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Using a Moultrie Plot Watcher

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Truedouble

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I bought a Moultrie D55IR xt at the deer expo. It has the plot watcher, trail cam, hybrid mode (plot watcher during the day and trail cam at night) and the video mode.

In an effort to save myself some frustration and time what are your recommendations on how to set this thing up.

1. plot watcher- takes pics from sun up to ??????? and then from ????? to sundown... I can choose the duration of morning pics and afternoon pics in the plotwatcher mode. I think 2 hours is good so it doesn't use too much battery life and most movement is close to sun up and sun down, this time of year especially.

2. plot frequency (default 15 seconds) period of time between each shot in plotwatcher mode. Less time chosen = less battery life. Any advice here?

Any advice on this particular camera. I'd be good just using it for videos and pics, but do like the idea of the plotwatcher from pre-rut to rut.
 
All I can say is to not worry about the battery life and turn the option on.... it is awesome....


 
Sako,

Have they improved battery life significantly with their latest model? Their older model would only run for about a week with rapid picture taking.
 
BSK said:
Sako,

Have they improved battery life significantly with their latest model? Their older model would only run for about a week with rapid picture taking.
Click to expand...

both of mine are about a year old and are hard on batteries..... but honestly, off of the camera that the above video came off of, there were only 12 still pictures.... I am still getting 3 weeks or so out of them with heavy picture taking... you can slow it down as well. I have mine set for 1.5 hours before dark and after sunrise...

I still believe this mode works best this time of year to look at overall numbers and activity. Once hunting pressure is on I generally go back to still mode
 
I talked to the PlotWatcher guys at the Expo, and they said they had improved battery life with the latest model, but I haven't had a user confirm that or tell me how long they now last.
 
I will put a new set out soon and see how long it lasts and get back with you.... I let a set go in the spring and I had a months pictures on it... Just really getting them back out hard now.
 
sako. I noticed you have your delay set at 1 minute. Any advice on setting less or more than a minute. I know the longer the delay the longer duration of the battery life but too much time and you might miss a lot.

That's pretty cool. Never viewed the rapid pic.

By the way, any idea if you can view on a Mac. I'm having my doubts.

by the way, say you get a shot of a good buck, but it's off in the distance. Can you zoom in on the buck?
 
The files are saved in a mlt format... to play on a mac or on a PC without the moultrie software, simply change the file extensio to .avi This is all I did and I do not use their playback software... I ran accross this advice on the moultie forum... it simple and works very well.

I am actually taking 3 pictures per minute... I have not tried to zoom. I will look into that.
 
Sako said:
I have not tried to zoom. I will look into that.
Click to expand...

I haven't used or reviewed images from their latest cameras, so I don't know if they've improved image resolution over the original units. But with the original plotwatcher, you could tell if a buck way off in a field was big or small, but the image was not clear enough to identify individual bucks by antler configuration. And that's why I don't use them. For what I'm doing, I need to be able to identify each buck in each picture by his antler configuration or body markings. But again, tell if a buck was a "shooter" or not? Yup.
 
Sako said:
The files are saved in a mlt format... to play on a mac or on a PC without the moultrie software, simply change the file extensio to .avi This is all I did and I do not use their playback software... I ran accross this advice on the moultie forum... it simple and works very well.

I am actually taking 3 pictures per minute... I have not tried to zoom. I will look into that.
Click to expand...

awesome. Thanks for saving me some time and frustration...
 

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