Camera, How close is too close?

I am getting my first trail cam this week. I have a mineral station that I am going to put it on and later on a trail. I have a tree that is as close to the mineral station as 8' on out. I would love to have pics that close but, I don't want to scare off the deer with a flash either. So how close is too close?

 

I used to have the same set up. I had an old flash type trail camera and got hundreds of pictures a week, and deer that would stick around for an hour getting flashed at over and over. They adjusted to it. Once the figured out it wasn't a thread they pretty much ignored it. They wanted the mineral bad enough to hang around half the night.

 

I would try to put it back to about 20'. If you put it at 8' you might block out other deer in the background.

 

most of mine are 10-15' away

 

Mine are 10 to 30 feet. Just depends on the location.
I found the same thing with the flash, however, I don't like the flash type and the IRs are cheap enough to just use them.

 

I run mine about 12 feet But it is trial and error as all cams are different you need to find the happy distance for yours

Personally I hate black and white night pics :D

 

Mine are about 30 feet away. Further away the better I think. My Reconyx trail cams will trigger deer over 60 feet away.

 

Usually between 10 to 20. It varies depending on the camera. The cameras we have use IR so we don't have to worry about the flash scaring deer away.

 

2nd question. Where can i get a inexpensive IR trail cam that shoots decent pics? I hunt on private land but have to worry about others coming onto the property and stealing things. I only hunt from climbers now because i have had multiple stands and tripods stolen from the property.

Farm is an hour from the house so i dont get access to this property until the weekends to catch the thieves.

 

Personally, I'd bite the bullet and get a pretty decent IR camera. Of course you would want to lock that baby up. Cheaper cameras can cause alot of head aches expecually if its an hour away. Too many times we have went to check our cheaper cameras after a couple weeks and found out that they hadnt taken any pictures, had all blank pictures on them, or ran out of batteries.