Has anyone used the bushnell cameras at all? Easy to use etc.? Failing that any recommendations for other trail cams? Don't want to spend a fortune! Better still if anyone has one for sale... I would be interested! Thanks!
I've had a Bushnell Trophy Cam HD Max out in the field every day for the last four years, during which time it's recorded 3,448 mainly video clips but also a few stills (I log every one on a spreadsheet as it's mainly used for recording wildlife species).
Good points:
It's been brilliant at showing me what's going on when I'm not there or things that are difficult to spot in person, e.g. it has confirmed that the newly-arrived Fallow are breeding, captured evidence of illegal off-roaders, etc.
The timescan feature is useful for getting shots of things which are too far away to trigger the camera, e.g. to get an impression of how often rabbits/deer/etc come out into the area of a whole field.
Even a mouse will trigger it if it's close enough and the camera is on the right setting.
It's cheap to run. Although it takes 12 AA batteries (only about £2 if you buy in bulk from e.g. Screwfix), battery life seems fairly good to me, typically 6-7 months in summer and 3 months in winter. I think it's low temperatures which makes the main difference between summer/winter, followed by the number of times the camera is triggered and whether it's dark or light at the time, i.e. IR LEDs on or off. So I usually get about 800 x 1min video clips in summer, and about 300 x 1min clips in winter.
Quality of videos and stills is excellent in the day and good at night.
It's really easy to use. I just have two memory cards which I swap around when I want to see what the camera has picked up.
It's never gone wrong, and has remained watertight throughout the four years.
Weak points:
The trigger time is fairly slow at about 1s, so in 667 of my 3,448 videos/stills the animal has moved out of view by the time the camera started recording. Trigger times have improved substantially since I bought mine, and getting a shorter trigger time will be high on my list of priorities when/if I buy again.
It's got a fairly narrow field of view (not sure what other trail cameras are like), so needs positioning carefully to get the best chance of the animal being captured on camera. E.g. I aim to get the animal walking diagonally away from/towards the camera, so it triggers the camera and then spends more time in shot.
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