The Offal Wildlife Watching Project might be one of the more interesting studies I’ve heard of lately. The project was started to learn more about what affect the gut pile from a hunter harvested deer has on the ecosystem. They’re always looking for volunteers to put a camera on their gut pile for the research, so if you’re interested, learn more here.

I immediately think of crows and coyotes when it comes to scavengers looking for an easy meal, but what I learned was that there were a whole host of other critters taking advantage of the yearly food source found in November.

Skunks, mink, woodpeckers and even other deer would nibble on the “offal” or “the entrails and internal organs of an animal used as food” (according to Oxford). I learned this while filming a segment for Prairie Sportsman. Part of the filming process was putting out my own trail cams on a couple of deer. While one was a donated carcass from a doe that was shot, the other was a roadkill buck that we found while pheasant hunting. I got a possession tag for it, set up a couple cameras and waited for the videos to come in.

It was almost as fun as checking cams for big bucks. I’ll post a bunch of videos at the end of this post.

My favorite interaction was a skunk that managed to keep a few coyotes from stealing his meal.

My most frustrating moment came when all my cameras on the property showed coyotes and the camera on the doe had died. When I went to replace the batteries the next day, I noticed that the carcass had been picked clean and there was a dead mink next to it. So, I potentially missed coyotes feeding on the deer and then presumably killing a mink for it.

I have piles and piles of videos of another mink at the buck carcass along with raccoons that made for interesting footage. I love watching animals interact with nature and this adds a new layer to the positive impacts that trail cameras can have.

Trail cams can also have negative impacts – but maybe not the ones that you hear people complain about. “They’re ruining the sport.” “It’s not fair chase” etc.

I’ll be the first to tell you that trail cameras have kept me from shooting deer more than once, because it allowed me to pick out a mature buck and wait for it, usually passing on smaller deer because of it. Then, I don’t shoot anything because that big buck never shows up. It also frustrated Danny Thompson and I last fall when I was filming him on a doe hunt. While we sat in an enclosed stand that overlooked one of his new food plots, deer were standing next to our pickups in the driveway. Then as soon as we left the stand, deer would venture in to the food plot with the cameras sending us all the embarrassing details.

So the next time someone tells you that trail cameras are ruining it, just like forward facing sonar, remember that neither of these tools are actually killing anything. They’re just allowing you to learn more about wildlife and fish behavior which will make you a better hunter, angler and, ultimately, conservationist because you will know more about the animals and how they live. Knowledge is power.

Those food plots that Danny and I were hunting near are part of a new property that he designed. He gave us a tour in a segment for Prairie Sportsman. As a bonus, you will also see me miss an easy shot on a doe that I wanted to blame on my bow, but it was most likely, operator error.

Here is the episode featuring the Offal Wildlife Watching Project and Danny Thompson’s land strategy.

I have thousands of videos, but here are a few of my favorites:

If you want to see more of these, let me know and I’ll post them!