Hot Roddin\’

Long Term Cam Build – Part 3

August 7th, 2009 by cammer

Part 2 closed with the camera fully assembled and working.

Now its time for camouflage. Even though the case I purchased is camouflaged already, I typically build with black cases and camo them myself. I also don’t really like the camo patterns on cases since the cam is against a tree. It needs to look more like tree bark and not the woods in my opinion. I mask off the lens, PIR and flash holes with painters tape. Using Liquid Nails construction adhesive I create a 3D camo pattern on the case trying to mimic bark somewhat. Mostly I’m just trying to get a really irregular surface. Just goop it on and manipulate it with a small spatula. I also create smaller eyebrows out of Liquid Nails over the PIR and flash holes to help channel water away from the openings. I know some guys that go to the trouble of actually making a mold of real bark and then casting a skin of bark that they apply to the case. You can also drill holes for fake leaves, etc. I don’t get that carried away.

Ready for camo

Texturing

Texturing completed

The final step is the paint. I first start out by painting just my 3D camo in flat black. If it’s a black case I paint the entire case so that it becomes a non reflective surface. I build up layers of paint over the black so getting paint into the cracks of the 3D surface is important for depth. Using cardboard strips as maskers I will also paint on some random lines with tan paint. After the lines are on I mist tan, olive and brown paints over the surface. I also make sure I do several shots where I slowly and carefully push the nozzle down and make it spit. You get some nice specs of paint that way. I also try to concentrate mists in certain areas so the colors are on the blotchy side. Depending on if I feel the colors are too light or not, I may or may not mist more black over the surface to darken it. The camo pattern on this case was particularly light in my opinion so I also made sure to mist the edges to tone down the overall color. Finally, I spray flat gray paint onto a cardboard sheet and using a wide brush get the tips of the bristles wet with paint. I don’t want the bristles loaded, just wet. I then brush over the top of the 3D surface to get the paint to come off on all the high spots. The black saturates the lowest areas, the colors are visible in the majority of the surface, and the high spots of the 3D camo and case parts are a light gray.

Black base coat

Time to tone it down

Olive and brown mists

Gray highlights

All that is left to do is to get it to the woods.

All done

I hope you enjoyed the series. I have two more builds planned. An infrared cam and a radio frequency controlled cam. I’d like to get at least one of them built before October. So, keep your eyes peeled…

Posted in Custom, Electronics, Hunting, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Long Term Cam Build – Part 2

August 1st, 2009 by cammer

Part 1 ended with the gluing of fabricated items to the inside of the case. A camera shelf, a battery shelf, the control board mount, etc. Now for the next steps…

Using foam I pad the inside of the case that will contact the Sony. Not really for protection of the camera or anything like that but to get a seal around the lens and flash holes. With a camera inside a case, the flash can bounce around inside the case creating spots and lines across the photos. Keeping those two sealed from each other is very important. I also use an ordinary rubber band to hold the camera on the shelf. There is a hole drilled in the shelf and some eye bolts that have been bent open at the top of the case. Rubber bands are cheap, plentiful and easily replaced. Its an easy and effective way to hold the camera in place.

Camera foam

The next step I move on to is the wiring of the components in the case. I soldered two lengths of wire to the leads on the switch and covered them with shrink tube. With the switch installed I soldered my positive wire from the battery pack to the switch wire and the other switch wire to the positive lead on the control board. The negative leads from the board and battery pack were soldered together. A quick flip of the switch showed I had power. I also wired together my C-cell battery packs. And, since a 4-pack can not feed a 2-AA camera due to increased voltage, the wiring of the packs needed to be modified to effectively create four 2-packs. These were all wired in parallel and had one set of leads coming off for connection to the Sony.

Switch wiringExternal battery packs

Now its time for the tough part…hacking the Sony camera. Actually it isn’t all that difficult but the wires are small, the spaces are tight and a wrong move can ruin a camera. I needed to run five wires out of the camera to a servo connector. Three of the wires allow the circuit board to control the camera and two of the wires feed the rechargeable AA batteries inside the camera more juice. The camera is taken apart and wires are soldered to the internal battery contacts. On the opposite face of the camera guts a ribbon cable is soldered to the end of the other three wires. This ribbon cable will be inserted sandwiched with the factory ribbon cable into the plug that controls the camera. This allows the camera to be powered on and off and to activate the shutter remotely. The five wires were run to the outside of the case thru the DC power port. There was no need for that port so I chopped a hole thru it on the inside of the camera and ran all 5 of my wires out thru the port. The other thing I did while the camera was open was to disable the lens cover door of the camera. This does make some noise and after viewing thousands of photos and videos, I know that it is frequently heard by most animals. This is as simple as just pulling the shutter door motor plug out of its socket. Prior to cracking the case of the camera it needs to be powered up and the lens cover will open. Remove the batteries and the cover will remain open. After it is unplugged, it will stay open. The method I chose to use to connect the controller board to the camera was by using telephone line. A jack on the board accepts standard phone cable and the necessary wires from the phone cable were soldered to the servo connector. And finally my battery packs were soldered to the servo connector wires.

Power connections

Phone and power cables

All done...just tidy it up

After a trial run to ensure that everything was working properly, I stuffed the DC port with Marine Goop to act as a wire hold. I cleaned up all my wiring with small black zip ties. And I fabricated an “eyebrow” for the lens opening. I like having a hood over the lens as it acts like a sun shield to keep glare off the glass and it is of some help during rain and snow.

Lens and eyebrow

Just a few more steps to go and it will be ready for the woods.

Stay tuned for the final installment…

Posted in Custom, Electronics, Hunting, Maintenance, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Long Term Cam Build – Part 1

July 28th, 2009 by cammer

It’s been a long time coming but as promised, I will chronicle my latest trail cam build. I’ll have to do this in a couple of segments.

This is a cam I’ve wanted to build for a couple of years now. I did my research and ordered all of my components quite some time ago. I typically don’t have a lot of time to do a build so good planning up front allows me to get the build done in just a couple days. I had a recent hole in my schedule and immediately filled it with doing this next cam.

I coined this cam my long term cam. This is the cam I can leave a long distance away from the road in the winter so I don’t have to check it every week in knee deep snow when its over a mile away. It’s the cam I can leave in the woods for the couple of summer months I hate being out there because of the heat, mosquitoes and deer flies. This cam will have an external set of batteries wired to the camera inside to provide enough juice that I think this could shoot three or four thousand flash photos over the course of a year without needing new batteries.

I chose to build this cam using the Sony P41 digital camera as its heart and sole. This is my favorite point and shoot camera for trail cams as it shutters its initial photo quite quickly, doesn’t have an extending lens, and has an excellent flash. The Pelican 1060 Micro Case is what I will use as the housing for everything. I normally use the 1040 but the extra batteries needed for this build require some more room than the 1040 offers. PixController’s Universal board is the board I chose. Regrettably, Pix no longer sells components to builders and only sells finished trail cams. I purchased a few boards before they ceased components sales. And for external camera power I decided on C-cell batteries as they just fit the case better. I honestly only need a few months worth of power so rather than jump up to a larger case for D-cells, I opted for the C’s and decided to use as many as would fit.

This battery set up is also a kind of “best of both worlds” scenario. NiMH rechargeable batteries have a quick recovery time so flash photos can be taken at a much quicker rate. They also hold their amps at a higher level and then suddenly dump so their life in digital devices can be much longer than alkaline batteries. Their drawback is that they loose roughly 1% of their charge daily, even without having a drain on them like photo taking. Alkaline batteries are slow to recover from flashes and slowly drop their amps and can quickly not have enough juice to power a camera, but still be fine for something less demanding like a remote control. The plus side of alkaline batteries is that they hold their charge for a long time when they aren’t being used and don’t drain away. This set up of having two AA NiMH batteries in the Sony and a bank of alkaline C-cells wired to them allows the quick recovery and high amps of NiMH and the longevity of alkaline. The alkaline batteries will keep the NiMH rechargeable batteries fully topped off with power.

For me, initial layout is critical. I’m not the kind of guy that can just start tossing stuff together and hope it turns out. I place all of my components into the case in the way I’d like to lay everything out. Then I sit and stare at it. I try to find fault and potential problems with my layout. There are things I really wound up disliking about my first couple of builds after I got them to the woods and I want to avoid those types of issues on anything I build now so looking for faults has become the best way to wind up happy when the cam hits the woods. I place everything in the case and try closing the lid, try changing batteries, try to pull the camera out of the case, etc. When a fault is found I do my best to find a solution or a better resolution. Often times completely redoing my layout.

I prefer a vertical format for a cam this large. Meaning the long dimension of the case will run up and down. It fits on trees and fence posts so much better. Due to the depth of the 1060, I felt it would be best if I mounted the camera to the lid of the case. To avoid the potential for a sniffing deer or a climbing squirrel to flip my external on/off switch, I decided to locate that on the bottom of the case. The controller board battery pack fit very nicely opposite the Sony. And I liked the eight C-cell batteries to the lower portion of the case so that the cam didn’t become top heavy. This layout just seemed to work best.

Initial layout

My first steps are usually to get all of the case modification chores done. I drill all the necessary holes for switches, eye bolts, mounting brackets, lens/flash/PIR holes. I also fabricate any shelves or brackets that will be needed. I have a supply of acrylic sheet from a previous life and I really favor using that material to create my shelves and other fixtures when ever possible. But it’s available at hobby stores and even some hardware stores.

Holes and mouting channel

Switch hole

Flash, lens and sensor holes

Control board

My next step is to start gluing all of those fabricated items in the case and to install any other hardware. Any penetration of the case is sealed with Marine Goop to provide a long lasting water tight seal. Many of my cameras stay in the woods 365 days a year. They endure 95° degree summer temps and -40° winter temps. Rain, hail, sleet, snow, etc. The cams see it all and being water tight is important. I glue down the lenses for the motion sensor (PIR) and the flash enhancer. I like to put UV filters over my lenses so I purchase a 25mm to 30mm step ring and glue that into the hole over the camera lens. I use eye bolts on the sides of my camera so that I can run a Python cable lock around the tree and thru the eye bolts to keep any potential trespassers from stealing my cam or even opening it to erase “evidence”. I also mount half of a sliding bracket to the back side of the case for mounting the cam to trees and posts. And for this build I fabricated shelves for the Sony to sit on, the C-cell battery packs to sit on and the control board. All of which got installed at this point.

Coming together

Fresnel lenses

Step ring

Eye bolt

The easiest tasks are now completed.

Stay tuned for the next installment…

Posted in Custom, Electronics, Hunting, Maintenance, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Peru – Land of the Incas

July 3rd, 2009 by cammer

Recently my wife and I were invited by my sister-in-law to be co-group leaders for her 2009 High School Spanish Trip: ‘Peru-Land of the Incas’ through EF Tours. EF stands for Education First. We escorted twenty sophomore thru senior age Spanish students on an eleven day trip to Peru.

I’ve included some photos here, but there is no real feeling of it except for being there. I know it sounds cliché, but photos truly don’t do the place justice.

We spent time at the coast (Lima), in the mountain highlands (Cusco), and the upper jungle (Aguas Calientes, Machu Picchu).

The starting point of the journey was Lima with stops around the Plaza Mayor at the Government Palace, San Francisco Monastery, and La Catedral (final resting place of Francisco Pizarro) and then to the Nat’l Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. While Lima is on the coast, it is a desert and anything that is green has to be watered. The weather was warm and sunny and was a really nice contrast to what late April is like in the northern US.

The trip continued the second day with a domestic hour long flight to Cusco. Cusco is located at an elevation of roughly 12,000 feet. It took some getting used to that kind of altitude for us “flatlanders” who live at an elevation of 1,300 feet. We based out of Cusco for a couple days and went to the Sacred Valley of the Incas visiting Pisac, and Ollantaytambo. We also spent time at the Sacsayhuaman fortress and the ruins of Kenko, Puca-Pucara and Tambomachay.

Sacsayhuaman

Sacsayhuaman fortress

An early morning train ride a few days later down the mountain to 7,000 feet brought us to the upper jungle and the village of Aguas Calientes. This little town exists for tourism at the ancient ruin of Machu Picchu and is only accessible via foot or train. Machu Picchu is roughly 1,000 feet above the village and is only accessible by foot via the Inca Trail or by buses from Aguas Calientes up a long narrow winding road. It was built without mortar or the use of the wheel. It has over 600 terraces, each about 7 feet tall. Machu Picchu was the only city not conquered by the Spanish. This site is also considered one of the new 7 wonders of the world and I can see why. The views are spectacular, the workmanship unbelievable, and the terrain incomprehensible.

Machu Picchu

The "guard tower"

Machu Picchu left

Machu Picchu right

From below

The Incas, experts at organization and engineering, did not have wheels, arches, or writing. At the height of their power, before the Spanish conquest in 1532, the Incas ruled the entire area in South American from Quito, Ecuador, to the Rio Maule, Chile. Their empire was centered at Cusco, Peru. They were excellent road builders, maintaining over 14,000 miles of roads throughout their empire. Inca stonework is characterized by the use of very large stones, some larger than 100 tons, which are fitted together without mortar so precisely that a knife blade cannot be inserted between the joints. It is still not known for certain how the Incas transported the large stones used in some of their stonework

Llamas in the fog

Clouds lifting

Our last day in country was a “free” day. Officially our tour ended back in Lima at 9am after the flight in from Cusco. Our flight out of Lima wasn’t until 11pm. My sister-in-law has a friend in Lima and they arranged a boat tour of Lima’s Palomino Islands. These are some incredibly bare rocks out in the Pacific ocean. They only receive about one eighth of an inch of rain annually so nothing grows there and they don’t exactly get washed frequently. One of the islands hosts a colony of over 4,000 Sea Lions. An unwashed island that is the home of thousands of seals has quite a unique smell. A few of us donned wet suits and swam in the ocean with the Sea Lions. They were incredibly curious and swam thru us investigating us and touching our feet from below as they swam under us. Until you are up close and personal with them, you don’t have a real appreciation for how large they truly are.

Palomino Sea Lions

I honestly can’t put into words what an incredible adventure this trip was. I honestly have never really had much desire to visit Peru or any of South America period. But the incredible sights, landscape and people of Peru truly wow’d me. Its an amazing place to visit and I would highly recommend it to anyone. I have a dream of returning and spending time doing a trip down the Inca Trail. 4 days of hiking along 27 miles of Inca Trail ending at Machu Picchu.

Posted in Events, Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Changing Patterns

March 30th, 2009 by cammer

As the weather warms and the animals start changing their patterns it’s time for me to start thinking about switching cam locations.

During the cold months when there is a lot of snow and limited sources of food the deer and turkey tend to “yard up”. They begin to congregate closely and they keep pathways worn in the snow and move between a few key areas. Areas that provide food and areas that provide good shelter from the elements and protection from predators. During these months I locate my cams in areas that fit these criteria. Feeding, shelter, or movement between the two.

Feeding Location

Opportunistic Feeding

As the snow recedes and it becomes less work to utilize the rest of woods the deer and turkey will use more and more territory searching for new green shoots and buds. Its time to start looking for those areas in the woods that have an already thin snow cover, are fairly sheltered, and have nice southern exposure. The sun will melt these areas rather quickly and the first of the green of spring will show there.

I heard my first Ruffed Grouse drum this past weekend. By mid April I’ll be trying to capture photos and video of that very interesting behavior. I got my first video of a tom turkey fanned out and strutting this past week. Very shortly I’ll have to get a camera to my favorite strutting ground. The ice on the big pond in the woods is starting blacken. By the time the ice is all gone I’ll have to get a cam overlooking a loafing log where the Wood Ducks like to hang out.

The expectation of new spring patterns developing prompted me to obtain the final materials for three more cams that I’d like to build. During the upcoming months I’ll “chronicle” the builds here.

The first cam I intend to build is a “long term” cam. This will be very much like most of the other cams I run with the exception of having extra battery capacity for long uninterrupted time in the woods. In addition to hacking the shutter control on the Sony camera I’ll be soldering leads to the internal power of the camera. Those power leads will run to eight C-cell batteries. The C-cell alkaline batteries will keep the rechargeable nickel metal hydride AA batteries inside the Sony fully charged at all times. I should be able to run for about a year without needing to worry about batteries. Perfect for a deep woods over winter cam. Or an all summer at the feeder cam.

The second cam I’m going to work on is an infrared (IR) cam. Again, this will be nearly identical to my standard cams with the exception of shooting entirely in the infrared spectrum of light. The reason for IR is that most animals, including humans, can’t see IR light. So at night there is no visible camera flash and spooking animals is much less likely. This will be an excellent for capturing the big secretive bucks that are mostly nocturnal and very good at avoiding regular cams.

The third cam I will be building is a radio frequency (RF) controlled camera. I’ll utilize the same Sony camera internally but the triggering of the camera is in a very different method. With all of my current cams as heat and motion are sensed in front of the cam a circuit board sends a signal to the Sony camera and the camera wakes up and takes a photo. This process usually takes from a second and a half to two seconds. At times, that is too slow to capture the animal that set the cam off if they are just passing by. The RF cam will solve this problem. Three remote sensors are used to control the circuit board that controls the Sony camera. One sensor is placed overlooking the area where the photo will be taken. The other two sensors further out on the perimeter. When a perimeter sensor picks up heat and movement it sends a signal to the circuit board and the circuit board wakes the Sony camera and readies it for a photo. When the sensor that is overlooking the target area senses heat and motion the camera fires instantaneously. Perfect for monitoring trails where animals can pass by the cam before it has time to take a photo.

These three new cams are all about having the ability to adapt to certain patterns and behaviors. Whether it’s the camera shy buck or trail usage to and from key locations.

Hello

Lets play

Its not just the terrestrial animals that are adjusting to the changing season. Crappie are leaving their wintering holes and staging just off spawning flats. Perch are setting up shop at the bottom of mid lake humps. Walleye are staging to intercept the Perch as they make their nightly trip up the hump.

What are you doing to stay in front of the changing pattern?

Posted in Electronics, Hunting, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Conditioning

March 16th, 2009 by cammer

Is it ever going to warm up?

The morning of the 8^th opened up below zero again! Its March already! Its not supposed to be that cold.

Spacing out the trigger times on my cams really made an impact in the volume of photos this past week. That can be good or bad. There have been plenty of times where I’ve looked at a photo and said to myself, “I would have missed that if my trigger times had been spaced out further.” But thousands of photos a week gets to be too much and you need to find a balance between not missing something and being overwhelmed with photos.

About ten years ago wild turkey were being reintroduced to my area of the state. They were a really rare sight before the reintroduction and even up until just a couple of years ago. I had not gotten a photo of a turkey until my 2^nd year camming and even then I only got two photos for the entire season. Not until the 2007-2008 season (my season goes from August to June) were turkey a regular occurrence on the cam.

Six years ago I built a large gravity fed feeder designed specifically for turkey. I did some research and was looking for a turkey-only feeder. I didn’t much care to feed deer as we live in one of the most heavily populated areas of the state for deer. I found a National Wild Turkey Federation drawing out on the web and built an elevated platform with a gravity feed box on top of it designed just for turkey. It has a predator guard around it to keep the raccoon and squirrels from climbing it. Its way too high for deer to use. Although they will eat corn off the ground from spillage. In over three years of maintaining that feeder I never once saw definitive sign or got a photo confirming that any turkey had been using the feeder. I abandoned the feeder shortly before I purchased a new style one. Although now that turkey are constantly visiting the feeder, I may have to start using it again.

Turkey Feeder

Two years ago I purchased an automatic broadcast feeder. It holds 350 pounds of feed and uses a small SLA 12-volt battery to run a timer that controls a motor that will broadcast feed at designated times. A small solar panel keeps the battery topped off and other than filling it with feed every four months, it has required very little attention. On top of the small motor is a small stainless steel pan and on two ends of the pan are hinged flaps. As the motor spins the pan the flaps lift up under centrifugal force and feed gets thrown out the ends of the pan. More and more feed falls into the pan via gravity as the feed in the pan is expelled. When the motor stops, the flaps drop down, and feed no longer has a place to fall so gravity is overcome and everything sits still. The motor and pan have a heavy mesh cage around them to keep squirrels and raccoon from eating until they founder themselves.

Broadcast feeder

As the wildlife in the area have become accustomed to the feeder and the daily dose of corn coming from it they have adjusted their patterns according to the disbursement of feed. Scrolling thru 500 photos a week from the cam overlooking the feeder shows an increase in activity about an hour before the feed gets scattered and the activity continues for a few hours after disbursement. Often times an hour or so before the magical time arrives deer are photographed bedded down inside the perimeter of the feed disbursement pattern. I suppose they are just patiently passing the time waiting for lunch.

A little rest

I approached the feeder quietly this past weekend since it was nearing feeding time. The snow was packed solid and not a single kernel of corn could be seen anywhere. I actually wondered if the battery had gone dead. I had a good eight minutes to wait until the feeder tossed shell corn out so I decided to wait for the timer to go off and see if the feeder was working properly. I walked away from the feeder to get out of the broadcast pattern (because 30mph corn hurts!) and leaned against a tree patiently waiting. Suddenly without warning corn was flying thru the air, pinging off the cage, pelting trees and turning the snow a speckled golden yellow. The tranquility of the woods really gets broken when the feeder does its job.

Within seconds of the feeder shutting down I noticed movement in the trees about 30 yards away. And then more movement. I stood motionless against the tree and watched a pair of deer trotting towards the beaten circle of snow that indicated the broadcast perimeter of the feeder. As the lead deer neared the clearing she stopped dead in her tracks and stared at me. She tilted her head to the right and then to the left. That big lump on that tree just didn’t look right to her. We stared each other down for what seemed like ten minutes. I’m sure in reality it was only one or two. She finally decided that she didn’t like what she saw and she and another deer turned and circled at a quick pace. They got around to the side of me and then I was much more silhouetted for them. They probably also caught my scent in the breeze. With a sharp blow from the nose she and her partner turned and bounded thru the woods away from me. With that warning blow about a half a dozen other deer, all well within 30 yards of me, in multiple directions, scattered. Who knows how many I never even saw.

Noon feeding

As I stood and thought about the events that transpired my mind immediately went to Pavlov. What an interesting observation of conditioning this just was.

While I’ve never given Pavlov much thought while fishing I often think about conditioning. Many times I will pull up to a spot that I really want to fish and will see someone else working it. I like to move off to the side and pretend to fish for another species. Walleye if the other guy is Bass fishing. Bass if the other guy is Walleye fishing. I like to watch what he’s using and make some mental notes of how he fished it. Most times they are fishing standard boiler plate everybody has one in their tackle box kind of stuff. After he leaves I almost always start off fishing something he wasn’t fishing. If I do fish the same thing, I try to fish it differently than he did. And more often than not, those techniques results in a catch.

Can fish be conditioned? I think so. Food for thought.

Posted in Fishing | 1 Comment »

Spring is coming

March 7th, 2009 by cammer

Another sub zero morning in the north. It was the first day of March and it opened up to a -9° morning.

At least this time I got to wait until the sun warmed things up to 11° before I headed out to check my cams. We received several inches of new snow a few days prior so just to be safe, I packed my snow shoes in my truck. With a couple mile walk ahead of me, and a bunch of new snow, I could really regret leaving them behind.

I can drive to within 30 yards of two of my six cams and as I pulled up to my 1st cam there was a noticeable lack of tracks in the snow. Even though we had a fairly nice week, outside of the 5” of snow, there just wasn’t much sign of activity. This cam is on the edge of the woods and looks over a heavily trafficked route between the harvested soybean field across the road and the safety of the woods. I opened up the protective case and pulled out the Sony camera, turned it on and saw that there were 229 photos on it! I didn’t feel like thumbing thru them all right there so I just switched out my memory stick and put a fresh set of AA’s in the camera, closed the case and moved on.

Move!

I pulled up to within 40 yards of my 2^nd set up. This is a digital video recorder unit made from a security cam with an 80 bulb infrared LED light so it can shoot color video by day and IR video by night. The camera is hooked to a Neuros DVR. The only thing that really drives me wild about this set up is that I never know how many videos are on the memory stick. Or if it’s even recorded anything at all. I never know until I get to a computer. That can drive a man insane at times. I’ve got this cam along the edge of the woods in a low area where I plant some forage. It’s a mixture of a lot of different food sources but during the winter months the primary thing that the deer are looking for are turnips. These turnips will remain untouched throughout the summer and fall months but shortly after the first snow the deer go after these with gusto. They will eat both the greens and the bulb right out of the ground. It’s funny to see little empty holes in the ground where the deer nibble turnips right out of the frozen dirt.

My 3^rd set up is a still cam, again on the edge of the woods. There is a little opening in the trees, sheltered by a hill, that provides a secluded warm spot for deer to mingle. I can’t drive to it during the winter so it was on with the snowshoes for the rest of the way. When I walked up to the camera I noticed that I didn’t get my picture taken. This cam is built with a model of Sony camera with an extending lens and it didn’t move an inch as I approached. I opened the case and put fresh batteries in the camera and flipped the switch to view the photos. 360 photos. And it had stopped taking photos two days prior!

Mom is mad!

My 4^rd set up is another still cam over looking an automatic feeder I have. The walk up the hill into the woods seems to take forever with all the snow. The feeder holds 350 pounds of feed and every day at noon a motor turns a little spinner that broadcasts feed (shell corn) for 15 seconds. This is always where the majority of the photos come from. The feeder is frequented daily by deer, turkey and squirrels. The bulk of the photos start being taken about an hour before the feeder goes off and it tapers off a few hours after the feeder has done its job. Due to all the activity here I have this cam set to take a photo when the motion sensor is tripped, wait 30 seconds and take another photo, power down, and not be triggered again for at least 5 minutes where the cycle will repeat itself. As I opened up the case of the cam I noticed that it wasn’t taking a photo. I powered the Sony camera up and the last photo was taken about an hour ago and the memory card was full. 547 photos. A 1GB card filled.

A little jumpy

The 5^th cam is in a lonely spot in the woods that for some reason seemed to really produce a lot of photos for me this year. I set up there over a buck scrape on a whim and have been getting photos there ever since. I don’t think there is really any particular draw to the place. I think more than anything its just a spot between here and there and a number of animals wander thru. Again, the camera didn’t turn on as I approached. A fresh set of batteries told me why. Another full memory stick. 694 photos. This is a lower resolution camera so it can take quite few more photos.

Hi Mom

My 6^th and final set up over looks the first feeder I had ever put up. I haven’t used it in years. It was designed to be a turkey only feeder and I never once saw a turkey there, much less using the feeder. Although turkey are newly introduced to my region at the time. This spot in the woods is an area that seems to draw deer. I’ve even gotten a bear photo there. This cam turned on as I squatted in front of it. I flipped the switch to view and noticed 516 photos on the memory stick. I thumbed thru a few of them and noticed a lot of turkey photos. A lot of turkey photos. It might be time to resurrect this feeder.

Run away, run away!

I wound up with a staggering 2,346 photos and 175 videos for the week of 2/22 – 3/1. Just two weeks ago I wasn’t even getting half that many photos. Rarely breaking 1,000 photos for all five still cams. Some weeks I would only have 30 or 40 photos on a cam. I set all my cams to not take photos continuously, but to wait for a few minutes between triggers. That’s just too many photos to go thru.

Even though the weather still feels like January, the increased sun and the increased strength of the sun is drastically changing the activity level of the animals. It’s amazing what a difference a couple of weeks can make. It seems as though everyone knows its time to wake up. Expectant mothers need to bulk up for their babies. The sun feels good and its just time to get out. Shortly the grouse will start drumming and the turkey will start gobbling.

It’s much the same for the fish right now. The ice will begin to rot shortly. Light levels are increasing due to the snow cover being melted away. The spawn is immanent. Its time to get the feedbag on and start bulking up.

I love spring!

Posted in Custom, Electronics, Hunting | No Comments »

Catch And Release…sort of…

February 23rd, 2009 by cammer

It was a hockey weekend this weekend here in the north country. Of the five nephews and nieces on my in-laws side of the family, all of them live two hours or more away, four of them play hockey, and each one of the four had a tournament this weekend. One nephew was actually in town for his tournament and another was just an hour away. With that much going on that close to home my opportunities to check my trail cameras this weekend were going to be limited.

It was a balmy -4° F when I walked out the door Sunday morning. Luckily the wind was only about 5mph so there wasn’t any wind chill to be concerned with. The sun still wasn’t even considering getting up, but yet there I was getting behind the wheel of my truck to make the short trek to the woods during my only free window for the weekend.

Besides the obvious fishing addiction I have, my second love is the woods. I have 160 acres of hardwood forest and I run a string of six motion/heat activated game cameras. I’ve been a hunter as long as I’ve been able to shoot a gun and always spent as much time as possible in the woods. But it was just five short years ago that trail cameras became part of my relationship with the woods. I’ve totally fallen in love with them and it has greatly enhanced my time in the woods.

The fairly recent digital camera revolution drastically changed camming and it is what eventually pushed me over the edge. You suddenly weren’t limited to a 36-exposure roll of film; you could take hundreds, even thousands of photos before the camera needed attention. You didn’t have to take your film to a developer and wait for days for your photos only to see 36 photos of the same squirrel eating acorns. You had the ability look at the photos right in the field on the camera. And even better yet, bring a little card home with you and download them directly to your computer. Or if you’ve got a laptop… It was during this digital revolution that I decided I should take the leap into trail cameras. I had always wanted a trail camera but the digital technology just made too much sense for this spectrum of photography.

My initial interest in cameras was to scout for the big buck or verify that it really was the recently introduced wild turkey eating out of the feeder. I only had my first camera out for a few weeks before I decided I really needed another. My very first photo from my first camera was of a buck. He was a smaller buck, but had antlers none the less. And observing one little spot on 160 acres just wasn’t enough. What other things were going on just fifty yards away, much less a half mile away at the other corner of the property? There was just too much territory to cover. I had to have another. And it was shortly after having a pair of cameras out in the woods that my “sickness” developed.

During a weekly cam check as I was flipping thru the photos on the camera before I put a new card in, there was a solitary photo of one of the nicest bucks I had ever seen locally. He got “shot” broadside, head held low, from nose to just behind the shoulders, not more than seven feet from the camera. His rack didn’t have a lot of mass, but it had some great height with two very nice very long tines. And his distinguishing characteristic was a set of “crab claws” (an unusual fork that looks similar to the claw of a crab) at the end of each of his long sweeping beams. Including the pair of brow tines and the crab claws, he was a ten pointer. I had gotten photos of some nice deer in the months prior but this one was really over the top. Outstanding quality and the crab claws just put him over the top giving him lots of character. I headed off to the opposite corner of the property to check my other camera excited about the great shot I had. My jaw just dropped while scrolling thru the photos on the second cam. There was Crab Claw again! This time a full body broadside shot but with him looking right into the camera. He was an even nicer deer than the first photo had indicated! His rack extended at least a half an ear in length past the tips of each of his ears. His body was deep from sternum to spine. Not only did he have the rack, with some great character, he had the body to boot. An absolute mule. Two photos, less than twelve hours apart, about a half a mile apart, of the same animal. That was the day, and the deer, that changed my life.

C&R isn’t just for fishing. Camming is the Catch And Release of hunting. Or at least it’s my Catch And Release. I can “catch” the same animal multiple times. I can watch them progress from young animals to mature ones. I can capture animals that could take a lifetime to see in the woods with the naked eye. And best of all, now I can “hunt” all year long. No seasons, no licenses, no regulations.

And…by the way…I build all my trail cameras myself. But I’ll save that for another blog down the road some time.

I hope you all enjoy TackleTog!

Action Shot

Tags: C&R, camera, release
Posted in Electronics, Fishing, Hunting | 2 Comments »