Schobs

Those pictures are absolutely some of the best i've seen. Some of my favorite pics come off carcass sets, ive got my moultrie game spy over a deer carcass right now and we've just started seeing wolves in the area, its about the only way to get any good predator pics imo. thanks for sharing these pics, they are freakin saweet!

MTdrahthaar

Its a homebrew VT. An sony S600 6mp camera with a Yeti control board in a 1040 pelican case. Runs on 2 AAs in the camera and 1 9 volt battery for the board.

VT Outdoorsman

OK. MTdrahthaar- So you tried out namebrand cameras and didnt like them so you built your own? Or did you just go right to building your own? Thnaks for the info

MTdrahthaar

I only had personal experience with Leaf River. And it was a $300 model that a friend bought and never used, so I took it from him and started into this camming thing. Was not impressed at all.
Did tons of reading on about 5 different forums, Cudde, moultrie, Bushnell, stealthcam. The picture quality of the cheap ones just seemed to suck, and the Cudde has great quality, but soooo many complaints about them just not working and horrific customer service scared me away from all of them. Jumped on a cam building site and researched and read and copied pdfs on the how tos. Bought a cheap S40 off ebay, figured if I blow it and wreck the cam, I am out $30. But I hacked it, then I bought case and board and a cheap drill press, had a cam put together, put it out in freezing temps and it worked like a charm. Many builds later, I am an addict.

Here was my first pic from my first cam.Sidenote. This is "ripped-ear", my resident doe. Born 10 yards from my house, a twin. Coyotes or a lion killed her sibling and tore her ear. She has produced 3 fawns, adopted 1 other. 6 years old this spring. She was at the house 1 hour before dark on the last day of hunting season this year, She walked off in the timber in the next group of homes behind me and I heard a gunshot and havent seen her since.

VT Outdoorsman

Thats awesome! I didnt even know people built their own trail cams until this thread. The pics that your custom set up takes are great. Good job! Say i wanted to build one: I already have a drill press, so how much did the other stuff cost? Thanks

MTdrahthaar

Mostly it depends on what you get the cam for off of ebay. Every camera I have built cost under $200 bucks in parts. That is after the sunk costs of the soldering iron, drill press, glue.
Boards are 40-60 bucks, cases are 20-27, glass, pipe, servo wiring, couple dollars here and there. You can get a kit not including a camera for 115 bucks, pre drilled case, python lock everything, you just put it all together.
I buy sony cams p32 p41 s40 or s600s, spent anywhere from 25-65 bucks on them. Maybe I did get one for 85 dollars once.

whitetailsupply.com is where I buy most stuff. But I also like yeti boards and snapshotsniper boards.

Here is what it looks like, generally, I change things too, for example I added external power to this cam for more pics between checks and covered this one with real douglas fir bark for concealment. You can buy camo cases too.

MTdrahthaar

Here is what some other ones look like, checkbook for scale.

MTdrahthaar

Try again

VT Outdoorsman

Wow the one with the douglas fir bark is exteremely well concealed. Thanks again for the info. Maybe ill try building my first trail cam.

mbhutton

thats cool if we had bears here i would set something like that up