Trail Cam?

[Kharon]

I had a Bushnell Trailcam that worked wonderfully for a lot of years - till I dropped it and broke the hinges. I think the wire from the batteries to the circuit board broke as well.

I just sent the last two of four trailcams back to amazon. The other two were returned earlier.

Meidase Trail Camera 16MP 1080P
Bushnell Trophy Cam Trail Camera, Brown (Renewed)
Bushnell Trophy Cam Trail Camera, Brown
TOGUARD Trail Camera 20MP 1080P

They all burned through batteries in less than a week, took really poor night video (when they took any), false triggered like crazy during the day (not all of them), and more. Never had any of these problems with my old Bushnell.

All were ordered from Amazon. I wonder if they are getting seconds to sell, maybe just sending returns out the door hoping they won't get sent back again, something else. Four out of four is a pretty poor record. If I was a noob I'd think it might be me. But 3-4 years of recording video, night and day, in my back yard with no problems and no change in the environment - the only difference is a new cam.

Do you think buying somewhere other than Amazon and paying the long price would make a difference?

 

[Schwob]

...Do you think buying somewhere other than Amazon and paying the long price would make a difference?...

Not if you buy the same product. Yes, if you find a product designed to perform better.

Not an electronics expert, just relaying experiences I had that may relate:

These might use more power, because they need to if they run a higher power chip or because their circuitry was not designed built to be particularly efficient. IDK. And yes there may be some variance in that, but not that much.

Are you using Alkaline batteries (1.5V, not rechargeable) Or rechargeable NimH batteries? We a compact Canon digicam (earlier days) designed to take AAs. They needed to be Alkalines as the circuitry declared batteries as dead when NimH batteries still had 80 ... 90% of their charge... and it was very wasteful with Alkalines... just junk really... otherwise it was good, but that made it junk...

Some LED fashlights I had had that issue. with 1.2V coming out of the battery they were near unusable dim. They sure looked great at 1.5V per cell. These circuits really should be designed to work well down to 1V or so, but some are not and or some part of the circuit that measures battery voltage to indicate charge status strays in performance too much.

The trigger sensitivity could also suffer from either bad circuit design overly sensitive to component variance or temperature ... or just bad design. Is there anything to adjust or is it what it is...

 

[Barracuda22]

Maybe try Cabela's site.

If you find one you like, please come back and update. I've been looking too. Was thinking about this one:

Wildgame Innovations Wraith 16 Trail Camera with Viewer Combo : Cabela's

No personal experience with this brand though.

 

[Kharon]

Not if you buy the same product. Yes, if you find a product designed to perform better.

Amazon reviews almost uniformly have large numbers of returned units. In large numbers of on-line (not Amazon) reviews the Bushnell is rated at or very near the top. The two I got from Amazon sucked. My old one bought on ebay worked fine till I dropped it. How do I identify a product designed to perform better. How about trying to find a new (unused) one same as my old model?

 

[Kharon]

Maybe try Cabela's site.

If you find one you like, please come back and update. I've been looking too. Was thinking about this one:

Wildgame Innovations Wraith 16 Trail Camera with Viewer Combo : Cabela's

No personal experience with this brand though.

Seems prety limited in what you can set. Videos look like the are all 15 seconds. The 0.75 trigger speed is awfully slow. Almost all video is 1080p now. 16 mp isnt terrible but most are a lot higher now. And finally, four AAA batteries when all the others use eight AA - I'd worry how long they would last. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Schwob]

Amazon reviews almost uniformly have large numbers of returned units. In large numbers of on-line (not Amazon) reviews the Bushnell is rated at or very near the top. The two I got from Amazon sucked. My old one bought on ebay worked fine till I dropped it. How do I identify a product designed to perform better. How about trying to find a new (unused) one same as my old model?

Unfortunately I cannot help you here and am watching for wisdom on that myself.
It is fairly easy to weed out products with more than (pick your own threshold) of say 4% one star reviews, but it is not helpful if that leaves no product and it is meaningless if the ones that have many good and very few bad reviews have a lot of good reviews by shills paid with free product ... or worse... And that seems to be the reality on Amazon...

Brand names are somewhat meaningless here, They likely all are made by a company unknown to us and branded with a name of meaning to the hunting community. They are cheap traded commodities and if any of those brands enforces minimum quality and performance standards is unknown to me. They sell what sells and drop what does not. If the customers are critical of what they use, that sorts out if the majority of customers however rarely actually use it ("nice gift syndrome"), then all bets are off...

Not sure things would be better there, but maybe peruse B&H's website and if you feel like it give even try to give them a call (no doubt you will be talking to a sales person ...);

See Without Being Seen: A Primer on Trail Cameras

trail camera | B&H Photo Video

 

[TuckerIdaho]

Why no Moultrie?

 

[greeniguana]

I am a wildlife biologist. We have at least a dozen Bushnell Trophy HD Low Glow cameras that get a lot of use... They are great.

We use Energizer Ultimate lithium batteries in them. One set lasts for more than a year, which consists of probably 4 months of constant use. We have tried lots of battery options in an effort to minimize E waste.

 

[Kharon]

On advise from a sportsmen's forum I ordered a Browning Strikeforce Gen 5. It was about 3 times the price of my old Bushnell but has upgraded features. It should be here in a few days. Guess I'll see then. I did not order from Amazon.

@greeniguana Yeah, my old Bushnell was great (till I dropped it - my bad). The two Bushnells I got from Amazon really were awful. One was "renewed" which seemed to mean returned as defective and sent to me. The right half of the night video was completely dark and the left side went about half as far as my old Bushnell Trophy Cam. A set of new Energizer Ultimates burned out in three days - about 10 false triggers during daytime and 4 at night - 20 seconds each. No true triggers.

The second one had serious defects too. I'm done ordering electronics from Amazon. I thought about ordering a Bushnell from other than Amazon but was a bit gun-shy. My brother uses Browning and has had good luck so ...

 

[greeniguana]

Even "open box" and "refurbished" items are usually covered under Amazon return policy. I've bought many "open box/refurbished" things from them at steep discounts ( not game cams)

We frequently have to adjust the cameras sensitivity threshold depending on the habitat and creatures we're trying to capture. Branches and grass will trigger them in the wind, and we aim accordingly or trim vegetation.

I did a large bird mortality/predation survey recently in a sheep grazing area. We had to sift through thousands and thousands of sheep photos......