Do you use any trail cams?

I was thinking of picking up a trail cam on Amazon but I don't know much about them. In terms of quality or what to look for. A co-worker says his wife bought a couple but he isn't really technologically with it to give me advice.

I saw this posted on social media tonight which reminded me of the subject.

There is no information on where it is unfortunately.

https://i.imgur.com/FkOvfMl.jpg

Our neighbour went to Cabelas and bought a high end one, with video in colour, after her two cats disappeared within three weeks of each other. She thought she'd catch a Fisher or maybe even a coyote but all she saw on it was trespassing kids playing in her pool and jumping off her roof into the pool. Make sure your tail cam is silent. I was alerted to one in the bush by the shutter going off. Made me wonder how many deer (it was put there for deer hunting) it scared off. Have you seen the one of all the animals crossing the log? Fantastic.

Well a lot of what you want to buy is really what you want to do. Just like any camera on the market these days there are lots of options.

When it comes to Brands, Bushnell is pretty much the standard. While there are other brands. Bushnell is pretty much the brand to go for if you don't want to do a whole lot of research. It's kind of like saying I want a new camera, you probably going to go with Cannon, or Nikon your going to spend a couple hundred dollars and your going to get pretty great results for what you want to do. Sure there are other brands of Camera, and some may perform way better but your going to be into them for a much higher price in the thousands and your pretty much going to be a pro. So just to make it easy stick with bushnell. This is the brand a lot of Department of Natural Resources use here, they are easy to work with and relatively inexpensive for what you get.

Then basically it comes down to features. You can see the whole line here
Bushnell - Trophy Cam HD


They have a really simple guide to walk you through choosing the best camera for you
Bushnell - Choosing the Right Trophy Cam


Basically there are the 2 main models. Low Glow and No Glow. Basically comes down to night vision, Low glow can be seen at night if directly looking at the camera, no glow is completely dark.

Then each of those have 24 MP vs 20 mp cameras.

Then they have wireless options as well if you want to connect it to your wireless network. Even have a cellular option you can configure to connect to cellular service so out in the wood if you have a phone signal you can still connect to the camera remotely.

Then they have the Essential line, the lower end line, this can get you into it for under $100. Little lower quality camera, not as good night vision with low glow but still decent.

Here is the camera I've been using for the past couple of years.

Stealth Cam G42 No-Glo Trail Game Camera STC-G42NG

Purchased from Amazon for $100. Works great both day and night.
Here's a couple of pics taken while set up over food and water looking for sign of a yellow lab lost in a traffic accident. I like that it gives you details of the picture (time, date, temperature, moon phase).
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We have a couple of the Bushnell cams. We've used it to figure out what was trying to dig under the chicken coop (badger), figuring out where the porcupines that kept sticking spines into our cattle noses were living so we could...dispatch them (rock pile on the BLM land behind the property), tracking where the elk bed down on the BLM land behind out property (in the lottery for a tag this year so we're marking likely spots). We also keep a motion triggered one facing the trail on the BLM property outside our fence. It mostly catches mountain bikers, equestrians, dog walkers, and critters, but we occasionally get a shot of illegal dirt bikes or quads that we share with our friendly BLM ranger (it's a non-motorized vehicle zone and jerks like to rip down the signs and fences to short cut out to a shooting pit a few miles behind us). They've been durable and reliable, highly recommend them.

I found one for $100 cnd ($69 us) called the Powerextra 12MP 1080P HD Hunting Trail Game Camera that might do the trick. I see some people are using bike type locks to fasten them around trees or posts.

I used https://www.trailcampro.com/ for both research and purchase. It was pre-Christmas and they had a great deal on bundles. I actually returned what I had gotten at Cabelas and for slightly more money, I got the camera, security case, batteries, mounting strap and a bigger SD card. I got a Browning mid-grade No Glow camera because we were not sure we'd get into using it. But we love it.

Going to get at least another camera but looking at a better quality for night shots. We've got pics of a mountain lion family, bobcat, skunk, mule deer, neighbor's dog and a few trespassers cutting through to a trail down the hill.

I may have told this story before but deer hunters left their trail cam up after the season ended. When they finally retrieved it and viewed it they saw two guys bring a deer up near the camera and load it onto their ATV. This was after the season had ended. The good hunters notified MNR, gave them the footage and the poachers got caught. :)