Editor’s Note: Dave Parrott of Louisville, Kentucky, one of Mossy Oak’s pros, decided he could build a better trail camera. Parrott got involved in building trail cameras when the switch was made from 35 millimeter cameras to digital cameras. Because digital cameras ran $500 or more when they first were produced, Parrott decided he could build a better and less-expensive trail camera, if he built it himself. He became fascinated with what trail cameras could do, and what he could learn about game movement with the trail cameras. This began his lifelong obsession with developing game cameras and learning more-efficient ways to use them.
If you’re checking your trail cameras every 3 days, your human odor has saturated the area where your trail cameras are. So, in states where you can use attractants or bait, I make up my own scent attractants. The spray I mix up has apple juice, flavoring, molasses, sugar and anything else I can think of that has a fruity sweet smell. I dump all those ingredients into a pot and cook it like a stew. After my attractants cool-down, I add distilled water to my smell-good stew. After this mixture cools-down, I put it in a spray bottle and use it as both a cover scent and an attractant. I spray that attractant all over the trail I walk in and out on, also around my cameras and the trees holding my cameras. I use the BioLogic deer attractants. There are a wide variety of choices of sprays you can use. I want this spray not only to kill my odor, but to be an attractant to put deer in front of my camera. Let’s say I set-up a trail camera in the corner of a soybean field. I not only spray the trail I walk in and out of to get to my camera, but I spray the base of the tree where my camera is mounted, the ground and bushes in front of my camera and the soybeans in the corner of that field. I spray up high as well as down low. When the deer smell this attractant, they’re going to come in and browse heavier than they do anywhere else. So, I’ll have better pictures than I’ll get if I haven’t sprayed everything.
I did some research using my homemade attractant and cover spray. I learned that if I put corn out in front of my camera, a buck would stay in front of the camera about 3 minutes and then leave. When I used my spray, as I recommended and put it on everything, the bucks would stay in front of my camera for 8 to 10 minutes. So, my spray attractant is causing bucks to stay in front of my cameras twice as long as they will if I just put shelled corn in front of my camera.
