Snapshot Wisconsin Marks 10th Year with its 100 Millionth Photo

   Those of us who scouted for deer in the 1980s sometimes rigged strings across game trails so an animal’s hoof or lower leg tripped a little clock to reveal when the critter happened by.

   If we went really high-tech, we used a 24-hour clock marked in military time to reveal if the string got yanked between midnight and noon or noon to midnight. Either way, we also cleared the trail of leaves and raked its dirt to get identifiable tracks. With all that,  we still couldn’t be certain which passing deer, squirrel, turkey, raccoon or roughly 20 other usual suspects stopped the clock.

   Yes, Junior, we often made our own gee-wiz trail-monitoring gear back then. So, don’t snicker too much when your mom, uncle or grandpop reminisces about the mid-1990s scouting revolution that brought trail-monitoring film cameras and 1-hour photo developing booths. Little did we know digital cameras would make film obsolete by 2005; and that cellular cameras would soon follow, sending images straight to your tablet, smartphone or desktop computer.

   We also didn’t realize the scientific community was simultaneously putting such technology to use in wildlife research. By the mid-1990s they were using trail cameras to estimate the size of local deer herds; and identify how often white-tailed bucks visited scrapes, bit overhanging limbs, or rubbed their antlers and forehead glands on saplings.

   And by 2015, researchers were designing “crowd-sourced” trail-cam studies to engage “citizen-scientists” in long-term data collecting. Those initiatives included “Snapshot Wisconsin,” which celebrated its 10-year anniversary in July by downloading its 100 millionth wildlife photo snapped by its network of 2,000 volunteer trail-cam monitors statewide.

These elk were photographed near the Flambeau River in Sawyer County by a Snapshot Wisconsin trail camera. It’s one of over 3,360 elk photos taken since 2017 by cameras monitored by Snapshot Wisconsin volunteers.   — Photo by Snapshot Wisconsin

   The Department of Natural Resources coordinates Snapshot Wisconsin, and strategically arranges six or more cameras per 100-square-mile areas to cover all 72 counties. To do that, the DNR divided Wisconsin into 6,271 survey blocks covering 9 square miles each. Since 2020, the DNR has worked with about 2,000 volunteers annually to monitor roughly a third of those survey blocks to collect data on wildlife.

   The agency provides each volunteer with a Bushnell trail camera, rechargeable battery, SD card, and a bear-proof box for sites susceptible to these four-legged vandals. The DNR doesn’t issue cellular-equipped cameras because of their higher cost and inconsistent coverage.

   Volunteers can’t place cameras just anywhere in their assigned survey block, and they can’t use bait or other attractants. Instead, they must find a naturally reliable spot along game trails, trail-crossings and geographic features that funnel wildlife past a camera. The cameras also can’t be near human activity, and they must be checked and their photos uploaded to Snapshot Wisconsin’s database at least every three months.

   Once volunteers settle on a site, they mount the camera about 15 yards away, placing it 2½ to 3 feet off the ground and angled slightly down the trail. The DNR programs each camera to snap three photos whenever it detects motion, so a well-positioned, properly angled camera gets at least one good picture if a critter is moving fast.

   The work doesn’t end there. Roughly 25,000 volunteers also help identify photographed wildlife by visiting the Snapshot Wisconsin webpage on Zooniverse, a global crowdsourcing platform. That task isn’t easy if the bird or mammal appears as a dark blur passing through part of the image. Some photos must get viewed repeatedly by Zooniverse inspectors before they reach consensus.

Not surprisingly, the most easily recognized animals in these photos are white-tailed deer, said Christine Anhalt-Depies, who leads the Snapshot Wisconsin project. She said the DNR’s rules for reaching ID consensus vary by species. Although deer photos often get “retired” quickly from the lineup, furbearers like fox, coyotes, wolves, weasels, mink, otters and fishers can require longer reviews by multiple viewers. 

   Whitetails also easily win the “most photographed” species, providing over 5.14 million photos in Snapshot Wisconsin from January 2018 to December 2024. Squirrels and chipmunks are a distant second with 581,315 photos, and raccoons are third with 439,220 photos.

   Visitors to the DNR’s website often spend hours viewing the Snapshot Wisconsin Photo Library, which shares downloadable color or black-and-white photos of birds and mammals caught on camera. Visitors can also study the Snapshot Data Dashboard, which shares trail-camera data for 22 species of Wisconsin wildlife. Besides tracking how many individual birds and critters Snapshot Wisconsin photographed the past eight years, the database charts each species’ daily and monthly activity levels.

   All these photos and data will keep generating insights into Wisconsin’s wildlife because of those thousands of volunteers, most of whom are stalwarts. DNR data show 90% of Snapshot Wisconsin volunteers complete their 1-year commitments and 67% devote at least three years to the program. Some have been participating since the program began 10 years ago.

   Today’s typical Snapshot Wisconsin volunteer is a 52-year-old white male hunter who single-handedly performs the required tasks. More specifically, 98% of volunteers are white, 66% are male and 64% hunt; while 73% participate alone and the rest include their family or friends. Further, 32% talked with DNR staff the previous year and 28% previously volunteered with a wildlife group.

   Those traits have changed slightly since 2017, when 75% of Snapshot Wisconsin volunteers were male, their average age was 61, and 66% hunted, 66% discussed wildlife with DNR staffers the previous year, and 37% had previously volunteered with other wildlife groups.

   Their efforts the past decade have also contributed data for 20 scientific research projects by the DNR and University of Wisconsin.

   That alone should make every Wisconsin hunter, angler and conservationist proud of their contributions to wildlife management.