So, I got this idea in my head, right? I wanted to capture some decent footage of young bucks. Seemed straightforward enough. I’d seen those nature shows, figured how hard could it be? Famous last words, let me tell you.
First things first, the setup. I didn’t go all out with super fancy gear. Had an old trail cam I’d picked up cheap a while back, mostly gathering dust. I figured I’d give it a shot. Spent a good chunk of an afternoon finding what I reckoned was a prime spot down near the old creek bed where I’d seen some tracks. You know, trying to get the angle just so, hiding it a bit with some leaves and branches. Felt like a real wildlife photographer for a hot minute. Then, it was all about the waiting. You set it and then you try to forget about it, but mostly you just wonder what it’s catching.
And this is where things started to get a bit, let’s say, ‘character-building’. It’s funny, you think you’ve got a plan, you think you’ve considered all the angles. But then real life, or in this case, nature, just does its own thing. It kinda reminded me of this one time I tried to teach my old dog, Buster, to fetch the newspaper. Simple, right? Dog, paper, fetch. What I got was a shredded paper, a confused dog, and a very unimpressed mailman. This whole young bucks footage project felt a lot like that – my intentions were good, but the execution, well, that was a different story.
The Actual Haul… or Lack Thereof.
After what felt like an eternity, but was probably just a week, I went to retrieve the camera. The suspense was killing me! Was I about to witness some glorious, slow-motion scenes of deer in their natural habitat? Well, not quite. Here’s what I mostly got:
- An incredible amount of footage featuring the local squirrel population. Seriously, hours of it. One particularly bold fella spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out if the camera was edible.
- A very artistic, blurry shot of something vaguely deer-shaped vanishing into the undergrowth. At 2 AM. Could’ve been a deer. Could’ve been a large badger with a limp. Who knows.
- My neighbor’s cat, Whiskers, making several guest appearances. Just strolling by, tail in the air, like he was on a catwalk. Thanks, Whiskers, real helpful.
- And, my personal favorite, extended clips of leaves. Just leaves. Blowing in the wind. Sometimes a branch would sway. Thrilling stuff.
I did, eventually, sift through it all and find a tiny bit of usable material. And when I say tiny, I mean like, maybe five seconds total. A couple of young bucks, way off in the distance, looking pretty skittish. Definitely not the epic footage I’d daydreamed about. More like “blurry shapes that might be deer if you squint.”
So, what’s the takeaway from all this?
Well, for starters, getting good wildlife footage is a heck of a lot tougher than those slick TV shows make it look. Those guys and gals, they put in the hours, and probably have way more patience and better gear than I do. It’s not just about pointing a camera in the right direction. There’s a whole lot of luck involved, and a whole lot of nature just not cooperating with your grand plans. Kinda like trying to get kids to eat their vegetables, you know? You can try all you want, but sometimes they just want the darn chicken nuggets. Still, it wasn’t a total waste. Got me outdoors, gave me something to tinker with. And hey, now I know how not to film young bucks. Maybe next time I’ll just embrace the chaos and aim for a squirrel documentary. At least I know I’ll get plenty of footage for that.