John Deer

I recieved a stealth cam as a christmas present this year. I've had it out for a couple of weeks now, so yesterday I decided to go check it and see how many pics had been taken. To my surprise, all 24 exposures had been taken and the counter read 29. I rushed the film to the nearest 1hour photo to get developed. An hour later to my disapointment, I found that only two of the pics had deer in them. The other 22 pics were of nothing but an empty trail and some brush in the background. Why is this? As suggested I made sure not to aim the camera to the east or west. The random pics were taken at all hours. Some late at night and some during the middle of the day. If they were all taken at first light or just after sun-up, I would have thought it was due to the raising temp. The camera I have is supposed to detect out to 90 feet. I have it set on the long range setting. There is some thick brush approx. 20 yards in front of the cam. Could the cam be detecting heat from an animal on the other side of this brush? Also could movement from windblown limbs or other inadvertant movement like leaves being blown around set off the camera? Like I said, I'm a rookie at this, any insight will help alot. Thanks

PABowhntr

Tough question. It could be any one of those scenarios that you mentioned or it could be that the "trigger area", for lack of a better word, is larger than the area of the picture that the camera takes. For example, a deer could pass just to one side or the other of the camera and trip the sensor yet not be in the field of view. I seem to remember someone else posting about this early last fall but I could be mistaken.

I guess the "remedy" would be to reposition the cam a few times to see if that is the case or if it is something else. I prefer the "short range" setting myself as I know that whatever trips the cam is going to be in the picture.

John Deer

I think that I'll try changing the range to the short setting. The problem may be that whatever is tripping the camera is out of view. Thanks for the info.

Martin Cougar

I agree with PABowhntr - it could be any of the things you listed. If I had to guess - maybe the brush in the background. Maybe if you could find a tree with a limb in the right place - you could attach the camera high and almost facing down on the deer. That would eliminate the brush in the background. Just a thought.

I think I even saw a post where someone placed black electrical tape on the right and left edge of the sensor. That eliminated the sensor from picking up the motion and snapping a pix when the deer wasn't quite in the pix frame.

ARMallardSlayer

Which model do you have?

Some people have had to cover part of the sensor to lessen the wide area it scans.

A deer could start in the beam area and a pic be taken but not catch the deer........

Tape up the sensor on each side, just let it shoot straight out..............

BigDaddy12t

I think it is probably the wind blowing the brush around and that is causing the camera to go off, all it takes is one little branch in range and the wind blowing a little bit, for it to go off. I know of a guy who had the same camera and he got an entire roll of blowing snow. Would make great Christmas cards, but not what we are looking for on a trail cam.

John Deer

I have the MC1-D model. I have been doing some looking around and have come to the conclusion that I'm not the only one who's had this problem. I took a look at www.jesseshuntingpage.com/stealthcam.html and found several reviews of the product that rated the product poorly to say the least. I guess I'll just try what you guys have suggested and see if I get better results.