Idea as a hunting substitute?

[Canuck Bob]

My health has eliminated big game hunting for me. The greatest loss is teaching my kids about wild animals. Last week on a wellsite one of our hands showed me some trail cam videos of wolves he got. Outstanding video was captured.

I got thinking I could go out and teach them about animals and hunting like the trail cam was a trap and make a set.

Here's the rub, I am one of those guys who lumps range finders, scopes, trail cams, synthetic stocks, and red dots as gadgets of no interest to me. I really am a guy who thinks hunting went down hill when hunters started trading in their levers for bolt actions with scopes and rubber soled Bean boots for quads.

Now I need to ask of wiser folks than myself what kind of trail cam would work for a family tradition of capturing pics and vids for a Dad and his daughters? I'm guessing high quality graphics and video capable. Any advice on not getting the thing stolen would be appreciated. I want to incorporate it into overnight camping trips and day hikes in the City of Calgary. We got rabbits, coyotes, and I suspect the odd bear, mountain lion, and lynx close to our house. It would be something to get a shot of a big cat close to the city! Two legged varmints in my alley is also an option.

[Chuck 100 yd]

I have never owned a trail cam but usually today you get what you pay for. There is a lot of competition in that market so they will be priced as low as possible to make the sale.

I feel for you not being able to hunt any more. My hunting buddy has cancer and may not last much longer.
We hunted together last year and hope to again this year but it is not looking good at this time. He is a go getter but those pain meds are not compatible with firearms .

[Marc]

Sorry to hear you can't hunt anymore. I have two cheap cameras here that a friend loaned me. I have them in the back yard to take pictures of the deer and other varmints that eat my fruit. They are 2 Megapixel Wildgame cameras. They actually take pretty good pictures - better than I expected. These are probably three years old and I don't know what is equivalent now. I would think anything now would be as good or better. Some sample pics:




I don't know anything about video. Just thought you might like to see what kind of pics a cheap one will take.

[Blaine]

That sucks. I'm sorry. Perhaps, consider being taken out to a place, and sitting in a comfortable lawn chair in in blind. I can barely walk anymore, but, I always find a way to go hunting.

[samb]

Bob, my brothers use trail cams I will as their opinion. Check your pm's for some wildlife intel. I started hunting by road hunting with my Dad, and two brothers. I was eleven, Eddy was nine and Jordan was seven. We would go for a camping trip up the Canol road and try calling moose. By the time I was thirteen we had started river hunting, success went up.

The thing to remember is shooting a grouse or rabbit is as exciting for a kid as shooting a Bighorn ram is for us.

Cruising the forestry trunk road and having lunch by a creek, then shooting a 22 is how I started my little guy yesterday. If they get up early they will see tones of game. Good luck I am sure the adventures will leave you grinning!

[AJMD429]

The thing to remember is shooting a grouse or rabbit is as exciting for a kid as shooting a Bighorn ram is for us.

GOOD POINT...!

Actually, I remember when my 6-year-old son decided the 'chore' of closing up the chicken-coop at night was all-of-a-sudden a FUN thing, was when he discovered he could take a pellet-pistol with him and shoot the mice that always were in there; the chickens would immediately attack the writhing just-shot victims, and tear them apart, ingesting protein to make us more eggs out of.

[RIHMFIRE]

I have a basic model Steath cam...
Gives you the time ,date and temp..
Check out the bear that was raiding my feeder

and....Dont give up on hunting...
I dont know what your situation is but
all my older hunting buddies used atvs, golf carts
or we dropped them off and helped them into the blind
or treestand...

[Canuck Bob]

I'm not giving up on hunting. I'm recovering from bone marrow cancer and treatment has been brutal. I must be very careful for awhile yet. I'll be cold when I give up hunting completely. I made a recent decision to work myself into shape as fast as possible. Besides my Win 32 Special needs a buck or two, maybe a blackie too. Thanks for the support.

[RustyJr]

Do they do ya'll have hunting leases up there in Canada like we do down here in the lower 48? I've never heard of it but am curious.

RustyJr

[Rusty]

Great picture there Ronnie. The caretaker at the lease we're at showed us some of the measures they've taken to try to defeat the bears. He says they have to take the handles off the winches to keep the bears from dropping the feeders. No kiddin... he says if you leave the handle on they will mess with them till they get the feeder on the ground. It must be like keeping the squirrels out of your bird feeder.
Didn't mean to hijack your thread Bob. But you did get me thinking, I wonder if anyone has ever built a website that is nothing but trail cam photos? You could put up a nice web page with tips and tricks on how to set everything up.
Trail cams are really nice these days. I remember when I was a kid at summer camp one year one of the councilors was an amateur photographer. He set up a camera on a tripod with a trigger on it so he could get a picture of a bobcat that was lurking around the mess hall at night.

[86er]

I have used a bunch of trail cameras recently and settled on the Leupold RX-2. On our property we had at least 6 Primos X-Cam's. They were hit or miss and 3 years later only one works. However, they were always problematic. Primos has great customer service and sent new cameras on 3 occassions, but I got tired of the great service and really needed a great camera. In my ME bear camp we used Cuddebacks (2006 models) and they all worked until 2011 and slowly had issues. No complaints about the function but I am convinced the flash scared away deer (not so much the bears). Two of these Leupolds have been in the field continuously since last May and they work perfect, have good battery life and excellent photo quality. They require a viewer to control them, and the viewer serves as an in-the-field picture viewer. My only complaint is that the time/date is hard to read on the viewer. However, you can scroll through and see if there are any pictures worth keeping before you move on. A feature allows to delete the pics on the camera so the card is fresh but they are retained on the viewer and can be viewed on a computer with the supplied USB cable. The 3rd of these RX-2's has been out since July this year and it works right out of the box. Open box, add batteries, plug in controller one time (sets time and date to camera), unplug controller and hang on tree. I'm sure there are some other reliable ones but these have been great for me. Good luck!

[Batman1939]

I, too, am looking at buying another (or some more) trail cameras. I have a Cuddeback (Expert I think?) that worked very well for about 4 yrs, then it stopped getting pictures at night even though it would occasionally flash. I never really got the impression that the flash scared deer very much as I typically had the camera set to take pics at 2 or 3 min intervals and most deer would be seen repeatedly over periods of time. One bear feeding under (and in) a neighbor's apple tree continued to be photographed over a period of 6 hrs from midnight till around 6 am one fall.

I've not bothered to set up my Cuddeback this year because of poor performance during night-time. Cuddeback does not provide good customer service on these older cameras and seems unwilling to work on them.

Trail cameras are amazing devices; it is surprising to see all the animals that occur in an area and learn something about their activity periods. I'm sure that both you and the kids would enjoy seeing pictures taken by yours; sounds like a good activity for the young'uns.

[2571]

Next door farmer spent couple of $k. One cost $400. Bears ate 'em all despite steel boxes & cages he put them in.

[Canuck Bob]

Do they do ya'll have hunting leases up there in Canada like we do down here in the lower 48? I've never heard of it but am curious.

RustyJr

Not in my experience. We have enormous amounts of Crown land still. We do not allow anyone to live on Crown land usually. In Alberta a short drive west from our population centers will get a guy on Crown land. It is logged and mined and oilfield so it is well travelled and there are roads and cutlines everywhere generally. In Alberta much of the north and west side forests are vast by many standards. Our ranchers on the east side do a booming business in guided whitetail and the private land is monitored closely and the big bucks well cared for.

There might be leases in the more populated areas in eastern Canada. I know there was once fishing leases of a sort on Maritime rivers but it might have been many years ago. If a guy is willing to drive a ways north we live in a sportsmen's paradise and frankly I have to kick myself once and awhile to see if I'm dreaming.

[Canuck Bob]

Regarding the cameras, Skypoint is a Canadian company and the reviews seem fine. For a couple hundred and change I can get one that is a "covert IR". The emitters are black and do not glow red as a give away. Could be a gimmick as far as I know!

One thing some searching made obvious, these things can be a good idea around the property as well. I'm blessed with a safe neighbourhood but there are occasional car prowlings and garage break-ins.

Here are the best links I've found. One sells them and one doesn't but they seem fair and do actual tests.

http://www.trailcampro.com/spypointbf-7review.aspx

http://www.chasingame.com/index.php?id=2