No more trail cameras allowed in Utah

[retrieverman]

The picture doesn't taste very good.

I much prefer beef steak to deer steak.

 

[.36Rooster]

Personally, I AM against trail cameras for hunting. I think trail cameras are a poor substitute for techniques and prowess in scouting. and people have been relying on them for 20 years or so now, to the extent that they don't even know how to scout without them, nor have they passed down such info to their kids. Just another set of techniques that is becoming lost...

 

[Coinneach]

Trail cameras are not period correct! I'm old school.

What about the Curly Maple ones with inlaid brass furniture ?

 

[Rawhide67]

I pulled my cams today. Season ended a month ago. It's nice to see next year's hunting potential in the bucks that survived this season. Several small bucks, 2 nice rack bucks and a button buck with his sister and mom that have been living near the house all summer.

I hope the camera ban doesnt infect other states, but it probably will.

 

[user 36911]

I much prefer beef steak to deer steak.

Me too but I hunt for elk and that's way better than beef.

 

[Rawhide67]

I like the cameras but have literally never laid eyes on a buck that I have seen on cam. It's not like you can get a pic and that deer is dead. Maybe it's just that the deer in my big timber hunting area are difficult to pattern cuz they don't seem to have a pattern.

I use the cams cuz it's nice to know that when I spend hour after hour on watch, without seeing a deer, that they actually are around.

 

[poker]

Yes, you can hunt over bait in Alabama if you buy a bait license. It is illegal to shoot at night unless hog or predator hunting. Lots of guys are going out hog/ predator hunting at night with night scopes shooting deer not hogs. I live outside the city limits and the neighborhood is not in the city limits so they can actually fire a firearm in their yards. The houses are pretty close together so Firearms would alert and piss off their neighbors, so they are shooting them with bows. I have found several dead deer on my property with arrow wounds and have found random arrows that were not mine or my boys in the woods boarding the neighborhood. I don't own the deer and can't keep them from going into their yards and if they have a hunting license there is no law against them shooting one on their 1/2 acre lot during legal shooting time. It is illegal to retrieve a deer on someone else's property without permission and it would take a really well placed shot to keep a deer in their backyard after a shot. It is very frustrating to say the least.

Perhaps set cellular cameras on trees watching their bait piles. Itd certainly provide some evidence if they were shooting deer with their crossbows after hours.

 

[7of7]

They shouldn’t ban them, just sell permits to place them.. only a certain amount of permits for a given area.. all cameras must be marked with the owners name, and permit. Simple solution.. oh, and no live feeds, all cameras would need to be on an 8 -12 hour delay, same as if you were to use a plane to fly around for spotting.. can’t land the plane and immediately go out to hunt in the area you just scouted from the air..

 

[tomm9903]

Some state senator probably got caught with his/her pants down! these days thats how a lot of legislation makes its way to the floor.
Robby

Thank you for this post! I was reluctant to post it myself knowing their would be hair raising on the back of those that use these gadgets. These modern gadgets, as you very well stated, "takes the hunt out of hunting".

Amen to that!

 

[1clayguy]

It's a felony for you to even say that

So what!

 

[tomm9903]

Real-time game cameras on public land,is not fair if used to spot game
for hunting. If used for other purposes Ok maybe. But hunting should
require skill, effort and fairness to the animal being hunted. Technology
is removing sportsmanship.

A BIG AMEN TO THAT!

 

[Sean Gadhar]

Perhaps Utah members can make sense of this.

https://www.foxnews.com/great-outdoors/utah-bans-trail-cameras-big-game-hunting

Did I not read it right?? This seems like typical over reach, they asked the public and the public said they disapproved of "the use of devices that transmit images and footage in real-time for hunting purposes." those being trail cams that send images to your cell phone in real time. . . .and then outlawed the ones that don't as well

 

[recurvebill]

In a way I do agree with you, but I do see value in them. They do offer a sense of security when placed discretely.

curiosity question : as Utah banned trail cam use "BY HUNTERS" , how does this correlate to a "sense of security"

 

[recurvebill]

Yep. I say, “imagine” because some people wouldn’t dream of such a thing. But, yes, it’s currently happening.
My version of a scouting package involves a pack stuffed with the bare essentials and a set of binoculars. Never manage to find any bucks that way but it sure is fun to get out & try.

Well darn , Nuthatch , i always thought the idea of "HUNTING" was to get off your a-- and get out among nature to pursue your passion !! I come alive when i hit the woods and hills !! GOOD ON YA , BUDDY !!!!

 

[Spikebuck]

I always felt using trail cameras is kind of cheating. I've never used them, and don't plan to.

Part of the issue is the misconception that using cameras is some kind of guarantee that allows a hunter to somehow magically know when an animal will be in a particular spot. Those who have never used them only have "hearsay knowledge" of what trails cameras may or may not contribute to a hunt.

I was on an 800+ acre lease for 7 years and the 7 to 8 of us on the lease had anywhere from one to three dozen cameras out at any given time. I have personally reviewed hundreds of thousands of trail cam pictures from my time on that lease. I can say, with 100% certainty that none of us ever killed any particular animal as a direct benefit of trail cam pics. I did, however, learn a lot about a vast array of animal behavior which increased the total outdoor experience for me. The biggest benefit was knowing what animals were using the property. But the cameras also showed how the animals change their behavior based on time of year, hunting pressure, etc.

One does not just walk out in the woods and willy-nilly attach a camera to a tree and hope they picked a good spot. They do all the same scouting any other non-camera using hunter does to locate heavy usage areas and travel patterns and sets cameras in those locations.

On our lease bucks were somewhat patternable and definitely more active during daylight hours while in velvet. As soon as they went hard antlered, usually the first week of September and before seasons opened, they would go mostly nocturnal. Daylight activity, if any at all, became very unpredictable. Once the chase phase started they could be all over the place or disappear completely.

I could go on about this but the net was that for any practical purpose, cameras were of no value in telling us when we should sit a specific location. Many factors, including weather, wind, new scrape or rub lines, personal sightings, etc. determined where one felt might be the best spot for any particular sit.

The biggest benefit was the enjoyment of looking through pictures, learning things about game and non-game animal behavior, and seeing what quality of animals were there that one might "possibly" see if they put in their time and hunted smart and hard just like any hunter.

One last comment...for those that believe the general public should be the guiding voice in modern wildlife management vs trained wildlife professionals, as was the case with the Utah camera ban, then I hope you enjoy hunting while it is still legal at all via any method. God help us as an increasingly disconnected urban populace makes that decision.

 

[rpatmuck]

Game cameras help in game management in Texas. Many leases use them to judge when a mature buck has reached his peak and needs to be removed from the land. These pictures are studied by all the hunters on the lease and when the bucks that have been selected for removal show up they can be harvested. Good leases must be managed by responsible hunters and a game camera is just another tool in doing that. Outlaw hunters are the ones that need to be removed.

 

[Spikebuck]

I have a neighborhood that joins my property on one side. The lots are about an 1/2 acre. I walked the property line a few weeks ago and 5 of the houses had cellular game cameras pointed to corn piles in their back yards. The only trees/woods is my property. I have cameras that take cards you have to read. Before deer season started I had 5 really nice bucks on my place. I plant a lot of food plots for the wildlife and never hunt on my property because I have land to hunt elsewhere. All 5 bucks were shot opening weekend by my neighbors. Their backyards are only about 50 yards deep to the edge of my property. The cellular cameras alert them when the deer comes to their corn pile in the middle of the night. All they do is open their back doors and shoot them with crossbows. I don't have a problem with the card cameras but the good ol'boys around here are using the cellular ones to kill the mature old bucks at night. The cellular cameras have taken the place of spotlighting deer .

Unfortunately some people are just slobs that will resort to unethical and/or illegal acts to achieve their personal goals. Let's not forget, however, that the entire anti-gun crowd uses the illegal acts of bad people in possession of firearms to try to make all gun ownership illegal! We must always be careful not to judge how "things" should be used by good people because of the rotten apples in the barrel that use those same things illegally and unethically.

 

[Crockford]

SpikeBuck,
You are correct.