Yeah I had some of the bigger bucks in velvet the second week of archery season last year.

Just for you Swamp, turkeys finally showed up on feed at one of my cameras!

Nice! Some jakes for the future!

Yeah, glad to see them. That particular drain leads straight to the dove fields and takes a turn right where the camera is heading West. My Lock-on is at the far West end.
Believe it or not, that canera goes off all day long, but at night the pics slow way down. Just a natural travel route, especially during the heat of Summer and when acorns are falling.

Those high ground oak hammocks make nice locations for feed/camera locations.

Did you rake that area clean? Or did the critters clean those up like that?

Heck no, lol. When I first decided to put up a camera because of the oaks it was all leaves. 1.5yrs of feed in that spot does it…plus hogs found it several times over the years as well and that keeps things cleared out. My other spot in the very back of the property is the same way.

When I had the brilliant idea of using posthole diggers to bury bait in the back, lol. This spot just since last August has had 30+ pigs killed off it.

When their head is deep down in that hole....you can sneak up on em!

The killing started 6 days after that pic was taken, lol. I didn’t have driving privileges yet, lol. I spent a while closer to quail season getting that area filled back in. There’s a feed trail up near that tower stand. I sneak in on it and shoot down. We were hunting that course with the owner and his buds last year and happened to get on a covey right under a big oak just out of view to the East (left) of the camera and one of his guests made a comment about all the .308 bullet casings. I was thinking, Oh heck, this ain’t gonna be good. The manager knows why they’re there, I didn’t know the owner did. The owner laughed and said talk to Mark about that and get him to show you the videos too! Come to find out the manager sends them to him I guess to show how I earn my money, lol.

Lil’ guy had been gone a couple of weeks, he put on a few inches since the last pic.

Ok, you got to name names for us Southerners…is that a Fisher or a Martin in the first pic. I’ve seen y’all post dead ones side by side and I know the Martin is smaller I think, but I don’t have a comparison in that pic, lol.

The photo shown above is a fisher. Note the shorter tail on the marten. + marten up to two pounds fisher 5-15 pounds

Same place different view. Six days later.

Before the trap was set.

Thanks for the clarification! Those Martins are a lot smaller!

Now another question…you trapped the bear??

ebsurveyor,
You foot snared the bear?

I got to do that a little back in late 90s-early 2000s while employed as a GW. Over a 2 or 3 year period, I captured 9 bears......one in a culvert trap and 8 in Aldrich foot snares. They are a very easy critter to catch in a foot snare on a bear trail.

Well dang Swamp, you need to share some stories or pics! Didn’t realize that was an actual thing. So what if you catch a sow with cubs? How in the world do you release??

The bears I trapped were bee yard raiders and I trapped them as an agent of DNR to assist game management in the area.

Once I caught one, I had to call game management tech to come jab em. Then, we weighed em, pulled a upper premolar, and ear tagged em. Then, woke em back up and released.

We operated with a policy agreement with beekeepers down here that a bear that depredated a bee yard twice was lethally removed. I only killed one of those 9. He was a fine specimen of a south Ga bear too. I caught him twice...3 months apart. Bear#269...he and I have a story together.

4 or 5 others I caught were confirmed dead within a few years, too. One road-killed that I just happened to find....still alive but badly injured. 3 or 4 were legally taken during our bear season...still wearing my ear tag. One travelled more that 50 miles from where I caught her in Echols County in January and was killed by a hunter in October in Ware County. Others were never seen/heard from again. All but a couple, I released at capture site as being caught and handled helped served as an aversion to bee larvae and honey found in a wooden box inside an electric fence.

I've got some good pics...just will have to hunt them all up and take a pic of them as this was before I had a digital camera.....all are 35mm prints.


For legal bear trapping...I think Maine is the only state that's allowed today.

I also caught a 50 to 60 lb cub in a Victor 1.75 coilspring while trapping coyotes. I was off work and running a long trapline near Fargo, Ga when this happened.

Wife videoed this release and it was very "exciting" for me. Big momma bear and the other cub was there with us the entire time.