Taken with the trailcam out back
Trail Cameras
Game/Trail camera Bleg
We bought a really cheap trail camera the spring after we moved in after seeing deer and turkey prints all winter in the snow. Of course, its cheap. Its reaction time from motion trigger to actual photo is at LEAST 1 second if not 2. Which doesn’t sound like much till you realize how quickly wildlife moves.
The problem: as we look at trail cameras things like trigger speed often aren’t mentioned, at least in the price range we’re looking at. I’d really like to keep this at not much more than $100 per camera cause we’re looking to buy 3 or 4 for the rest of the trails off the back of the property, and we’re not exactly made of money.
I’d kinda narrowed down my choices over the winter only to have the ones I was looking at either go up in price or no longer be availible.
I know there’s some hunter type people who read this, I’m hoping one or more of you has some experience with trail cameras, or can point me to a really good review site that has the information I’m looking at. I’ve already hit Cabelas, Dicks, Bass Pro, and Amazon looking at cameras and reading reviews.
Wants:
A faster trigger speed. I realize really fast is probly the realm of the $400+ cameras, but something faster than what we’ve got would be really nice.
Price preferably not much more than $100. $120 would probly be ok if the camera was perfect, but $150 isn’t going to happen unless I can find it on sale.
Taking D batteries would be nice as we already have a setup to recharge them, but a different battery type wouldn’t be a deal breaker.
A camera that would accept a solar panel would be a plus. Probly not going to buy the solar panels NOW, but in the future I can totally see that in the future.
I don’t need video, but infrared flash for night time would be nice, the one we haven’t doesn’t have that.
There was something in the yard last night
Based on the prints left in the frost it has doggy like paws about half the size of Apollo’s. I’m thinking coyote, but it could be stray dog. Whatever it was Apollo was NOT AMUSED. He spent half an hour this morning dragging me around the front yard, sniffing prints, peeing on strategic spots, and huffing away to himself. He’s now sitting infront of one of the front windows and won’t even come to breakfast.
The incredible memory card
So, I posted on Sunday about how I put my memory card for the trail camera through the wash by mistake. Since it wasn’t in evidence when the clothes were moved out of the washer or the dryer I figured it’d gotten washed down a pipe and that was the end of that. I even shook things out as I took them out of the dryer hoping I was wrong about that. But no luck.
Course, I was in a hurry Sunday, doing far to much on my day off, so the clean clothes never got put away. It was tshirts and jeans and the like anyway, nothing that was going to be ruined by sitting in the basket a couple extra days, so no big deal. Then this morning I realized today was Thursday and I’d STILL not put away the clothes, so after I got dressed I dumped them out onto my bed so I’d remember to put them away before I went to bed tonight, and guess what tumbled out of the pile? The memory SD card!! Cool!
Wonder if it still works after having been immersed in soapy water and heated in the dryer?
Plug it into the computer, and hey! The computer recognizes it! Even better….THE PICTURES ARE STILL THERE!!! Sweet!! So, with no further fuss, the best of the trail camera shots from last week.
Speaking of deer
there will be a temporary hiatus in the pictures from the trail camera. I took the card out this morning to check pictures (there were 18 according to the camera), and stuck it in my pocket for the trip back across the yard. Came back in covered in mud thanks to having a swamp for a yard (thanks mother nature), and a puppy who likes to splash in it. So I went to change clothes. And forgot to take the memory card out of the pocket. Stuffed the jeans in the laundry, decided I had enough for a full load, and dumped it all in the washer. Unfortunetly the memory card didn’t come out when the clothes did. I have this image of it being stuck in a line somewhere, being either a fire hazard or plugging the plumbing line….
This morning
Someone was wandering around out back while I was out front with the puppy! This is NOT the same buck as the last picture.
Deer! (again)
Husband’s of the opinion that it might be the same one, though the lighting is enough different its hard to tell.
Deer!
A couple months ago we set up a trail camera on one of the trails off the back of our property. We’d seen wild turkeys in the yard, and lots of deer tracks all winter. We were rather frustrated when week after week there were no photos of turkey or deer on the camera. Lots of random photos of the trees though, don’t know if waving branches set it off, or a bird flew by fast enough to avoid the photo or what. Twas rather annoying.
In the last couple weeks I’d seen the turkeys (or a bunch anyway) off one of the other trails in the back, which in retrospect wasn’t a huge surprise as there’s a small stream right there that stays wet in all but the driest weather. So I decided that after I checked the camera this week I’d move it to THAT trail and see what I got. What I wasn’t expecting was what was on my camera memory card when I checked it this afternoon!
First picture off the card! Cool! Wish it had gotten a bit more detail, but its a cheap camera, so I can’t complain.
Then I looked further…..
This young buck spent most of a half hour or so wandering back and forth in front of the camera. This is by far the best of the shots. The apple trees are only about 20ft behind the camera so I assume he was snatching bites.
How cool is that?
(now I want two cameras, one for each trail…..)
No pictures of the turkeys, but I’ll share this one from last fall instead:
