Game Cams

[jethro]

Does anyone know anything about game cams? good brands? cost? features needed?

[hunTer06]

try this


http://www.ohiosportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9113

[all4abuck]

http://www.jesseshunting.com/forums/index.php?showforum=50

I have built a few and its both cheaper and more robust than the ones you purchase. You can get the controller and the rest of the stuff from:

http://www.pixcontroller.com/

Then you can get yourself a digital cam from eBay and rig it up per instructions given on these sites.

[ncboman]

http://www.chasingame.com/

[jethro]

I see from the chasing game website that the moultrie digital has a 6v lantirn batery that "will last for months". But I am reading from the hunter forums that it lasts for 2 weeks.
Does anyone have some experience with this one?

[bowwinkles]

Jethro,---Sorry for the confusion on how we determined battery life on the Moultrie. I have edited the writeup to reflect the proper battery life. When the higher resolution is selected and most of the pictures are day time (larger file size per picture) the battery life is shortened. By useing the standard resolution and if the bulk of your pictures are at night the battery life is greately improved. We use rechargable batterys with solar panels aimed at the morning sun and wit an average of 2 to 50 pictures per week we have gone two months without a battery change. Some of the cameras have gone over six months and the panel has kept the battery full. Please go back to our site and review the new write up www.chasingame.com. Hope this has helped. Bill

[jethro]

I still find the review misleading. It leads me to conclude that the choice for a $200 price range game cam is overwhelmed by a 2 month battery life.

Might be more helpful to state unaccessorized battery life for what it is. And since it does appear to be a critical product feature to those of us in the woods, then it would be good to add summaries of battery life with a matched comparison basis.

Obviously the accessorized cameras will compare differently in performance, but it will change the price grouping too.

[bowwinkles]

Jethro,---This cam sells for around $100 from most sources including wal mart. a pair of rechargables from moultrie is $18
and the panel sells for $20 even with a couple of SD cards we are still less than $200. Due to the number of cameras we are dealing with we would go broke fast if we were to use standard batterys in all cams. The first field test is always done with standard batterys and there after we are forced to use our rechargables. We relize that these cameras are expensive toys and a lot of thought needs to be given prior to a purchase. This is exactly how I got into these reviews. My first two purchases were very bad because and even with the internet there just was no place to go to get good factual information. We found that what some of the makers of these cams advertised things that were far from factual. I began purchasing and evaluating each of the popular cams in order to help some local folks to know what to stock in their stores so that when they sold a camera it would not be returned due to some problem. The amount of data grew to the point that the only logical means to get this data out was to start a site. Expressing myself on paper has not been my strongest thing, But we do try to give the best possible un biased information we can. We are still sorry for the confusion. As you can see we at www.chasingame.com do follow most of the forums to see camera problem areas so we can direct our testing to those areas in order to aide our fellow sportsmen. Bill

[jethro]

Do you have an idea of the battery life (rechargeable or not) on the Moultrie without accessories?

[trapperack]

hey bill, have you tried the cam from sportsmans guide? battery life seems to be excellent. trigger speed maynot be the best, but for a 2.1 meg pict. and sd card use, it seems to be priced right. i have one and posted a couple pics at,http://ohiosportsman.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9113 (http://)
my freind has the one from walymart, and he claims 2 weeks tops on batteries, wether it takes any pics or not! i have never hooked up a 6 volt too mine, the "c" battieres seem to last forever!

[bowwinkles]

Jethro,---Our first out with the cam was in the summer and regular battreys were still working at two months when we switched to the panel and rechargable. cam was set at reg. rez.
one pic per event 24 hr. Bill

Trapper,---If the cam you are talking about is the stealth cam
that uses c batterys the answer is no but we have the 2.0 MP
Wildview made by stealth arriving this week for a review. Bill

[trapperack]

mine just has "guide gear's" name on it. not sure who makes it for them. i looked at the stealth cams and believe there are some differences, but i'm no expert! i just tried the link i put up beforeand i see now it doesn't work. sportsmansguide.com is the webpage. i just searched digital game camera. it is around $140.

[bowwinkles]

Trapper,---The cam in sportsman guide for $140 is the same cam that is in Cabelas for $99. Cabelas calls it the 2.0 Wildview. This is the cam that is due in here for testing this week. These cams are made by Stealth Cam.

[trapperack]

i just checked it out on cabelas page. it looks close but i'm still not sure its the same one. sportsmansguide also has a wildview cam but it is only .3 megapixel, for $90.

do the manufactures change the layout of components and cases for different companies, but still use all the same hardware inside?

[bowwinkles]

Trapper,---Try www.cabelas.com when that comes up select hunting/optics when that comes up select under wildlife management scouting and trail cameras. the camera on the top right is the .3 Wild view scroll down and the camera on the bottom right is the 2.0 Wild view. Same cam as yours. Bill

[trapperack]

not trying to argue with you, but mine says 2.1 meg and the layout of the openings on the front are different. are they still the same cam?

mine
http://image.sportsmansguide.com/dimage/93986_ts.JPG?cell=200,200&cvt=jpeg

cabelas

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/content/Pod/03/57/26/p035726sq03.jpg

[bowwinkles]

Trapper,---I believe you are correct. At a glance they look very simular. Sorry for the confusion. I did not enlarge the pictures as you did. Bill

[jethro]

Bowwinkles,
You are "the Man" !
Thanks!

[jethro]

OK Bowwinkles,
It lasts two months with one click per day.
Does that mean that the battery lasts for 60 clicks? Would it go dead in one day if it took 60 clicks? Will it go dead in two months at 30 clicks?

What is the average number of clicks per day? I know that's hard to say....a good spot would have more clicks than a poor spot and birds, small game, and swaying trees/brush can set it off I assume? We need to see the curves in order to make smart choices.

Maybe there is a "no click" battery life as one performance metric, and then there is a one click per day metric, and then a 5 clicks per day, and so on depending on the memory and resolution.
That's what we need to compare these toys.

The picture quality is probably not the primary deciding issue for hunters. Although it might be for some. It would do me good to have you assume a marginal picture quality. Enough quality to make a shoot decision.

[bowwinkles]

Jethro,--- With all the variables It would be hard to give you the milage for this engine. With one bad plug it goes down (all day pictures) with another bad plug it would go down further (more pictures). I would love to tell you that you can get a 100 MPG
but in the case of a trail camera all we can say is what we have experenced and on an average this camera does very well as far as battery life. If you go to your local wal Mart and happen to get a battery that was stuck in the system for a couple years , its life would probably not be as good as one manufactured last week.
We follow these comments about "no pictures and the battery was dead" on some of the forums but I can truely tell you that our cams have never had this problem. On occasion we have placed a cam where the folage or tree movement has set it off and we have had 400+ pictures per week and the battery was down even with the solar panel. Bill