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A Simple DIY Game Feeder

I get a lot of enjoyment out of putting out my game cam and seeing what I can catch on film. I’ll save left over food from home to put out to see what predators come in, and recently, my friend Peter had a great idea for a do it yourself long term game feeder. Like all good ideas it’s simple and easy to do. Just take a PVC pipe and cut it to a desired length – the one Peter made that I tried was about 5 feet in length and will hold a 50 pound bag of grain or more. You could increase the length to be able to add more grain and save yourself trips out to the feeder. The key is to place the bottom of the tube at ground level or just a millimeter or two above – that way the grain isn’t all over the ground in the elements, and critters can paw at the bottom to get more food taking advantage of gravity flow. It works a lot better, in my opinion, than the timed broadcast feeder I bought a number of years ago from Cabelas – with the broadcast feeder it’s spewing out food that is not being eaten and I would often arrive to fill the feeder to find the entire contents had been emptied onto the ground without being eaten. With this much simpler and cheaper method, the food stays put – dry and protected until something actually comes by to eat it. You can see in the pictures below that I attached the pipe to the tree with just a ratchet strap, you could also use duct tape or a number of other methods. You can also paint the PVC pipe if you feel so inclined. For the top you can use any number of items that can cover the hole to keep the elements out – I cut the top off a plastic whiskey bottle and put it over the top and it worked great. Peter made a few of these, and I put one out for a week – I set it up quickly with just the ratchet strap and there wasn’t a feed store open on the Sunday that I put it out, so I simply put in 10 pounds of guinea pig feed I grabbed at Wal Mart. Corn or sweet feed for horses or any type of grain will work. In a weeks time I had 69 pictures, the guinea pig feed was completely gone and the ground at the bottom of the feeder was pawed and dug up. Here are some of the best pics that I got, taken on a wildgame camera – reasonably priced as far as game cameras go, and takes good pictures -
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I also wanted to add a disclaimer that feeding wildlife, especially deer over the long term is not a good idea. I have witness several deer over the years that have died from malnutrition in the winter because of “good samaritans” that thought they were helping by putting out food. There are some very good reasons listed here. It should only be done on a limited short term basis.

Posted by fuck0500 in Hunting, Maine Life, Trapping

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Natural Highways of the Woods

All my life people have been telling me you shouldn’t travel alone. But it’s interesting; I’ve never been told that by anybody who’s ever done it. - Bill Mason

Years ago there was a large tract of land that I liked to hunt – I liked it in part because it was bordered on all sides by woods roads, so one could effectively never take a wrong turn, as long as you could walk in a straight line, you would eventually find your way out. It allowed me to wander rather aimlessly without having to worry about sense of direction. However, I began to notice that invariably I would walk past the same places each time I was there. Deliberately I would enter through a different location each time, and yet once my mind wandered a bit I would begin noticing the same areas once again, which taught me about funneling. There are lots of studies and evidence that says in the absence of sun, landmarks, blindfolded, or in darkness people have a tendency to walk in circles, and while that may be true (I have certainly experienced that on a boat in the fog) I believe that if you turn someone loose in a vast tract of wilderness, they tend to walk along “funnels”. And wildlife do the same thing – which is why there are typically particular “crossings” where you tend to see the most wildlife.

When I asked a friend of mine who has professionally trapped marten for much of his life how I could spot a crossing or funnel his answer was that he couldn’t describe it to me, but he could show it to me. His journals show that the landscape naturally lends itself to certain routes of travel, and that these routes have held true over many years, even if areas were logged. There is a good story that he tells; he will sometimes take out of state people out on the trapline so they can experience what it is like, and one time he had a fellow from New Jersey riding with him, who said that he wanted to chose the spot where they next put in a set. Jerry said no problem, and in short order the guest said that he wanted to stop and make a set. He asked Jerry if he thought it was a good spot, and Jerry said that it wasn’t, but the guest said he wanted to set it anyway, and they did. Jerry, with a caveat to the listener that he was just having fun with the guy at this point, drove 200 yards down the road and said “this is the spot”, and set the location. And sure enough, when checking the sets the next day, Jerry’s spot produced a double of marten, a mere 200 yards from where the guest placed his sets, and upon this discovery the guest said that never again would he ever doubt Jerry’s word. And that’s how legends are formed. It’s interesting that if you walk a certain stretch of woods each day, you begin to notice the subtle changes that happen – bent grass or perhaps a bit of fur on a branch that wasn’t there the day before. I think our ancestors were much more in tune with the world, and used the natural lay of the land for ease of travel before the days of epirbs, cell phones, gps, or even compasses. That’s why the Native American names for places were much more meaningful than those of today – such as Passadumkeag, which means above the gravel bar, and describes the section of the Penobscot River where it meets the Passadumkeag river. And wildlife know them too – I came across an otter track once in the middle of nowhere, far from any source of water. I took a couple of days and followed it in both directions, finding the water where it came from, and where it was heading too, a distance of some 10 miles apart. I think the old ways of the woodsmen are somewhat lost today – being able to extricate yourself from any sort of situation, knowing where you are, and relating that to the surrounding country around you. I enjoyed seeing the old barely discernable marks on the trees whenThe Old Man from the sand pit took me along the old hunting path – a path my Grandfather used, and his grandfather before him. In those days people knew where they were in the woods, much as people today know where they are by what road they are on. It’s just a matter of learning the subtle clues and signs of the path you are traveling.

Posted by fuck0500 in Hunting, Maine Life, Trapping

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Game Cams

Greenbush Fox

Game Cameras (Cams) come in many different choices these days, and have a big range in cost. Many excel in one area but under-perform in another. I’ve had a lot of fun with mine, and you never really know what you’ve captured on film while you were away. It’s exciting to run up to the camera to see how many pictures it’s taken and of what. There are a few things you have to think about when you’re shopping around for a camera – first being this day and age digital is the only way to go. I’ve used the old 35mm film cameras when digital was still expensive, and between the incandescent flash and the film advance you’re spooking critters left and right, some of whom won’t return. Some digital cameras have an incandescent flash so you can get color pictures at night, but I prefer the infrared (IR) flash because the creature you are taking a picture of never even knows it. It does give a more “ghosty” appearance to your images, but it looks fine, if not better, to me. Generally the faster the trigger time the higher quality (and price) of the camera. However, if you’re on a feeder or bait as I am, trigger time doesn’t matter all that much because the animal is hanging around having their picture taken. If you are interested in a game trail or security though, you’ll need a fast trigger time. The detection zone of a camera is comprised of the width and the range. Cameras vary in ranges from 30 feet to 100 feet, and widths of 5 to 90 degrees. Each camera will have their own specs, and if possible it’s best to see pictures that it’s taken at various lighting and distance to see if it will work for what you want it to, and most camera manufacturers will have pictures available to view. The other factor is recovery time – the time it takes to take and store a picture to be ready to take another. Some take only half a second, which would be good on a game trail, and some take 60 seconds or longer, which is ok if you’re on a feed station. Obviously the faster the time the more expensive the camera.

I like to set mine up over bait – typically I’ll put out something interesting (usually table scraps and leftovers) and I’ll spread it around a small area. This keeps whatever is interested hunting around for each tasty morsel, and therefore more likely to have a good picture taken. I then set up the camera within close range of the bait. You can test whether the camera will work in it’s location by turning it on and walking around the area with the bait – the camera will flash a red light when it is picking up a signal from your movement, and a small green light when the picture is actually taken. The images in this post are taken with a Wildgame camera -

For the price it’s been a great camera, and I’ve got some memorable shots with it. When combined with some enhancing software which you can do online for free at Picnik, you can get some pretty good pictures out of it. For these images, we had cooked two racks of baby back ribs over the fire, and as we were eating I was tossing the bones out into a small area of the woods in front of camp, and when we left in the morning I set up the camera overlooking them at ground level. That night this red fox appeared and stayed for almost 48 hours finding what I had thrown out there. In the second to last picture you can see him with one of them in his mouth. So, if you have a place where you’d like to know what’s visiting or what’s nearby that you can lure in, think about getting a trail cam – they’re a lot of fun.