A Porcupine in the swamp
No elk I think because of the hot weather, but did get several photos of a porky eating grass and brush in the swamp. I had placed my cameras in poor locations for anything but bull elk and they were no where to be seen, so was lucky to get any pictures.
I really thought I would have some elk photos on one camera because while walking on the trail I never ran into any cobwebs, a sure sign that a larger animal had recently passed by heading toward the camera. The batteries were dead on the camera so will never know for sure.
posted by cliff @ 9:15 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I have a technical question for you. When you find a "game" trail and want to know which animals are using it, how do you orient your camera? I use stock trail cams (not fancy homemades like yours), and I'm finding that they don't do well in detecting animals walking straight at them. So, I'm trying to set them up so that the animal will be moving across the field (at least when he first enters the frame). That can be tough, given detection distance issues. Do you have any tried and true rules of thumb for setting up a cam by a game trail?
I always enjoy your photos, and I'm glad that your cams are back in the field. I chuckled at your last post - as a wife, I wish that my husband would listen to my requests as well as you seem to listen to your wife's! Pulling your cams to do home projects - wow!
Good to see you are back, Cliff. Was wondering what was up, and now I guess I know. (I'm not telling my wife though.)
KB, I build my cameras so any of them can be set aimed across a game trail out to 12 feet. This works for all animals with the camera set from 2 to 3 feet above the ground and aimed level. I very seldom want a photo farther than 12 feet from the camera, especially at night.
If your camera is slow to take a photo, then you have two choices..one is to set the camera farther from the trail, but not over 12 feet, or second is to slow the animal down for the camera by laying a large stick across the trail for smaller animals and make them walk over it(that can give you a second or so) or maybe use some scent for larger animals just to make them stop for a second.
I'll try to be tackful, the only scent I use would be human urine scent, just be sure the camera is turned off before placing the scent.
Hope this helps
Hmmmm, humane urine, that's interesting. Wouldn't it scare off critters? I've also had the same problem as KB, but I've started setting my camera at popular watering places along creeks. I've also heard that critters will investigate the scent of vanilla, how true this is, I'm not sure, and whether you want to use expensive vanilla in this fashion is your choice. But I have tried to do it in front of my trail camera once and no pictures were taken of curious critters sniffing at it. But the area had also recently had a flood, so whether or not animals were still using the trail, I'm not sure. I'll try it again and see what happens.
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