Summer is one of my favorite times of year. I love fishing and coaching baseball. However, what I love to do most in the summertime is setting up trail cameras.

From June to August, whitetail bucks will grow antlers at the fastest rates of the antler growing period. Bucks can grow up to a half an inch per day, especially in July.

Steve Sherk Jr.

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By setting up trail cameras and checking them to see bucks growing antlers in your hunting areas, you can get ahead of the game this fall when hunting season begins.

The best place to find and observe whitetails during the summer months is around browse sources. Even though it’s typically a hot time of year, deer are extremely active around food sources the whole summer. Food is the ultimate key in the summertime and a whitetail’s diet from May through August is almost entirely green browse.

For most of us who hunt public land, we have to focus on natural browse versus food plots and supplemental food sources. There’s a wide variety of natural, quality browse this time of year; however, the best food for big bucks right now through the end of summer is jewelweed. Jewelweed is rich in nutrients, but better yet, it’s full of water. When green browse is abundant, whitetails can get as much as 50% of their water intake from what they eat. You’d think this time of year, deer would spend a lot of time close to water, but when green browse is widely available, they typically stick around food because they can get both nutrition and water intake from what they are eating.

Jewelweed reminds me of watermelon. I love a fresh slice of watermelon on a hot summer day. It soothes both my thirst and my appetite.

Deer spend a lot of time on north slopes during the summer months. North slopes are cooler and they hold more moisture. Even though north faces lack sunlight, which generally has a negative impact on plant life, jewelweed does extremely well on north slopes.

A lot of times, jewelweed will grow inside of mountain springs. Quite often, I’ll find jewelweed growing right in the water of a mountain spring. The roots are sucking up water 24 hours a day. I’ve found spring runs in the summertime that looked like pig pens, trampled with deer tracks because they were heavily feeding on it. If you find jewelweed this time of year, you’ll find deer, and very likely big bucks that most of us love to pursue.

Setting up trail cameras where jewelweed is abundant is a great way to locate bucks and watch them grow in your hunting areas.

When you locate jewelweed and you plan to set up trail cameras around it, look for spots that have yet to be heavily browsed. Once the plant has been eaten, deer won’t come back to it because the upper stem is what they eat. I like to find patches of jewelweed that are heavily browsed and then I’ll start scanning the perimeters of the area to find areas that have yet to be eaten. Focus trail cameras where jewelweed hasn’t been nibbled on. Eventually they will come to it.

You can place a trail camera right in the middle of the jewelweed or on the edges of the browse line, but I most prefer to create mock scrapes in areas with an abundance of jewelweed. Bucks are extremely territorial during the summer months, especially around food. Bucks establish their rankings within bachelor groups during the summertime by marking their territory on scrapes. By setting up a trail camera on a mock scrape or natural scrape around jewelweed, you’ll be in the best spot there is for summertime big buck Intel.