By Chad Searcey | July 29, 2011

Last fall I planted two clover food plots from Frigid Forage on a Missouri property that I hunt. Earlier this spring I was trying to decide where to put my trail camera at each site. I wanted to place the camera in a spot that would pick up deer entering or leaving the plot. Along with facing a decision on where to place my cameras I also wanted to switch to a camera that did not use D size batteries. I wanted a camera that used AA batteries because there are lots of cameras on the market that take AA batteries that will last up to a year. In doing some research I found a camera that has a "field scan" setting and took AA batteries. In field scan mode, you can set your camera to take pictures at certain times of the day even if a deer is not in front of the sensor. This would allow me to cover my entire clover food plot with one camera. Here's some pictures from my first card pull using my new cameras.

The information I gathered from this picture is that deer were in my food plot (and in front of my tree stand) at 7:15 p.m. Without the field scan mode on this camera I would have never got a picture of these deer.

This picture drives home my point that field scan can help tell you vital information about your property. In the above picture, these deer never would have been captured on a camera without a field scan setting because they are too far away. Because of the field scan setting a picture was taken and after zooming in on the picture.....see below...

...the deer farthest away from the camera appears to be a possible shooter buck. In summary, I now know that a great buck was eating in my food plot, in front of my tree stand during shooting hours. Information I would have never known without a camera with a field scan setting.

There are many cameras on the market that have a field scan setting. Hopefully this post has provided you with some useful information that will help you if you are having trouble covering a food plot with just one camera.