get those deer running by. You get buck chasing a doe and they can zip in and out of that camera range in a flash well and under a second. Having quick trigger speeds is going to catch that photo for you. It’s the difference between getting a photo with information versus getting a blanket picture of grass. We’re the only trail camera company you can see with the integrated solar panel on your trail camera. Our non-cellular version can run with no batteries in it at all. It runs solely off the solar panel on that camera. There’s nothing more frustrating than going out to check your trail camera and realizing your batteries had been dead for three weeks. You leave that camera out in your hunting hole and you go out there and check it and it hasn’t taken pictures in three weeks. Having that security of those solar panels on the cameras is invaluable to me. 

Lastly, something we haven’t talked about. You can go to Spypoint.com and click on Buck Tracker. It’s the new software that Spypoint developed. It’s free with your account. Go to My Spypoint Account, which is a free account with the person using the camera. You go on there. It’s going to show you a calendar view on the computer or the layout view on your phone of all the pictures that your camera has taken. Let say you’re on the desktop view, it’s going to say, “You took 173 pictures.” There are four icons on the top you can click on. There’s a star, a picture of a buck, a picture of a doe, a picture of a turkey. If I click on the buck icon, the software is automatically going to pull out the buck pictures for me. All it’s going to have to sort through is the buck pictures. The software uses the Antler Recognition Technology. It can go in there and use the intelligence in the software to go in and pull out the buck pictures, line it up for me, and I can start studying those particular bucks that I want to see. If I click the doe icon, it’s going to filter out all the deer pictures. I’m not going to see the squirrels on my feeder, the raccoon on my feeder, the coyotes or whatever else I don’t want to see. We launch the turkey tracker icon. You can go in and click turkey and it will filter out just the turkey pictures. 

If you’re running a lot of cameras like I am where you’re running over a feed site or a bait site, having that Buck Tracker, I get 1,000 pictures a day sent to my phone. As cool as cellular technology is, it’s a pain to go through 1,000 pictures a day. If I want to see bucks, even now, three, four-inch point antlers, I’m seeing the Buck Tracker start to filter those antlers out and show me when my bucks are coming in and I can start breaking down and pinpoint based off that software. Those are some key points at SPYPOINT. All our cameras are two-year warranty. They’re quality made, durable, compact, lightweight, everything that you want from a trail camera. 

What other products do you have at your company? 

We also make action cameras. We’ve got our XCEL line of action cameras. It’s a cool little 4K action camera for $199. It’s got a viewing screen built onto the back. We make all the different accessories and everything to go the with the trail cameras, with the mounting accessories for the XCEL line as well. We also got some little products on the website that you can go on and see. We’ve got a heated seat cushion. Some of the electronic earmuffs that dampen the muffled sound with a microphone, some smaller things like that but the bread and butter is the trail camera line. 

How do people find you on the web? 

You can go to my Facebook page which is Facebook.com/TheEverydayOutdoorsmen. You can follow me on there. You can go on Instagram and Facebook and follow the Spypoint page as well. It’s got daily pictures. You can see what our users see. We’ve got some good guides that are using our cameras now and we can see some of their pictures on there. You can email me. It’s [email protected]. If you have any questions, you can look me up on there. 

Jacob, thanks so much. This has been a blast. As I always do it, I’ve learned a little bit more and it’s fun for me because every time somebody says something they go, “I apply it to the farm I hunt. That’s how I do it.” I go, “That makes sense.” 

That’s the fun thing about whitetail hunting. We’re always learning and there’s nobody out there who can’t teach us something. No matter how long you’ve been doing this. There’s always plenty to learn about whitetail hunting, that’s for sure. 

On behalf of over 250,000 followers across North America, thanks so much, Jacob. I wish you well and we will be in touch down the road. 

Thanks for having me, Bruce. I appreciate it.  

important links:

• SPYPOINT 
• LINK-S 
• Force-10 
• LINK-EVO 
• Spypoint.com 
• XCEL 
• Facebook.com/TheEverydayOutdoorsmen – Jacob Hacker 
• Instagram – SPYPOINT 
• Facebook – SPYPOINT 
• [email protected]