do you guys use different cameras for different situations(bait, trails, food plot, scrape,) if so what camera?
I do, however, position them different depending on the situation. IE. on trails, I point the camera up or down the trail to get more pics of a moving deer. @ mineral sites, I place them more broadside. and a water crossing or feeding area, I tend to hang them high to get a better view... etc, etc....
The longer I use trailcams, the more specialized I am becoming. I use my homebrews in situations where I expect the subject to be no more than 2ft from the camera. With the homebrews I am after the best quality photo I can get. Some of my other sets are dictated by the speed of the camera. If it's only a trail situation I will probably go with my Reconyx or the Bushnell. If it's a bait station or mineral site, almost any camera will do. I must say that if you have an established bait station or mineral site it won't matter what type of camera you use because the deer will be occupied with the food and will ignore the camera. I agree with Fitz about the trail thing. Always point them up or down the trail and not pointing across it. Blessings.......Pastorjim
My slower triggering trail cams go over mineral licks and by over i mean directly above or to the side but 9-13 feet above to get the flash out of the line of site of the deer and trespassers. One note on video and burst mode the longer the flash duration of your cams the more your deer are going to pick the cam off and avoid the setup,move the cam up and off the ground using a step ladder or a lower section of climbing sticks and set the cam pointing down at the trail or cam site. your pic numbers will increase as you do this. Near scrape site i move the cam back as far as the cam will trigger because not all bucks will walk up to another bucks scrape and the ir flash will spook a number of bucks away for this i like the blackflash cams and again off the ground. blackfash cams dont have the range as well as a reg red stoplight cam but the whole idea is to get pics of deer i can hunt not push away by tipping them off that i have been there. A good fast triggering cam I like for trails the farther you can set the cam away from the trail the more i like it, keeps scent away from the trails and the ir flash up off the ground 9-13 feet will keep the deer from simply walking around your cams. I use the zoom feature allot on the computer to look at pics. Also i like to use a spray scent to spray on trails where i want the deer to stop for a better picture,I have a spray bottle that will shoot almost 10 feet with a mixture of 24 oz canola oil and a bottle of vanilla extract mixed in shake well and sprayed on the trail from as far as i can shoot it from . When your mature deer pics start to drop off then you have most likely have blown your cover and will need to move the cam. I maybe extreme but with 14 cams running on three pcs of ground I have learned a few things over the years. I like to set cams downwind off my sites like I set my stands most of the time when it's raining or going to rain soon after i leave the area And i check them the same way every 3-5 weeks.Most cams face northeast for the best pics and to keep from sun triggering the cams.. My hunting ground has alot of people hunting the edges and i would rather they mess up there spots and move deer to my ground then the other way around. Keep in mind that i am in a heavily hunted area and the deer are on high alert and wont take much intrusion before the go nocturnal so i am pretty @nal about things. Some deer dont seem to mind but some deer do and dont return it's the big deer that i only get single pics and videos of a deer that got me trying new things. Some cams spend more time being return for repair then they get used so do your research on some of the websites that review cams like http://www.chasingame.com/ and after you find a cam look in the forum section of that site and read more in depth about the cam you like. The end users know more about failure and return rates of the cams in question after being used in the field then anyone testing a off the shelf unit for one day. Sorry this is so long. good luck:D
