TEN TO GROW ON

Use Trail Cameras to Track a Snow Buck

Using trail cameras doesn’t make it any easier to close the distance on a gnarly big-woods buck in the snow, but they can help you figure out where to start. In the Adirondacks, Adam Arquette of Whitehall, New York, uses a systematic, years-long dragnet of trail cameras to dial in on which woods hold big bucks and which ones don’t. By keeping a half dozen cameras in the same place year after year—he has two he hasn’t moved since 2013—he’s built a database that helps him figure out which locations are most likely to hold deer at specific times during the season.

“I’m patterning specific locations instead of patterning specific deer,” Arquette explains. “I want to know where big whitetail bucks typically go, so I can hunt an area that attracts multiple mature deer instead of just one big buck.”

He starts by scouting along cedar swamps, spruce bogs, and wet drainages for signpost rubs, typically black ash trees that can hold rubs as old as 20 years. He’ll hang a camera there or at a primary scrape location, one that tends to be used year after year. Then he lets the data build. Arquette might not pull the camera cards till the spring. But over the seasons, very specific patterns emerge.

“There might be one spot with a single picture of a monster deer, but another spot with half a dozen good bucks. Tracking deer in the snow is an odds game, so I go to where I think there’s a better chance of