As you probably know by now Pix Controller have installed a 3rd motion-activated remote camera which is currently setup over an active whitetail scrape. A whitetail scrape is an area a whitetail buck will create by scraping a patch of ground under a small tree usually in a funnel area where other bucks will see it. These act as a way bucks will communicate to each other during the mating season or the rut as it is known. A buck will scent the area by licking the branches above the scrape and urinate in the scrape. Many different bucks will typically visit a scrape site which is a great opportunity to video mature bucks.
The camera they have setup over an active scrape has not produced much to date other that this one hotspot:
However, not too far from this site they did capture this action on one of our motion-activated DVR systems this past week:
Pix Controller believe this is the first time an active scrape has been broadcast over the Internet LIVE. They have the ability to move this 3rd remote camera to another scrape site in hopes to see some better action before this phase of the mating season ends in about 3 weeks.
Another rather interesting find on their camera was two sightings of a whitetail doe with deformed hooves.Her hooves are unusually long which is caused by too much protein in her diet. Bill says that he has never seen this before, but has seen photos of this on the Internet. She has made two appearances to the main camera. They were able to capture some great footage and zoom the camera in for a better look at her hooves. (see attached photo)
Lastly, they have viewed some interesting groundhog behavior on the main camera. They witnessed groundhogs feeding at night last year, but when they were able to capture a hotspot and show a local wildlife expert he was amazed to see this. Groundhogs are not known to be nocturnal since they do not have eyes which can see in the dark very well. However, what we are seeing appears to be groundhogs feeding as much as they can before hibernation. Here is one of the video clips captured:
They also captured a couple clips of groundhog fighting over food area. This appears to be several groundhogs defending their territory.
