5 Best Summer Trail Camera Locations for Finding Big Bucks

Bedding Areas

We start our list with the most difficult task, finding big buck bedding areas and successfully deploying trail cameras in these areas without pushing the deer out of them.  Whitetail deer bedding areas can seem random at times, they do have certain bedding areas they prefer for the various weather variables or times of the year.

For example, in hot weather, deer tend to seek out low, thick cover near a water source. You will most likely find big bucks bedding in the best locations to ensure they’re protected from predators, especially people.  That’s why it’s so hard to find a specific buck’s bedding area sometimes.  However, if you find an area that one buck wants to call home this season, chances are another buck will claim the area the following year if you happen to kill him,

The best time to identify buck bedding locations, as well as doe bedding areas is during shed season.  While shed hunting, be sure to bring a trail camera or two along with you so you can deploy them in late winter or early spring and check six months from now.  Just be sure that you’re using high-quality batteries and a large enough SD card that you don’t fill the card in the first few weeks.

If you can keep those cameras deployed for six months or until hunting season grows near, you can learn a lot of valuable information when it’s time to check them.  Pay attention to the frequency of photographs of particular deer or age classes of deer and compare those dates and times with weather conditions and other factors that might affect deer movement.  This might be the ticket you need to help you predict when and where you’ll kill your target buck this fall!

Feeding Areas

Deer will feed in predictable locations in the summer, such as food plots, crop fields, kudzu patches, and other high-quality food sources in your area. In my neck of the woods, deer love soybeans and will feed on them daily until the beans start to turn yellow at the beginning of archery season.

In other areas of the whitetail range, you might focus on green alfalfa or clover field.  Deer all over the country will eat corn early when it just starts to come up, and then feed heavily on corn again when the ears are growing.  One of my favorite early season stand locations and trail camera inventory locations is on the edge of kudzu patch.  There are no food plot or crop fields in this area, just an overgrown invasive species that shares similar nutritional value as soybeans.  Deer love them!

Placing a trail camera on an isolated fruit tree in an overgrown homestead can really bring out the big bucks, as these are known for producing giant bucks on small properties.  If you find the preferred food source, you will find the deer.

Video mode can be very helpful for large fields and scheduling events (photos) at routine timeframes during the best times of the day for deer movement is a great way to see deer in fields that might not have been photographed otherwise.

If you can avoid putting boots on the ground and drive to these trail camera locations via ATV or ebike, these cameras can be checked often.

Mineral Sites

My favorite way to inventory bucks on my property is with mineral sites.  You’ll need to make sure it’s legal in your area.  Quality mineral sites have the the potential benefits to increase the overall health of your deer herd, but it’s not likely to me a difference in the wild, so don’t buy into that too much.

Instead, focus on attracting deer and keep the mineral sites refreshed often.  Mineral sites should be started or refreshed as soon as the antlers start to grow in the spring. Quality minerals have the potential to benefit lactating does and aid in antler growth, so all the deer benefit from it.  However, the greatest benefit for you is inventory!  A well-placed trail camera at the mineral site will produce photos of every buck using the property at some point during the summer.  Keep the batteries full and large enough SD card so that it doesn’t get filled up.

I’d recommend checking this camera no more than one time per month.

Replenish your minerals often to keep them coming back and change out the cards in your cameras each time you do. I guarantee you’ll feel like the season can’t come soon enough once you start seeing pictures of the bucks using the minerals.

Community Scrapes

As you’re shed hunting or doing your post-season scouting, take note of the best scrapes in the area.  These are often the largest scrapes and the most sign, both during the season and after the season.  It’s a good idea to run a trail camera in these areas all year long because deer use them all year long.  You might not see a lot of ground sign or pawing of the ground, but deer will still communicate via the scents on their face and head by rubbing them on the licking branches.

You might find a buck’s primary travel route this way but you’ll more than likely find a mature doe that’s keeping check on her area as well.  Use this information against her during the rut to predict when she’s going to be receptive and capitalize on a buck searching for a doe that routinely hits the scrape.

I’d recommend checking this camera no more than a few times between spring and fall.

Water Sources

One of the hardest places for me to pinpoint deer movement is on water sources.  In areas where creeks or rivers flow regularly, you might not be able to pinpoint where deer are drinking from the edge of the creek bank as easily.  However, small ponds, mudholes, and isolated water sources are ideal locations for inventorying deer.

In dry climates, this makes perfect sense, especially if you have a manmade source and it’s the best water source around.  However, I often overlooked this approach in the Appalachian Mountains for decades because there was water everywhere you looked most of the time.  That is until I ran a camera on a mud hole to catch trespassers and learned how many bucks were traveling through the area.

Water sources like the one I found a few years ago are good ways to inventory deer all season long, especially during the rut!

I’d recommend checking this camera no more than a few times between spring and fall.

Also, you’re going to want to check out 5 Early Season Mistakes Deer Hunters Often Make.