Increasing Detections of Small to Medium-sized Mammals Using Multiple Game Cameras

D. Blake Sasse^1,*, Jaclyn S. Reifeiss², and Roger W. Perry³

¹Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, 213A Highway 89 South, Mayflower, AR 72106. ²Hendrix College, 1600 Washington Avenue, Conway, AR 72032. ³Southern Research Station, US Forest Service, PO Box 1270, Hot Springs, AR 71902. *Corresponding author.

Southeastern Naturalist, Volume 22, Issue 1 (2023): 36–42

Abstract
Surveys using game cameras have become a standard method to determine presence of small to medium-sized mammals such as Spilogale putorius (Eastern Spotted Skunk). Surveys typically use a single camera at each site; however, prior work with other species suggests that single cameras are less likely than multiple cameras to detect small and mid-size mammals. During the winters of 2019−2020 and 2020−2021, we placed 71 camera stations in the Arkansas Ozarks, with each station having 2 cameras aimed at the same target. We used detections of a common species, Sciurus carolinensis (Eastern Gray Squirrel), to determine if adding an additional camera at each site could increase detections of animals similar in size. Overall, detections increased 27% with the addition of a second camera. We found that a second camera increased Eastern Gray Squirrel detections by 15.6% when the animal was closer than 1 body-length from the target bait tree and 41.2% when the animal was more than 1 body-length from the bait tree. We conclude that a single camera may miss a significant number of detections of small to medium-sized animals and could bias results of detection/non-detection studies.

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