Strategy for location to place a trail cam

[wiiawiwb]

I'm curious what others are doing when deciding where to place your trail cam(s). The forest is vast and it could be put anywhere. How do you narrow it down? I have typically looked to place mine in one of three areas:

 

1) At the merger of game trails

2) A chokepoint in the terrain

3) Near a water source

 

The first location is in hopes the menu is set and I'm waiting for a saquatch to take a seat at the dinner table.  The second is an area where terrain features force game to pass through. I usually narrow down this  location by studying the topo map. Maybe it's a saddle between two peaks or a narrow hollow but usually it is at the base between two mountains/hills where travel is easier going through the passageway than up and over.  The final location is somewhere near a water source...a pond or stream.  I try to choose ones that are by themselves and a longer distance to the next source.

 

I'm considering selecting somewhere along an edgeline. For example, where the treeline meets a field. Setting up the trailcam so it records things coming out of and back into the treeline. Maybe catching a sasquatch running out of the treeline to grab a deer. My concern has been the trailcam would be more exposed to a hunter poking around because it would have to be placed on a tree on the outer perimeter.  Most trailcams have a flash range of 60'-100' so it can only capture so much of the treeline's edge.

 

How do you decide where to place your trailcam?

 

[Madison5716]

You should ask @NorthWind. He likes trail cams!

[MIB]

A few considerations ..

 

1) Sun .. I try to point my cameras north to get the minimum amount of sun flares off the lens.  

2) I avoid being in trigger range of brush, branches, or grass that the wind can move creating false images.   This isn't always possible to do absolutely, but it's a worthy goal.  

 

Then ..

 

I don't usually use game trails.  I think the BFs will be off to the side observing / ambushing what is using the trail, not using the trail themselves.    When I do, I try to point the camera along the trail, not across it, 'cause BFs walk at a pace about as fast as I can run ... unless the camera trigger is very fast, by the time the thing trips and takes a picture, the BF will have already left the field of view.   For that same reason, if I am taking pix across a trail, I try to get back quite a ways so that distance creates a wider field of view with more chance the BF will still be in the image when the shutter snaps.

 

My favorite places are in pinch points where bluffs or large patches of blow-down force critters passing through into a narrow spot.    The ideal ideal, which I've only found once, is two such places next to each other so that I could set up a camera on each side facing toward the other side, other camera, so nothing could pass either behind either camera without the other capturing its image.

 

Also ..

 

I prefer to set my cameras out to "soak" for a year at a time and do not visit them except at set times of year so that there will be 2-3 months between the time I pass through to service the camera and the time I actually expect the BFs to be around.   This gives my scent time to dissipate, any sort of disturbance of grass or ground cover from my passage to fade into the background, and so on.  For me this means lithium batteries and the largest SD cards my cameras can use.   I can usually get around 6000 pictures on a card and a set of batteries, in my cams, lasts about a year unless I overflow the storage .. which I have done when I foul up and have branches or brush in the wind triggering "false" pictures.

 

MIB

[wiiawiwb]

2 hours ago, MIB said:

I don't usually use game trails.  I think the BFs will be off to the side observing / ambushing what is using the trail, not using the trail themselves.    When I do, I try to point the camera along the trail, not across it, 'cause BFs walk at a pace about as fast as I can run ... unless the camera trigger is very fast, by the time the thing trips and takes a picture, the BF will have already left the field of view. 

 

I agree that having that trailcam along rather than across the game trailid best. You have more opportunity for getting a video/picture especially if the trailcam has a 80' or 100' range.

 

Agree with positioning the trailcams north or south. Facing them east or west creates the opportunity for sunshine to cause glare from the trailcam IR emitter window.

 

You are a patient person. Keeping the scent off the trailcam and letting it age in the wilderness is the best way.  I've been toying with using a deer scent on the trailcams themselves with the idea the scent might be too much for a saquatch to ignore.

 

It's always an exciting time when extracting a trailcam or its micro-card.  One never knows what awaits when the unveiling its contents.