Eric Thompson laughs at the notion that the trail cameras he uses on his Missouri farm give him an advantage over the whitetail bucks he loves to hunt.
“I’ve been dabbling with trail cams since their resolution got good enough that I could tell the difference between a deer and a raccoon,” Thompson says. “I’ve used pretty much all the brands, and the one thing they have in common is they give me an unnaturally high expectation that I’m going to kill a big buck.”
Deer that consistently show up on Thompson’s cameras in the summer and early fall vanish once hunting season starts. Bucks that demonstrate high fidelity to patterns captured by his cameras go nocturnal, or they start deviating from their habits when crop harvest ends or shooting begins.
“I used to
