JAN 21, 2019   |   HUNTING TIPS, TRICKS, and SKILLS

Craft of the Trail Camera

I’m like a kid on Christmas when it comes to checking trail cameras. I checked my cameras a while back and had a mess of pictures, but probably 70% of the daylight photos were too bright. There’s nothing worse than checking a trail camera and having a bunch of jacked up photos.

I thought the dang camera was junk, but since I’d spent more than a hundred bucks on it, I moved it to a different spot to see if it would just magically – fix itself. I put it on the edge of a field hoping to catch the deer moving from feeding to bedding areas, and the camera took hundreds of perfect pictures.

Those bad photos at the first location were not the camera’s fault; they were mine. I’d set it up at noon, and positioned the darn thing facing east, right into the morning sun. Yep, rookie mistake. I’ve since had my best success setting trail cameras up facing north or south. This keeps the sunrise and sunset out of the camera’s lens. Where you place your trail camera is important, but so to is the direction it’s facing. (Travis Belcher/Potts Creek Outfitters)