Does anyone have any experience with the Moultrie d-444 trail camera? I received two of them for Christmas and was just curious how good they work. Thanks
I have 4. I really like them for the most part, but I have nothing to really compare them to personally. They seem to work just fine except for the annoying habit of only taking pictures of deer's rear ends as they leave the FOV. Part of that is my fault as on one of my set ups there's no real good place to put the cam except right on top (less than 5 yards) of the trail. I mostly solved that issue by buying 16BG cards and setting it to video. The video seems to catch them a little faster than the still shot. The do a real nice job of not scaring deer. Had many walk right past in both day and night and they never do more than casually glance at the unit. My only other complaint is the distance seems to be pretty limited at night...it picks up motion and eyes out to about 25-30 yards on a dark night, but they need to be w/in 20-25 to see them clearly. The biggest buck I got on camera was a 140+ 8-10 point that was ghosting right under my stand at the max effective distance of ~25yds. Even though he was on camera for over 10 seconds, I never could quite tell how many points he had. It was a cloudy night so no moon or stars to help. Anyway, overall I like them. I got mine at Gander early this year for $65, they were running a big sale.
Dnoodles, if possible you might want to try and point your camera "down" the trail that way you see them coming or going and not just when they pass the camera. I have a few friends who run a couple of these cameras and they seem to like them. I myself have several of the Moultrie M-880 and I love them. I had an issue with a camera and luckily I was still with in 1 year so I sent it in and they sent me a new one. The rep I talked to on the phone was really nice and answered all my questions. If you ever intend on spending good money on camera's I would say always try to get the extended warranty just in case.
yeah, like I said kind of my own fault. Being a bit greedy and trying to get them coming/going both ways at a trail intersection with a mock scrape. Worked great if they paused, but if they were on a mission they would cruise right on by. Problem largely solved by setting it to video.
well over a month (at least) w/ decent alkaline batteries. Your card will likely get filled up before the batteries died. In fact, none of my batteries died this season but I only left one of my cameras up for 2 months, the rest were up for a week or two, down for 2-3, then back up.
