To score big, public-land hunters must stay one step ahead of their quarry, as well as the competition. These tips will help you get it done starting now.
These days it’s become increasingly rare to run across a whitetail hunter who doesn’t use trail cameras to scout. But, unfortunately, those who choose to ignore the fine details can wind up doing more harm than good. For the private-land bowhunter, trail cam placement decisions are usually pretty simple. Find the preferred food, or pounded trails leading to that food, and, well, that’s about it. The public-land bowhunter doesn’t usually have that option, and instead needs to consider a few “sneaky spots” deer might be—strategic places that other hunters will likely ignore. Those are the places worth hanging a trail camera on common ground.
Here are 7 of them to consider:
River & Stream Crossings. If the water is moving, there will usually be a few places the deer prefer to cross. Whether you’re dealing with a small, easily wadeable trout stream or a decent-sized interior river that is dicey for you to cross in chest waders, the deer will have preferred locations for traveling from bank to bank. Find them, and hang your camera to watch over them. Typically, the hottest river crossings show consistent deer movement patterns throughout the season; this means that if you dial into current deer activity at a particular crossing, you don’t need to worry about phase of the rut, seasonal timing, or anything else. Just hunt it.
Isolated Waterholes. Hot crossings are often a no-brainer, but watering holes are a different story. The “obvious” pond sitting 200 yards from a public parking lot is probably a lost cause. Every bowhunter on the place knows about it, and it will get hunted a lot. Skip the obvious water. Check out your aerial photos for smaller water sources—the farther from access points the better—and get in there to check things out. If you have to work to get to water, the deer will use it. Hang your cameras on all of the “sneaky” water sources you can, because just like crossings, they can be good for the entire season.
Swamp Crossings. Each year, some of the best local whitetails are bagged in some of your area’s nastiest swamps, mostly for obvious reasons. However, finding a place to hang a camera in and around a low, wet swamp can be a tough proposition. So do your primary scouting from home. Find opposing points, or long spines, of high ground that allow for easier travel through the lowland muck, via aerial photography. This is a time-honored big-woods strategy, and can work very well at all times of the season, but especially during the rut. When you’ve identified a few of these spots through digital scouting, hike in and hang some cameras. If the deer want to get from one side of a swamp to the other, they’ll probably pass by your camera. 
Life On An Island. If you’re digging into swamps during your digital recon, you’ll probably encounter some isolated “islands” of cover. If your pulse didn’t start to quicken, it should have. Mature bucks love these islands because they offer most every possible advantage as bedding sites. A good buck spending daylight hours on an island can easily hear approaching predators, including bowhunters, but you can build a plan around a suspected sanctuary and use it to develop a solid hunting strategy. Run cameras to see how a buck accesses, and exits, his island. If you know where he comes from and where he’s going, you can play off of that travel and possibly catch him sneaking out at last light—without ever having to slog your way in to his island sanctuary. Keep in mind that you’ll want to intrude as little as possible, so be sure to play the wind and make every camera check count.
Staging For Success. What if your chosen ground lacks streams, rivers, or even a swamp? Don’t worry. You can still hunt like a private-land bowhunter—sort of. In this scenario your goal should be to figure out the “destination food sources” of the local deer herd. These areas might be on public ground, or they might be across the fence beyond the No Trespassing signs. Either way, your challenge is to “reverse-engineer” the travel routes, until you find a spot that looks like it might be a staging area—a place where the local deer linger and otherwise mill about after leaving their day beds, just before entering their preferred feeding area. Staging areas will usually be within 200 to 400 yards of the “groceries,” especially in areas with good cover. Run a camera or two on the best trails, to start figuring out just who is using them and when. If you identify a good staging area, you’ll be light years ahead of most of your hunting competition, most of whom will likely be setting up right on the local food source. And as a bonus, any direct food source hunting pressure can often make the area’s staging areas even more important—and productive.
Isolated ‘No-Go’ Zones. Nearly every piece of public land I’ve ever hunted has featured at least one area virtually untouched by human pressure. Sign, as they say, does not lie. Sometimes it’s the five-acre patch of woods by the parking lot that most hunters simply walk right by, or sometimes it’s the ridgetop located a full two miles from easy access that is just too far for most weekend warriors. These spots require an on-site “speed-scouting” mission to verify their potential, but if the deer sign is there and the human sign is not, you should hang a camera and back out. It may seem too simple, but the reality of public-land success often boils down to hunting where other people don’t—or won’t.
Fencing Will Point The Way. Much of the deer movement on public land is influenced by what’s happening on nearby private ground. A great way to flesh out this impact is to find well-used fence crossings and monitor them with trail cameras. Some of my best year-to-year spots were discovered this way. Start by walking the perimeter of your chosen parcel and keep an eye out for where the deer leave it to enter private ground. Even if the land doesn’t have a maintained fence, you might find an old rusty three-strander still hanging in certain spots. Where the barbed-wire is busted, broken or sagging, you’ll often find a crossing.
Great Photos Are In The Details. I almost always hang my cameras above my head and angle them down, for a few reasons. The first is that this reduces theft. The second is that it cuts down on the number of passing deer that get spooked. Whatever type of “flash” or “no-flash” system your camera utilizes, deer often take notice of cameras showing up in their bedrooms, and they don’t appreciate it. I also use quality SD cards, long-life lithium batteries, and pay special attention to my camera settings. I hate returning to a trail camera that has been in the woods for a month only to realize the batteries died a few days after I hung it, or that I set the date/time wrong. Or worse, never even turned it on. Think about all of these things with every camera setup, and you’ll gather much more useful intel.
Finding Motivation Pays. As a public-land bowhunter, you don’t have the luxury of a lazy scouting strategy when it comes to trail cameras. You’ve got to out-think and out-work your competition, while attempting to keep tabs on the same bucks that everyone else is trying to keep tabs on. This isn’t easy—nothing about public-land bowhunting ever is—but it is entirely possible if you’re willing to exert a little extra effort right now. Take the time to get out there this summer, and you’ll be setting the stage for fall hunting success.
