Scrolling through Facebook over the weekend (before losing power from the storms on Sunday), I noticed a few pictures of bucks with their antlers in velvet posted by another NWTF volunteer from Indiana with a goofy hashtag.

They were of very nice bucks that almost any hunter would be proud to harvest and its only July! Then yesterday after the power was restored at my house, I was cruising through Facebook again and saw more velvet buck pictures from another hunter I am friends with, with the same hashtag that the Indiana pictures had.

It was #Fuzzbuzz. I thought it was odd when I first saw it but after pondering it some, I realized that it was clever and comical. The buzz of the anticipation of the upcoming season combined with the fuzzy nature of the antlers in velvet. Seeing #Fuzzbuzz and the pictures got me thinking about setting out my trail cameras.

Having cameras out longer in the summer will give you more data in the form of pictures or videos so you can decide if there are any bucks that you want to focus on or what stands to hunt when the season rolls around. Make sure they have fresh batteries and empty memory cards before putting them out. Once I put them up, I like to let my cameras sit out and take pictures for at least two weeks before going back to swap out memory cards. I have double the number of memory cards as cameras so I can just swap them out and keep going without sitting there for too long and letting my scent get all over.

While I haven’t used one yet, but I have talked to quite a few people who have used cellular cameras instead of the traditional trail cameras. They have become very popular in the past few years as the technology has made huge bounds.

These cameras require a cellular plan that is paid monthly and allows the cameras to send the pictures it takes to your cell phone or email when they are taken. Many of them also take memory cards as a backup option. The positive of these cameras is that they do not require you to go back to them to see what pictures they have taken. This minimizes your scent around your camera or just in the woods in general. This also is beneficial is your hunting spot is a good drive away from your house, because now you don’t need to drive there to see what’s on the memory cards in the cameras.

Whether you use traditional trail cameras or cellular cameras, there are a few things you can do to help improve the quality of the pictures you get from them. If setting the camera on a trail, set the camera at a 45-degree angle compared to the trail. This will allow the camera to detect the motion in front of it and trigger taking a picture of the deer before it is out of the view of the camera. Make sure to clear out any small vegetation from around the camera when you set it up.

Windy days that move the vegetation can make the camera trigger and take a lot of pictures of nothing, eating up battery life and making you waste a lot of time going through all of the pictures just in case there is a deer in one of them.

So of you set your cameras out and get pictures of bucks in velvet that you are willing to post on social media, use #fuzzbuzz this summer!