A Whitetail Waterhole Pictorial of Big Bucks
Now I know that some are reluctant to get some game cams on waterholes for fear of spooking out mature bucks…but my experience for several years has shown that it just doesn’t matter. Now at the same time we are typically only changing the cards when the stand is accessed for hunting so that may be why…but we haven’t found cameras to hurt our hunting in any way, let alone on waterholes…
If you will notice the majority of these pics are actually during shooting hours…or at least with a little light showing in the background. We only change our cameras when accessing a stand and frankly if I am not getting mature buck pics in a spot…I hunt somewhere else.
Of course my buddy was sitting 1 stand over at the time this pic was taken.
And this guy met the wrong end of an arrow about 4 hours later while I sat on the downwind side of his bedding area about 125 yards from where this pic was taken.
And finally this guy was a fan of the waterholes during daylight hours…and it was really cool to shoot him out of our new 110 gallon tank stand last year towards the end of October…
To say I am a fan of waterhole cam pics is an understatement. Those pics have shown me patterns of 5 year old bucks that I have later been able to shoot…they tell us a lot about the core ranges of mature bucks, and mostly they have given us a consistently intimate look into the daytime activities of a mature buck…many times over that of scrapes, funnels, rublines, and food plots. I know waterhole cams aren’t for everyone…but I am just saying…don’t knock em til you try em. And these are just a small sampling of great waterhole pics over the last several years…
And of course…”the Big 8″, who resulted in a “big miss” by myself during the WI Muzzleloader season of 2010. Laat year he was the first buck at the top of this article…now appropriately renamed, “Kickstand”.
By Jeff Sturgis, www.whitetailhabitatsolutions.com
