I am going to purchase my first trail cam for MI whitetail. There are many with a variety of prices. I would like recommendations on what has worked well for you.

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

I have a Higlander, a Recon Outdoors and a Cuddyback. All of them are infrared (no visible flash) The Cuddyback takes color photos in the daytime and infrared (black & white) at night.

I will never buy another Highlander for a couple of reasons. Mainly because they would not fix it when it broke. Another reason, it will only allow a certain number of pictures, no matter how big your memory card is.

Cuddyback is good. A little strange to operate though. It has blue buttons, Red buttons, yellow buttons. I do not know what most of them do, you have to look at the instructions to figure it out. But, despite the strange operating features, it takes a good picture day and night and has not disappointed me yet. A lot of people really like the Cuddyback. It has good battery life and every time I turn mine on, it works.

The pictures are very large, so buy a big flash card with this camera.

Recon outdoors makes a very good camera in my opinion. Mine is the Talon. Very easy controls and good photos. I would consider another Recon as well. They also make a color-by-day B&W-by-night model. I would consider buying one of those as well.

Just bought a Moultrie for $99 at Bass Pro. Based on the photos my friend's has taken, it seems to be a good buy. Simple to use. Will be hanging it tomorrow.

My friend in Columbus has had his a couple of years with no complaints. I'd rather have 2-3 Moultries for $100 each compared to one with all the bells and whistles for $400.

I don't need a spectacular photo, I'm not looking to win some contest in some magazine. It is nothing more than a scouting tool to let us know what's out there.

My brother has been using a StealthCam with excellent results. It uses a standard camera that is removable and takes film. His wife paid about $45 for it on sale last year.

Good luck

Thank you both for the information!!

Merry Christmas

Dale

Anything but a "Leaf River", the camera is great, but setting it up is the most cumbersome, non-intuitive thing I have delt with.
Istruction manual is worse.
Great shots from it once I finally get it going though.
Watch the sun, IF the camera is pointed toward it's path of light, you will get a picture of it every day as it crosses the sensor!

I like my LeafRiver, it has worked great, long battery life & holds a ton of pics with a big card.
I did recently have an issue with it taking pics & call to LeafRiver, they said please send it back & I had it repaired & back at my door in under a week at no cost.

Be sure you get the non-flash variety. The Flash scares the living daylights out of them. Just about everyone I know that has bought the flash variety has had the same results...They take piles of pictures to start with and then quickly taper off until they don't hardly take a picture.

We put the flash type by some feeders and they would take plenty of pictures for the first few days and then they would only get occasional pics of coons and such. The deer would completely stop eating the corn.

The incident that took the cake was when my cousin placed one on a good deer trial near his stand. He arrived well before light one morning shortly after that camera had been in the area. He said the camera flashed and the deer must have hit every brush top in the woods tearing out of that area. The funny thing about it was just before light another deer came down the same trail and it flashed again with the same results, the deer tore out of the area scared to death. He said "at least I'll know what they were when I look at the camera." He said you'd have thought dynomite went off beside them.

I've heard several other hunters mention the same results.

The best cameras are the Led types, they seem to not scare them as much. We've got several pictures of the same deer coming to feeders so I don't think it bothers them all that much. The pictures look sort of like black & white photos but you get a good look at their racks.

Cuddie Back is the cadilac and Leaf river is good as well. I think Bushnell has as non flash type that's reasonably priced as well.

Good Luck

Reloader

Great information,

Thank you!!

I don't doubt that the flash will scare some deer but I wonder what happens when a thunderstorm rolls in and there is a lot of lightning? It may have something to do with the hunting pressure as my experience has been that the flash does not bother them. I have 13 Cuddebacks and they have been troublefree and take excellent pictures. Here is a picture of a mature buck with a flash going off right in his face. The flash didn't bother him as he was caught on camera on a regular basis.

I hate my Leaf River. I bought the top of the line model at the end of the summer. I got about 5 decent pics out of it and the rest were of the beautiful scenery at my farm. No matter what I would do, it would just take pics of the brush until it's memory card was full. Oh yeah, I was careful to point it either north or south to prevent sunrise and sunset pics...to no avail. I even gave up on "edge of the field" shots and hid it in the deep woods (shaded areas), again to no avail. As soon as it became daylight, click, click, click, until the card was full.

A call to Leaf River, with a description of the problem, my only reply from the service technician was (verbatim quote), "Well, is sounds like it done gone crazy on yew."

They have had it two months and not one reply from them....getting a Cuddyback next time.

Don't get a Bushnell. Mine sucks and I'm sure I'm following the directions. In a year or so I've only gotten 2-3 pics of game, even when I used bait.

Hard to set up too. They expect you to screw it to a tree.

The original is still the BEST...Camtrakker. I have had Moultrie and Cuddeback, and both were junk for me. Moultrie does have good customer service, which is more than I can say for Cuddeback.

quote:

I don't doubt that the flash will scare some deer but I wonder what happens when a thunderstorm rolls in and there is a lot of lightning? It may have something to do with the hunting pressure as my experience has been that the flash does not bother them. I have 13 Cuddebacks and they have been troublefree and take excellent pictures. Here is a picture of a mature buck with a flash going off right in his face. The flash didn't bother him as he was caught on camera on a regular basis.

M16,

I don't doubt that the flash doesn't scare the deer on the ranches you hunt in Texas due to the huge populations of animals and low pressure from hunters but, I'd say 95%+ of hunters hunt in situations where game are very spooky and populations may not be as dense. In those situations spooky game will often never return to areas where they've been spooked as my post above states from our experiences around here.

Glad the flash type work where you are at. The flash sure gives a good pic...

Reloader

In my observation over about five years of using game cameras, flash is a non-issue. Deer may momentarily "freeze" or startle, but settle right back down because the duration of the flash is so short. A short flash of light is something that they do not connect with imminent danger, so it is meaningless to them.

I think that the sound of the old-fashioned 35mm film camera film winding after the shot was more problematic.

First time I saw a deer walk down the sendero where my cam was, he spotted it immediately, even though it was 5-6' back in the cactus. Then when the flash went off, he turned wrong-side out and left. Flash may have had that effect due to him being on edge after spotting the camera. These animals know every tree, shrub, cactus, and dead limb in their range I guess.