Originally Posted By: NickD90
Originally Posted By: stlhdr1
I haven't ran the cell cams, most spots I hunt are off grid and don't have the cell service. Wish I could though, would save some travel time checking cards.

Keith


They aren't worth the money. Most game cams aren't worth the money. They're designed to fail after about 2-3 years in the woods. It's a bonus if you can get one to last longer than that.

They fail from weather; trees & limbs, bears, hunters, trespassers & criminals. They're stolen even on private land, let alone the public woods. All things considered....yeah...about 2 years of use and then something bad is going to happen.

Most hunters don't need all those fancy and ever increasingly complex features. You only need a 8 - 10 mp camera, some no-glow IR's with a 60 - 80' trigger distance. $30 - 50 bucks tops. You can buy an 8 pack on Amazon for a little over $300. That's like a 12:1 ratio of cheap cams to a single high end cell cam.

I'll carpet bomb some of my elk spots with cheap cams. First, to pattern the elk and second, because I know half are going to either fail, be stolen or crunched on by a bear. I have cams out there I haven't checked in 2 years and I highly doubt they'll be there when I return.

Cheap is the way to go...at least for me...



Oh I've got my share of the Moultrie and Bushnell cams, this was the first year I didn't deploy any on the west side for elk. Did put some out on the East side again for our Archery Elk hunt but ended up with cattle galore and very few elk pics.. Bears seem to hammer the salt as well June/July... To me, they're counter productive in some ways. If you don't get a pic of a good bull it's common to not hunt the area that hard. I found bulls this year where cams didn't get pics of them, they seem to nest in little spots and often don't move around too much until the fresh scent of ass is in the air come the last 2 weeks of August and especially the first week of Sept, but by then we usually yank them do to the season opening there and the greasy fingers in the woods...

Keith
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It's time to put the red rubber nose away, clown seasons over.