Interesting thread, I consider them absolutely essential to my success. You cannot go by sign to positively identify a big buck made it. Part of the reason I cannot watch any hunters like Infalt or Sturgis is because I quickly noticed none of the crap they were spewing is what I was seeing in the woods. I've seen big rubs waist-high on big trees get made by spikes with 3-inch tines. You need to see him or get a picture of one to know what's around. A few years back I scouted a remote swamp with a letter "I" shaped bit of dry land that jutted into it. There were rubs all over it. Heavy beat-down trails. Lots of security cover. Man, I got excited. I through a cell cam there for over 5 months. After 5 months the biggest bruiser I had on cam was maybe an 85in 8 pter, and that was during the rut.
These animals are also extremely nomadic and you need to stay on top of them as best you can with the cams. The huge 9 I chased all year bounced around like ping pong all over the place covering miles in just a couple of days. Even with the cams, I got my butt kicked all year.
A couple things make my hunting so much harder.
1, there is no good access in the mtns. None. It doesn't matter where or how you access. Something somewhere is getting spooked. Where I'm at, there's very little open timber to access through. It's all thick, there bedding literally everywhere. There's mtn laurel everywhere. I've kicked up bedded deer in spots that make no logical sense for bedding. Combine that with every square inch of the woods is covered in waist-high sheep laurel. So quiet access is impossible. You can walk heel to toe as much as you'd like, you're still gunna sound like a buffalo coming through.
2, 6-7 outta 10 hunts are gunna be ruined by the wind. Doesn't matter where you go, what you do, what you try. There's a constant push-pull effect of the wind that makes the very best spots almost impossible to hunt. Steve Sherk is a MTN guide in NW PA, and he experiences the same thing I do. He almost doesn't bother looking up wind forecasts anymore because he knows it's not going to be doing that where he goes. His rule of thumb is as long as the wind is blowing in the correct direction 60% of the time he stays.
These cams also confirm I'm hunting the right locations. More than 5 times this season I hunted a spot to see a couple small bucks, some doe. Then the very next day when I wasn't there the big one walked through. So they boost my confidence, just didn't get lucky that day.