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B&C label cell cams unethical

raisins said:
Yep, if I was into that sort of thing, I'd put the setup somewhere where you could easily sneak up slowly. In certain conditions, you could easily get within bow range. Gun range is obviously no issue.
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Oh yeah, most of these guys set these spots up for rifle so they can just go out in whatever work clothes they are wearing and shoot the buck once the camera tells them he is there. Several of these guys make that a major bragging point. "Snuck out of work today and killed a good un". If it isn't gun season, they have a crossbow and set the shots up for 50 to 100 yards (or on private just shoot them with a rifle anyway).
 
I think @Plebe makes some good points. If everybody (reworded from "we all" to take the culpability off of the outstanding members herein) took the time to do the right thing there wouldn't be a need for half of the regulations there are now. For instance a prime example that is brought up here regularly is the litter left in the woods. You know this is mostly left by hunters, for the most part they're the only one's venturing in that far that regularly. If everyone took the time to take everything out of the woods that they took in then there wouldn't be a need for littering laws. The laws are created once someone starts abusing things.

Am I against cell cams? Probably not in principle, but I honestly don't like the idea of someone sitting in they're recliner in front of the TV waiting for they're target buck to show up on their cell phone then picking up the rifle to wander out back and shoot him. To me that's almost as bad as shooting them from the truck window spotlighting at night. It's not what hunting is about. It also takes the guy who's doing it "the old fashioned way" with boots on the ground and time spent in the woods and puts him at a further disadvantage.

Also at what point do these technological advances become too much? Are cell cams that line in the technological sand? I personally don't think so. However suppose, for discussions sake, that someone developed a means to take real time, extremely high resolution satellite images that allowed you to see real time presence of deer and even their size and antlers on the google maps app on your phone. Do you honestly think that wouldn't cause issues with every hunter running to that spot in the woods at the same time. That's not the kind of world I want to hunt in.
 
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NMSbowhunter said:
Oh yeah, most of these guys set these spots up for rifle so they can just go out in whatever work clothes they are wearing and shoot the buck once the camera tells them he is there. Several of these guys make that a major bragging point. "Snuck out of work today and killed a good un". If it isn't gun season, they have a crossbow and set the shots up for 50 to 100 yards (or on private just shoot them with a rifle anyway).
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I know about a fella who has a group of good old boys over every day during end of Oct, early Nov. They sit in the kitchen eating breakfast and waiting for a.m. cell cam pics over the adjacent food plot. When they get their buck on camera, they send out a shooter.

Is this different from a fellow who has to drive 3hrs to his access point, row across a lake, and then hike 5 miles or more to his spot in the Adirondacks, where he got a photo of a nice buck over a scrape.

You dang better believe it.

And it's probably the latter hunter who won't whine, stomp feet, or break the law when cameras are banned.

This is the problem.
 
I think the idea that we cannot predict what advancements in technology will develop in the future is spot on. I think one thing we can say with a fair degree of certainty is that these technological advancements will be intentionally designed to give the paying customer an ever increasing advantage over the deer and other hunters. For instance, we might think it is complete science fiction today but 20 years from now fly sized drones with real time thermal cameras and pinpoint gps might be a real thing. Just shell out $300 each for these little gems and release them in the woods to find and then perch on the back of your target buck like a horsefly. Remote tagging of a target animal might be a reality pretty soon. If in 2000 you told someone that there would be cameras that most anyone could afford that would relay real time pictures of a buck to you wherever you were you would likely have said no way that will be a thing in my lifetime. At some point there has to be a line drawn and it seems like more and more people are saying the cell cameras may be a bridge too far.
 
Plebe said:
While it'd be amazing to have a big chunk of public all to myself, I'm not for driving folks away from enjoying hunting and the outdoors. (I do wish many would clean up their act though.)

However, anyone who quits hunting public land because of a camera ban doesn't seem that interested in the public resource or the activity, imo.

You want pictures, take em with a camera...or an iPhone @Robert loper, lol.

I'm not a hardliner on this. But we shoot ourselves in the foot on these issues, because of the same crap that makes a "rules for me, not for thee" thread go round and round.

Lack of respect for each other, the game, our resources. Tunnel vision.

I know of a lot of public hunting areas, not public hunting preserves. We're lucky to be able to hunt on public land at all. It's not an entitelment.

We wouldn't need half the ordnances at public venues (parks, beaches, etc.) if people were a bit more thoughtful and openminded.

Trail camera bans isn't a big picture issue.
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Lol. Im not quitting hunt ever on public land. I love it just lost a tool
 
It will be interesting to see if the numbers of big deer and other trophy animals will decline over the next ten years as likely the ripple effect will continue of outlawing or banning them continues.

What I like about cell cams especially and what I do think is neat is to see what’s going on in the woods at all times but that’s because I like to see wildlife. There is something very satisfying about watching things happen in real time…. It’s why we hunt in the first place is it not?? Cell cams somewhat provide that experience no matter where you are or what you’re doing. Again, I do think there is a huge potential for abuse but my only point is they better look at a lot of other things that are being done, used, manufactured, planted, etc. besides or in addition to cell cams.
That’s my only real point about this discussion. If we’re going to truly be concerned about fair chase, Let’s do a wholesale review of emerging technologies, techniques and other activities to determine what things are and are not fair chase. I also agree that baiting for most game is despicable perhaps except bears as a lot of the most successful bear hunters and baiters have a whole other perspective on the real efficacy of baiting especially for trophy bears. I’ve never shot anything over bait and hunting bears over it does not pique my interest whatsoever but I do know enough and respect some of those in that genre of hunting that I have a better overall understanding of bear baiting and it’s difficulty and shortcomings.

Perhaps my perspective is also different because of trapping. You can have the best bait and lure going and it can still be very difficult to catch numbers of coyotes or any furbearers really. A lot of hard work, time, planning and preparation and expense goes into catching high volume of fur and diminishing returns and declining ROI really is manifesting more and more frequently as expenses rise and demand declines. My understanding is that bear baiting has a lot of similarities and so we need to truly understand the whole process before we just jump on seemingly “noble” fair chase requirements.
 
Ok guys. How about we go hypothetical here and say that what if B&C or even your state made optics such as scopes and binos and rangefinders illegal when they first came about? You could make the same argument that they give you an unfair advantage. How would have you reacted at that time. I think it's up to the individual to determine whether or not they want to use cell cams. I use them but I wouldn't cry myself to sleep if they outlawed them here. I also don't like politicians making things illegal that they probably haven't really got a clue about. People that you guys speak of that would sit in the kitchen having coffee with their friends and waiting for a pic of the buck they want to shoot showing up in the food plot are the same type of guys that have no respect for themselves or the game we pursue anyway. They're probably the owners of the illegal bait piles I'm always reading about on here and don't tag they're deer either.
 
DroptineKrazy said:
Ok guys. How about we go hypothetical here and say that what if B&C or even your state made optics such as scopes and binos and rangefinders illegal when they first came about? You could make the same argument that they give you an unfair advantage. How would have you reacted at that time. I think it's up to the individual to determine whether or not they want to use cell cams. I use them but I wouldn't cry myself to sleep if they outlawed them here. I also don't like politicians making things illegal that they probably haven't really got a clue about. People that you guys speak of that would sit in the kitchen having coffee with their friends and waiting for a pic of the buck they want to shoot showing up in the food plot are the same type of guys that have no respect for themselves or the game we pursue anyway. They're probably the owners of the illegal bait piles I'm always reading about on here and don't tag they're deer either.
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Truly hypothetical, as those tools are on your person and decrease the chances of an "oops". Magnification for target identification and yardage info for accuracy.

Nowhere close to the same.
 
I witness cell cameras being used around here for two main uses. One is the type of guy who uses it over a bait pile to give him real time intel about when his target buck is at or on the way to his kill zone. He can then leave work or the house and run out and try to kill it. The one guy I was referencing earlier is a high school coach and teacher. He and I were talking at a ballgame and the subject of hunting came around. He showed me the pictures of this buck he shot and told me the whole story, thinking I would be impressed. He said he had two 200 pound feeders about 150 yards apart along a power line easement on his lease. One had corn, the other a rice brand mixture. He had 2 cell cameras, one for each feeder. He had the feeders set to run at 9 am and 4 pm. He said he was getting this buck on one feeder and like clockwork it would hit the other feeder within 45 minutes of the other. That way, if his phone told him the buck was at the corn feeder, he would leave school or home, depending on the day of the week, and run out to set up over the rice bran feeder, or vice versa.

He said the real advantage aside from basically knowing the deer would show up shortly was that he never had to actually sit on stand anymore. He said he could keep his vacation time and use that when his wife and kids wanted to do things and he could just run out and shoot his buck in his work clothes.

The other use relates to a club that I was invited to join but declined but a friend of mine joined and is still in. He is in it mainly because he has younger kids and needs a place to go set up fairly easy shots for the kids. He rarely hunts for himself anymore. The club had some pretty draconian rules when I was looking at it, which caused me to decline joining, but they have gotten worse. He said that two years ago the club made it a rule that you were not allowed to do any scouting in the woods at all. Furthermore, you could only have cell cameras, not regular cameras and the cell cameras had to be in front of a 200 pound (or larger) spin cast feeder. Their rationale was that with cell cameras and huge feeders the deer would be less disturbed than if people were going out to put bait out often and check cards. He said that members can have 2 spots on the club and you cannot set up a spot within 200 yards of anyone else's spot. He said the place is designed to be an "old man's club" for guys who are too lazy to hunt. He said if it wasn't for his kids he would have gotten out.

For what it is worth, I have never run into a cell camera on public ground. I think people are too afraid to leave an expensive camera out on public, I see a handful of cheap tascos, etc every year, but they are usually only 50 to 75 yards off the road.
 
Jammintree said:
Now now friends, let’s not get flippant just because Plebe makes several good points.
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Intent wasnt to come off flippant, I like the idea of the challenge. Wouldnt want that as my only means but wouldnt back up from taking it on either. Would definitely have to eat more salad than I care for but I bet I could wrangle up some meat along the way too. ;)
 
DroptineKrazy said:
Ok guys. How about we go hypothetical here and say that what if B&C or even your state made optics such as scopes and binos and rangefinders illegal when they first came about?
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For me personally, would not have mattered in the least but I grew up and learned to hunt in a bow club so didnt have a need for scopes or binos and rangefinders didnt exist. I know my situation was not the norm but banning a lot of technology wouldnt significantly change or disrupt my hunting. Just let me keep my longbow and I'll be happy.
 
BTaylor said:
Intent wasnt to come off flippant, I like the idea of the challenge. Wouldnt want that as my only means but wouldnt back up from taking it on either. Would definitely have to eat more salad than I care for but I bet I could wrangle up some meat along the way too. ;)
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I like the idea of the challenge too. Maybe we can start a “low tech hunt” contest.
 
I really like cell cams. We have a Snapchat group of about 7 guys at work who all hunt and we send each other cell cam pics all fall. We had some nice bucks on camera last year, but no one shot a buck that they'd had on camera...
 
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