Artificial Intelligence meets Trail Cameras: The Buck Finder
Of all the innovations in the hunting world, trail cameras arguably represent the best advancement for whitetail hunting and scouting. They often serve as our eyes amid the woodlots, trails, and food sources that make up our hunting grounds. In doing so, they provide crucial information on the bucks frequenting our hunting properties. Trail cameras also reveal valuable data, such as time and weather conditions associated with deer movement.
The resulting intel is not only practical for hunting, but it helps establish a realistic plan for harvesting deer and other game. Trail cameras are an invaluable part of a hunter’s arsenal during the season, as well as offseason periods. Best of all, they represent a low-impact method for scouting. That is, they minimize time spent in the field, spooking deer and spreading human scent.
Reducing Trail Camera Image Chaos
Despite the useful technology that trail cameras provide, it’s easy to end up with gobs of images in disarray; especially when you run multiple cameras. Juggling memory cards and locating and organizing the more valuable images often turns into a fiasco. It’s laborious enough to keep cameras charged and consistently maintain a good set of clean memory cards. The process screams for a solution – one that allows you to efficiently access the images you want and discard the ones you don’t. You know, the useless pictures of wind-blown weeds, livestock, raccoons, and the like.
Enter the Buck Finder.
Buck Finder owner and founder, Chuck Wilson, is a long-time deer hunter and knows these problems all too well. In search of a solution, his entrepreneurial spirit leads to tireless development and testing of a compelling image organization product. The result is a flat-out straightforward approach for faster and easier identification of area bucks – and sometimes even specific ones. And it does so without the useless images commonly generated by trail cams.
“I started noticing the amount of time I was spending in front of a computer going through pictures rather than spending time with my family and friends,” Wilson said. “It was even interfering with my leisure time around the fire at the ranch. This is really when the concept of Buck Finder was born”.
“I wanted to create a product that served all hunters and worked with any game camera, regardless of budget,” Wilson said.
The Buck Finder provides an instrument that will work on the most advanced game cameras, as well as low-end ones. Additionally, it can be used retroactively with old game camera images. The upshot of this is an ability to proficiently pattern bucks and manage herds for both the solo hunter on 20-acres and the ranch manager overseeing thousands of acres and multiple properties.
Separating the Men from the Boys
…or rather the does from the bucks. How often do you find yourself wearily scrolling through images simply looking for bucks? What about specific types of bucks? The Buck Finder uses a digital process of artificial intelligence. Here, the tool utilizes recognition technology through Google – and this recognition methodology only gets better with time, as the algorithm becomes increasingly intelligent. Simply put, it becomes progressively easier to identify the animals in your images. For example, it can recognize and isolate bucks, does, and hogs – even poachers. By drilling down to only the types of game images you want, you’re left with a much more manageable collection for analysis and filing. It’s that simple.
Valuable Time
Perhaps the best benefit of the Buck Finder is its time-saving qualities. For years, I’ve spent countless hours of drudgery scrolling through thousands of images in search of shooter bucks, deer patterns, and other information. Even the most hardcore deer hunters will admit that this exercise eventually gets old. Not only does the task evolve into a frustrating mess, but it also takes you away from other worthwhile activities – sometimes even hunting.
How it Works
Using the Buck Finder is easy. Go to the signup link at TheBuckFinder.com, where you will find a free 7-day trial. Here, you can register for monthly use or, for a reduced price, sign up for a year. The dashboard is easy to follow and provides a few basic choices, including folder and sorting options. Within your preferred folder structure, the Buck Finder allows you to dump thousands of camera images seamlessly. It automatically does so by compressing the files, which provides for the redownloading of photos and maximized membership duration.
Using trail cameras can mean the difference between big buck success and a tag sandwich. The Buck Finder offers seamless organization of your game cam images, making hunt planning and game management less of a chore. Stack the hunting odds in your favor by taking advantage of clear, organized deer intel. Elevate your hunting and scouting game today with the Buck Finder.
Key Features: Buck Finder
- Online access to trail camera photos
- 64 GB of storage for the life of the membership
- Automatic image file compression
- Multiple image sorting capabilities
- Long-term cloud-based image storage
- Increasingly effective results over time (through artificial intelligence)
- $9.99/month or $89.99/year
Based in Texas, Jerald Kopp is President of 1st Light Hunting Journal. His articles cover a variety of topics about hunting and the outdoor lifestyle. Jerald is an avid outdoorsman with deer hunting and whitetails being by far his greatest passion. He was introduced to hunting and fishing at an early age and has been enjoying it for 40+ years. In 2005, he established the Empowerment Outfitter Network (EON) – a faith-based non-profit organization that provides hunting opportunities for disabled and terminally-ill children and youth. When not hunting, he spends his time traveling and enjoying life with Amy, his wife of over 30 years. Jerald and Amy have two adult daughters and a son-in-law.