Schuckman: Trail cam pictures heighten anticipation for firearms deer season for young hunter

PLAINVILLE, Ill. — Once a week for the better part of three months, Charlie Smith and his 14-year-old son, Trent, rode 4-wheelers across their 100-acre Adams County property to collect the SD cards from three trail cams.

When they downloaded the images, nothing really grabbed their attention.

An occasional whitetail doe appeared, but mostly it was racoons and opossums playing in the camera’s field of vision in the middle of the night.

“We figured we were set up in the wrong spots or deer just weren’t using our land,” Smith said. “My son was pretty discouraged. He was determined to bag a buck this fall.”

Two weeks into the fall archery season, things changed.

A bigger silhouette appeared twice on one trail cam. A week later, the same whitetail deer appeared three different times. Another week later, there were several images with the buck in the distance, only this time the deer moved close enough to the camera for a cleaner, crisper image.

What an image it turned out to be.

“It’s as big as any buck I’ve ever seen and bigger than any buck I’ve ever killed,” said the 42-year-old Smith, who began hunting in Brown County when he was 11 years old and has hunted in Brown or Adams County every season since. “You should have seen my son’s reaction. He about fell out of his chair.”

The deer appeared to be at least a 14-point buck.

“He’s mine,” Trent Smith said. “That’s the one I’m after.”

His dad chuckled.

“You know it’s not that easy, right, son?” Charlie Smith said. “Just hope you get a shot at something.”

Trent held firmly to the belief that buck would still be around for the opening day of the Illinois firearms deer hunting season, which runs Nov. 22-24 and Dec. 5-8, even if his dad continually warns him not to get lured too much by one photo.

“You don’t know if you’ll ever see him again,” Charlie said. “But you know he’s out there.”

And he has a target on his back.

“I’m not shooting anything until I see him,” Trent said. “I’ll let other bucks pass because I want the biggest buck out there. That’s him. He’s huge.”

Charlie said he won’t allow Trent to wait too long without taking a shot.

“Being patient on opening day makes sense,” Charlie said. “As the the days that follow, you can’t let every deer pass, unless you’re only hunting for trophy’s sake. We’re not. We’re hunting to fill our freezers with meat. We eat what we kill. If we kill a trophy buck, it’s a bonus, not an objective.”

Some may ask then, why the trail cams?

“We use those to track movements and see if we are setting up our deer stands in the right places,” Charlie said. “If we see a big buck on one of the cameras, that’s another bonus. It doesn’t change our hunting plan.”

At least not his.

“I still want to go for the big buck,” Trent said. “That’s the only deer I want to see.”

Soon enough, Charlie said, his son will learn it’s not that easy.

“You have to take care of the task at hand,” Charlie said. “For us, that’s stockpiling food. Trent will learn that, and he’ll understand you only trophy hunt once the job is done. And there are never any guarantees you will see or get the chance to take a trophy buck. You may see them and never get a shot at them.

“He’s young and he’s aggressive, but he’s excited to go hunting. That thrills me. Opening day can’t get here soon enough.”