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Virgin- got some ?'s

bigluresonly

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I have been lookin at pics here for years and I decided I wanted to play. My doe got me a cam and I could really use some assistance and tips in setting it up. I appreciate your time in answering my (probably silly) questions.

1st off, I don't know what half of the features of this cam mean.
It is a Bushnell trophy cam hd. Features on the box say-

Field scan 2X time lapse w/live trigger (?)
32 Hyper night vision led w/60ft flash (?)
auto pir (something about temperature?)
Gps geotag (?)
multi flash mode (?)
temp stamp (understood)
moon phase stamp(understood)

I guess I want to know the cliff notes on what is the best way to set this cam up so I can see some pics. I regularly see deer on my land and I suppose I should set this cam where I usually see them? Huge thanks to any help and any input on advantages/disadvantages to this cam.
 
You might initially just use it with the "default" setting, just to get your feet wet, so to speak.

"Field scan 2x time lapse" means it will take a pic continuously every so many minutes. You do NOT want to use this feature yet.

bigluresonly said:
I regularly see deer on my land and I suppose I should set this cam where I usually see them? Huge thanks to any help and any input on advantages/disadvantages to this cam.
Assuming you didn't get a "lemon" (quite a few don't work properly brand new), this cam has lots of nice features, and is fairly easy to use and change the settings.

If you have a food plot or field deer are regularly using now, that's where I'd place it now. Or, if you have an established salt lick, that would be good for the next 2 or 3 weeks. Place this cam approximately 20 feet from where you expect the deer, and place it approximately 3 feet high on a tree. The bigger the tree the better (makes cam less noticeable to both wildlife and humans).

Best if you can have the cam facing as much to the north as possible, since this puts the sun behind the pics as much as possible.

I'm not sure what the default settings are on this cam, but if you decide to use something different, I'd initially program that cam to take 1 or 2 pics no more frequently than every 1 minute. Just saying this to prevent your being overwhelmed by the time-consumptive task of going thru so many pics when you check it.

Many of your pics will be of "nothing", as things will trigger this cam slightly outside either side of the area a pic can be obtained. This is one reason to go with 2 or more pics per trigger (after you gain a little experience), as a deer walking into the viewing area will commonly trigger the cam before he's directly in front. The 2nd pic (when set 2 per trigger) will be about 1 second after the first, often getting the animal that the 1st missed. Three pics per trigger CAN be better, but will give you a lot more useless pics.

You will get some "nothing" pics sometimes from wind blowing something in front of the sensor, such as some weeds the sun is hitting (they're warmer than the surrounding air, and moving). Sometimes a bird will fly across, triggering the cam, but gone before the pic takes. Sometimes a squirrel, etc.

Many of your nighttime pics will be blurry (this is normal) due to the slow nighttime shutter speed of both red & black flash cams. Only traditional white flash will give you crisp nighttime images on moving animals.

If working properly, and that can be a big little "if", that particular cam has a fairly fast trigger speed, takes really good daytime pics, and fair nighttime pics. The scan mode, which can be programmed to only operate during two time-frames every 24 hours (such as 6A to 9A and 4P to 6P) is nice feature for fields and large food plots where deer would often be way beyond the trigger sensor, but since the daytime image quality is good, you can tell a lot about a deer 100 yards away. You generally would not want the field scan mode operating during the night.

Focus now on learning the basics of using that cam, then experiment with the different settings.

The main "cons" of this cam (which apply to nearly all cams made in China) are poor quality control during manufacture. Some of the features may not work or may not work properly, and being a new user, you may mistakenly think the problem is your inexperience, when the real problem is the cam may not work as advertised. [size]BE SURE YOU REGISTER THE WARRANTY.[/size]
 
Wes, I read your response twice and I thank you for your input. I am going to hang this cam tomorrow and will probably re-read again before that. Once again, ty for the tips!
 
Glad to be able to help a little.

One more thing, I would not initially use the video mode until you become more familiar with all the settings. I seldom use video mode myself simply because the imagery is much less detailed (although the movies can be fun to watch).

My version of "video" is to set a cam such as this to take 3 pics per triggering, and allow it to re-trigger about every 10 seconds. That means if there is a deer in front of the cam, you should get 3 pics within every 10 seconds, i.e. 9 pics in 30 seconds. But it can be extremely time consumptive to go thru thousands of pics.

In the case of your Bushnell, it can be set to trigger more frequently than every 10 seconds. My experience with some Bushnells and other makes is they can have a tendency to malfunction when used near their stated limits, such as the date resetting to January 1st, runaway triggering (just continuously triggers until the card if filled), etc.
 

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