N/E washington?

[elkaholic]

Exactly Brew!  I love it! Wish I was up there right now!

[DBHAWTHORNE]

In away I wish I had never bought a trail camera, addicted to them. In the begining it was, I can scout lots of places at once, save me on time and travel..WRONG   I spend more time in the woods WAY more on fuel and the frusturation of malfunctioned cameras, bears!! and people stealing. Then to not get anything good on camera is always a downer.. almost sounds like a drinking problem  

I definitely spend way more money than I used to..I am addicted to it. Like gjbruny said..it's like Christmas every time I check my cameras. Aside from covering more territory the biggest advantage the cameras give me is being able to limit my presence (pressure) in any given area.  

[huntnnw]

I feel my presence is even greater with the trail cams, before I ever owned one I watched from a far, I glassed alot and watched particular bucks to hunt then made a plan to hunt the buck. Now I am in and out of areas alot, I need to get away from this way of scouting and get back to the way I use to do it

[DBHAWTHORNE]

I still view some of my spots from a distance if the area is open enough to allow it. I do venture into a bucks core areas quicker than I used to but that is because it takes me less time to find it with the cams. I worry a lot about pressuring the bucks during those times. I try not to go in any area for more than a few minutes once a week but preferably no more than once every two or three weeks.

[gjbruny]

I feel my presence is even greater with the trail cams, before I ever owned one I watched from a far, I glassed alot and watched particular bucks to hunt then made a plan to hunt the buck. Now I am in and out of areas alot, I need to get away from this way of scouting and get back to the way I use to do it

i feel the exact same way. used to be the only way to pattern a buck was to sit back at 500-1000 yards and glass with binos and a spotting scope. pick out your buck, keep a journal or talley as to which trail he took most often then play the numbers by setting stands over the most frequently used trails. start on the field fringes and then work your way further into the timber as the season progressed.

i still glass daily, but now i can set cams well in past the timber edge and figure out which spur trails he might be using. i need to get away from that and get back to basics. i think they are great as "buck inventory cams" where you put big piles of corn out in the fringe areas and/or in alfalfa fields..... within 2 weeks, you should know of just about every buck that is on the place which is great for figuring out which bucks made it throught the winter and which ones didn't.

in all honestly, i think montana has their shnat together with the cam laws...... you can use them right up until season, then after that, your cams had better be out of the woods. kind of keeps some the "mystery" in hunting.

[huntnnw]

Pretty much how I feel..I like using them to see what is around. Now elk and wallows...these cams are a huge advantage! 

[DBHAWTHORNE]

I feel my presence is even greater with the trail cams, before I ever owned one I watched from a far, I glassed alot and watched particular bucks to hunt then made a plan to hunt the buck. Now I am in and out of areas alot, I need to get away from this way of scouting and get back to the way I use to do it

i feel the exact same way. used to be the only way to pattern a buck was to sit back at 500-1000 yards and glass with binos and a spotting scope. pick out your buck, keep a journal or talley as to which trail he took most often then play the numbers by setting stands over the most frequently used trails. start on the field fringes and then work your way further into the timber as the season progressed.

i still glass daily, but now i can set cams well in past the timber edge and figure out which spur trails he might be using. i need to get away from that and get back to basics. i think they are great as "buck inventory cams" where you put big piles of corn out in the fringe areas and/or in alfalfa fields..... within 2 weeks, you should know of just about every buck that is on the place which is great for figuring out which bucks made it throught the winter and which ones didn't.

in all honestly, i think montana has their shnat together with the cam laws...... you can use them right up until season, then after that, your cams had better be out of the woods. kind of keeps some the "mystery" in hunting.

I prefer it the way it is currently. WA: Baiting/Trail Cams  ID: No Baiting/Trail Cams  MT: No Baiting/No Trail Cams in Season. It allows a different experience in each state. If all the laws were the same I would use the exact same strategy in each state. It keeps things interesting. Maybe I haven't refined my trail camera strategies but I still find plenty of mystery in using trail cameras. There are constantly bucks showing up on and off camera that I have never seen and I have found it to be far from a guarantee of even seeing the bucks I have on cam. This year I saw well less than 50% of the bucks I had on camera while hunting.

Like you I still haven't given up the regular glassing. It is one of my favorite parts of the experience. There is nothing like watching those big boys in the summer when they are extremely visible during daylight hours....and cameras or not I still find post-season scouting to be critical for my future late season hunts.

By the way gj... Congrats on that great buck you shot this year.

[Decker]

By the way gj... Congrats on that great buck you shot this year.

Personally speaking, I think the Palouse has a MUCH better buck to doe ratio. I have seen monsters in the most wide open country you can imagine. Before this year, I spent three years chasing mule deer in the open sage country and kept coming across HUGE whitetail where I never would have thought to go look for them.

As for the access thing, it's a numbers game. The more people you ask permission, the better odds you have to get it. I would consider spot lighting wheat and alfalfa fields at night in the summer (if this has not become illegal yet). When you find the bucks you want to hunt start asking permission on those places. You would be surprised how many farmers WANT the deer to be taken.

Good luck.

[huntnnw]

I have done that for years, thousands of miles spotlighting, make mental notes and go ask.

[Decker]

Without exaggerating it really does work, I've counted up to 20 bucks in a single field, 3-4 that would probably Pope. If you can't get permission to hunt a great spot you find in the summer, get out your topo/google earth and consider where those bucks may peel off to during the rut and then late season.

[DBHAWTHORNE]

Without exaggerating it really does work, I've counted up to 20 bucks in a single field, 3-4 that would probably Pope. If you can't get permission to hunt a great spot you find in the summer, get out your topo/google earth and consider where those bucks may peel off to during the rut and then late season.

I miss the days where I would see 40+ bucks in a field during daylight (late summer) and 10-15 would be Pope.

[bearpaw]

Without exaggerating it really does work, I've counted up to 20 bucks in a single field, 3-4 that would probably Pope. If you can't get permission to hunt a great spot you find in the summer, get out your topo/google earth and consider where those bucks may peel off to during the rut and then late season.

I miss the days were I would see 40+ bucks in a field during daylight (late summer) and 10-15 would be Pope.

This is one of the reasons the NE Management Group is recommending a 5 year trial in two units for 4 pt or better. We want to bring the herds back.

[Pathfinder101]

Like most of the guys posted already, the key up there is to learn the areas, find your buck before the season starts, and pass on the smaller ones.  I am orginally from Kettle Falls, and killed a few nice bucks when I was a kid.  I still go up there every few years, when I don't fill my general tag down here in the SE, and have killed a couple of bucks up there recently.  But, the guys that I hunt with are loggers, spend 300+ days a year in the woods, and they kill BIG deer every year.  They won't even raise a scope unless it's 130 or bigger.  I can't afford to be that picky.  They are out almost every day of the season, and rarely pull the trigger until the last week of the late hunt.

[gjbruny]

This is one of the reasons the NE Management Group is recommending a 5 year trial in two units for 4 pt or better. We want to bring the herds back.

i would give anything for that and have been begging for it for years. only issue is, you can have a 1.5 year old that is a 4pt....... many many 2 year olds are 4pts. i wish more people were "up to snuff" about aging deer on the hoof so that we could have a 4pt minimum with a 3 year old minimum. i would be absolutely for a 5pt minimum, but 4pts as wide or wider than their ears were legal..... that wouldn't be too difficult for most people.

it was hard for me to get on the bandwagon on killing does to help the herd until i really started hunting the midwest. we DEFINATELY need to kill more does. wisconsin's "earn a buck" program is proof in the pudding on how well that works.

[DBHAWTHORNE]

This is one of the reasons the NE Management Group is recommending a 5 year trial in two units for 4 pt or better. We want to bring the herds back.

i would give anything for that and have been begging for it for years. only issue is, you can have a 1.5 year old that is a 4pt....... many many 2 year olds are 4pts. i wish more people were "up to snuff" about aging deer on the hoof so that we could have a 4pt minimum with a 3 year old minimum. i would be absolutely for a 5pt minimum, but 4pts as wide or wider than their ears were legal..... that wouldn't be too difficult for most people.

it was hard for me to get on the bandwagon on killing does to help the herd until i really started hunting the midwest. we DEFINATELY need to kill more does. wisconsin's "earn a buck" program is proof in the pudding on how well that works.

I agree on wishing people could age deer better. I have seen a lot of 1.5/2.5 year old bucks killed in my life that people claim are old bucks and on the downhill slide. I don't care that they killed them if they are legal and that is what makes them happy... I just wish they realized the buck was not mature. An age minimum is something that could never happen on a statewide scale.

I think the 4pt minimum is the best antler restriction for whitetail that can be enforced on a large scale. The killing of our stronger 1.5 bucks is the downfall of such an antler restriction. However, I think most people that would kill those 1.5 year old 4x4 bucks would shoot the same buck regardless of the antler restriction so it is probably a wash. The good thing is the number of bucks making it to 2 1/2 years old would increase and thus each age group after that should increase.

You then run into the same problem putting a point and spread restriction. You run the risk of killing off only your best 2 1/2 year olds but many more 2 1/2 year olds would make it to an older age class.  I think this would be even more likely effect the deer herd because many people would pass on a 1 1/2 year old 4x4 but have a hard time passing or knowing the age of a solid 2 1/2 year old 4x4 that is wider than the ears.

On another note spread restrictions have been done with success in the past. From Dr. Dave Samuel: "In 1993 Georgia became the first state to impose Quality Deer Management (QDM) antler restrictions throughout a whole county. Subsequently, three other counties adopted antler restrictions. But research was needed to determine if the approach was working, so in 1998 the Georgia Department of Natural Resources radio-collared 135 bucks in parts of four counties to assess mortality. In two counties the antler restriction was 15 inches outside spread (ear tip-to-ear tip), and in the other two counties the antler restriction requirement was 4 points on one side.

In the areas with 15-inch spread minimums, 57 percent of all yearlings survived to 2 ½ years of age, and 25 percent survived to 3 ½ years of age. In the 4-point-or-better areas, 47 percent of all yearlings survived to age 2 ½, and 29 percent survived to age 3 ½. Also, twice as many yearling bucks were killed illegally in the 4-point areas than in the spread-restrictions areas."

Below is a link to another article that has other great info from Dr. Dave Samuel on the great success of spread restrictions as opposed to point restrictions (apparently they are doing this on a county wide basis in several states): http://www.knowhunting.com/article.html?id=93