The Twisting Trail of the Trail Cam

Me and my wife Em enjoy the wildlife that surrounds us as where we live, we are quite lucky in the variety of animals that venture into our garden and the adjacent woodlands. We will spend quite a lot of our free time in the garden enjoying watching their presence and their activities, especially in the good months of the year. Our sit spot is usually by our old back door where we can seat ourselves quite quietly and let nature become our entertainment. We have had a herd of Fallow Deer Hinds and Fawns come as close as 25 yards whilst browsing in our garden and there was a time a bird of prey brought down a pigeon just in front of where I was sitting, which was an odd moment for all three of us. But there were times we could not have ears and eyes on the ground to experience these types of activities. Especially throughout the night and when we are at work.

Em, and I have always discussed purchasing a garden trail cam. So, I decided to look into purchasing one. Talk about walking into an unmarked minefield. There are so many companies that are making, selling and marketing them it sort of bamboozles you a bit. As this one does this, and this one does that. This one will notify you of animal sightings and then go and make you a cup of tea*. Then there is the, if you buy cheap, then you buy twice but also, I am not prepared to pay the price of some of the high-market trail cameras that make you a cup of tea*. We just wanted to have a decent trail camera at a reasonable price. So, I was lost on what to buy. Then luckily enough, I was reading issue 102 of the Bushcraft magazine where an article was written by Mal Ingham who is a former Head Ranger and Wildlife Officer. He recommended the Browning Recon Force Elite HP4 as it is very good and comes at a reasonable price. So, I thought to myself 'Ooohh, if he thinks it good!' and I have heard of the make Browning as if my memory serves me right, I have used one of their shotguns in the past.

So off to eBay I went and there was one used twice and nearly enough brand new for £100. I will cut this little story short on what happened next, but the SD card mechanism was broken and would not hold the SD card in place, whether the seller knew this or not I really don’t know but luckily there was a Browning Dealership not far from where I work. So off I go downhearted with the single thought circling around and around in my head 'How Much! Is this going to cost me!' Bless Browning and their dealership's little cotton socks, the dealership didn’t charge me for sending it off and Browning couldn’t fix the trail cam and didn’t have the Recon Force in stock so would I mind an upgrade to the Elie HP4 Specops Full HD Video instead? (WOOPIE!)

1. Nifty pouch to keep the important things together.
2. Naturespy quick start-up guide.
3. The Trail Cam
4. Python Cable Lock
5. SD Card & SD Card Reader.
6. The Trail Cam Manuals.
7. Trail Cam attachment strap

So, I now have a working brand new trail cam ready to go forth into the garden and capture some wildlife. But, alas, it is not as simple as that, nothing is! I now need to go and buy an SD card for the camera as well as an SD card reader for the computer so that we can view what we have recorded. Now I know me and Em live in a woodland in the middle of nowhere and there's more chances of Squirrels stealing things, but where I am originally from, I know that even if you nailed things down, even the nails were stolen! So for peace of mind, I bought a Master Lock's Python Security Adjustable Cable Lock, an adjustable locking cable from 30 cm to 1.75 m and with a size of 1.8 m x 5 mm, which was much cheaper than the same sort of locking cable I saw for trail cams being advertised. Now, with peace of mind and reading through the instruction manual. Off I went into the garden with the trail cam and kit and looked around eagerly to find a location to strap the trail cam to, I know that Fallow Deer are usually in the garden feeding so I decided to strap the trail camera to the Apple tree. Now do I want to take photos or videos and at what length, at what frequency of capture etc., so I take the advice given in the Naturespy starter guide that came with the first cam and just go for photos every 1-minute setting the interval every 0.6 seconds.

Then we left it in situ for a couple of weeks and after 14 days without trying to peek at what we may have captured. We plugged the SD card and reader into the computer and after a few minutes of faffing about with it. We found the photos and now see what animals we had wandering around in our garden. First up there are quite a lot of photos of Pheasants actually, there were lots of Pheasants' photos and of our neighbour’s chickens and their cats. Then it's Fallow lots of Fallow Deer and a few Muntjacs then a couple of photos of a Fox which made our evening as we knew we had Foxes but the only time we saw a Fox so did our dog Woden and very luckily Woden was tethered to a climbing rope and the Fox was nimble enough to get out of his reach.

After the success of the first attempt with the trail cam, we were now hooked on it. With a bit of track and sign courses under my belt, I started looking around the whole garden and the adjacent woodlands and then I spotted that there were some Fallow deer and Muntjac trails near a Squirrel feeding station. I looked for the best place to position the trail cam to try and capture them and try the video option at various settings. I must admit we did end up with having lots of good quality videos of interesting animals but, also, we had a lot of boring videos of leaves blowing about and from that little episode, we then tried experimenting with the various settings of video and photographs in all sorts of different locations with mixed results but as they say, practice makes perfect.  For the last couple of years now we are still using the Browning trail cam we have had a lot of interesting photos & videos of wildlife that surrounds us and if you are interested in wildlife and tracking, I would recommend investing in a trail cam to open a new view into all. I have seen on the NHBS website that there is now a birdfeeder camera which works on the same principle, so I think I will be looking into purchasing one of these soon.

Here below are some photos and video screenshots taken by us.

Hopefully, this blog has given you some inspiration in purchasing a Trail Cam, and if you do, here is some advice.

• Only use lithium batteries, they do not care about cold temperatures and have high currents.
• Be mindful of all wildlife laws.
• Most Trail Cams will have the American date formula as standard which is MM/DD/YYYY. I’m a bit lax on this and sometimes don’t bother to change it every time I set it up for the duration of its location. Something that I must get in the habit of doing especially when trying to age tracks made by passing animals.
• Trail Cam mode. This is photo mode, rapid-fire means a photo every 0.2 seconds when triggered and multi-shot means a photo triggered every 2 seconds when triggered.
• When removing the SD card make sure the power is switched off.
• Photo delay. This is how long the camera will wait, regardless of activity, after a video or photo is finished.  It suggested 1 minute initially and change this when it suits your needs.
• Motion detection. Leave this on long-range for best results, but this may not be available on all models.
• Ultra video resolution. An uncompressed video. It takes much more space on an SD card than the high resolution and films at 60fps during the day but this again depends on the trail cam model.
• Keep in mind when placing your camera that it is triggered by movement so moving vegetation like leaves will trigger the cam, so try and avoid these locations.
• Trail cams need to be about 30 to 60 cm off the ground to capture most UK animals.
• Locate your trail cam 10 to 30 feet away from your area of interest for best results unless there are smaller animals to capture.
• Don’t angle the trail cam to close to the ground or it will reduce the detection zone and cause overexposures.
• Ensure the LEDS on the trail cam are not blocked by things such as branches and tree trunks to allow the IR light to reach as far as possible.
• I would personally recommend that the trail cam is left in position for a minimum of 7 days to a maximum of 14 days. 

Here are some useful resources:

• nhbs.com
• uttings.co.uk
• naturespy.org
• Bushcraft Magazine issue 102 Jul/Aug 2023.

On a last note, some photos or videos that you capture on your trail cam can be hard to explain away as this is a still frame of a dancing thingy ma jiggy that I caught one night will show.

*We would like to point out that there is no such thing as a Trail Cam on the market that makes you a cup of tea – ED.