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BRAD: Today’s February 18^th. Uh, Brad Mormann here, filling in for Grant. Grant’s off at the National Wild Turkey Federation Conference this weekend.

BRAD: Today, I’m just going out and checking some of the cameras, grabbing the cards, and bringing ‘em back to the office, so I can start to show you how we upload our pictures, and the things we do to try to learn more about the deer herd from those thousands of pictures we collect throughout the year.

BRAD: This time of year is a great time of year to really look back at the pictures we’ve captured and put onto our computer throughout the year. It’s a great time for us to learn how the deer are using the property and how, potentially, next year we can setup our tree stands to help close that distance between us and a mature buck.

BRAD: So, once I gather the cards from the field, I bring ‘em in the office. And here’s where the magic happens, I upload those pictures into my Reconyx software on my computer. Reconyx software is so awesome, because it helps me organize the pictures.

BRAD: This software is really neat, because it actually keeps our, our pictures very organized. I look through about 100,000 or so pictures a year, and this keeps it so that I can tag each individual picture and put it into a particular file that I can open up later. Specifically, when it comes to hit list bucks, I can go in there, click on that name of that hit list buck, and bring up every picture from throughout the year.

BRAD: And as I’ll show you, in a second, I can even pattern the deer and show where they’re moving between the camera sites, uh, within the property.

BRAD: Some of the hit list bucks are gonna survive until next year, which is great, because I can look back this year and start to figure out how they’re using different places, when they’re using particular food plots, or how they’re moving around the property. Obviously, some of those bucks aren’t gonna make it until next year, but the habitat preferences that they had are probably gonna be used by other bucks that are younger. There’s something going on where that buck wanted to travel on a particular transition zone, or bed in a particular spot, that other deer key in on also.

BRAD: Another reason to use the software this time of year and to look back at what deer are doing, is to see what time of day the deer were moving around the property. Specifically, were they moving a lot during the pre-rut? Were they moving more during the post-rut? Or was it mainly only during the rut? And were they moving during daylight activities? This is a great time to look back at those pictures and say, “Wow. You know, November 5^th through the 15^th, we had a lot of daylight activity.” Or, “Gosh, Pitchfork, up here on the northern end of the property, he really likes to move during the post-rut.”

BRAD: Now that we have a bunch of data in our Reconyx software, let’s take a look at a couple of bucks in particular and see how they were moving around the property last year.

BRAD: Well, this pattern is from Left Brow Taller 10. As you can see, he used a large portion of our property, but he really didn’t start using the property until the beginning of November, and it started to really key us in. Like, “Wow. This deer’s moving a lot. We’ve got an opportunity to potentially see him during daylight hours.” And Jessica Brooks, from Barnes Bullets, was able to maximize that opportunity.

JESSICA: I am so excited about this deer. I didn’t take a second look. I was just focused on my shot. But I had no idea that he would be as pretty as he is. I’m, I’m so happy with my trophy.

BRAD: She was only hunting just 100 or 200 yards from the location on the map where we had the most pictures of this particular deer.

BRAD: Let’s take a look at just one more buck and see how he used the, the property in just a little bit different way than Left Brow Taller 10.

BRAD: This pattern is of 11 Point Righty. This particular deer, we have a ton of pictures of. He loved to move around a smaller area of the property, but in particular, you can see that there’s a couple different locations that were real hot spots for him. In our areas that we really gonna have to key in for next year – and very soon here, I’m gonna be going out there and looking for potential tree stand locations to help maximize that opportunity for next year.

BRAD: Well, last year, we had a lot of success looking through our deer pictures and learning the patterns of our mature bucks, and we had the great opportunity to harvest two fantastic deer last year. Hopefully, from the pictures we’re looking at today, and the tree stands, and things we’re gonna do to improve our chances next year, we’re gonna have these same opportunities, and same excitement, come next fall. Thank you for watching GrowingDeer.tv.

BRAD: Which just really helps us go back and look at data throughout the year to try to learn how these…(Inaudible)…nice.