Silly Question: How To Use A Trail Camera

[cloudbaseracer]

I bought a trail camera last year and have tried to use it several times but it is just giving me fits.  I had it up the other day for one night and I had 1274 pictures!!! As you can probably guess, it was triggered by slight movement of some limbs and twigs.  There was one lone set of coyote eyes but that is it for game.

I then moved the camera to another location and did a pretty good job of clearing out stuff in front.  So, overnight I had 265 images.  About 30 or so were of several different does at 5 different times but I still got quite a few of what I assumed was nothing.  This one may have been triggered by deer movement that was out further than could be seen but would still make the shutter go off?  I say this because the time stamp was all over the place.  What I mean is that if the wind was causing the branches to move, I would have expected more consistent photos and more along the lines of the previous night with 1274!

What am I doing wrong here? How do you guys position and use yours?  Once set-up properly, what do you feel is adequate number of deer sightings per night?  If you only see a few deer every few days, do you consider it a bad location?

[bofish-IL]

Mine are all homebrew cameras that have adjustments for sensitivity and range. The couple factory cameras I had always had a lot of false occurrences.

From using them for years now twigs moving, tall grass, and weeds will set them off. Even having them attached to small diameter trees that sway in the wind will trigger them. Also having them face into the sun in the morning or evening would give false photos. Since some are also triggered by heat. I get a lot of what I think are false photos but after close inspection a squirrel or rabbit have triggered them.  Birds flying by will also trigger them. I have one that has no adjustment and it is triggered by deer 40 to 50 feet away. This doesn't allow for any close up photos.

My Moultrie took lots of false photos and a friends cuddieback is about 50 percent false photos.

[PowDuck]

It may be false triggering. Set it up in your living room one night before you go to bed. It should have no pictures in the morning. I've had to take 2 Moultries back for false triggering.

[kennym]

The best thing I've done was put a mineral block out to keep the deer there for a bit.Thanks Tracy!

Or point it down the trail so the deer has time to say cheese when it finally snaps the pic.

[Wary Buck]

What KennyM said.  Even just scuffing the ground heavily in front of the camera or putting an unusual cedar branch or something (some scent) to get them to stop for a second can help as well.

I've also had them false trigger when put on small trees that themselves were moving in the wind.

[cloudbaseracer]

Yeah, my thing is all of the shots I get of nothing shouldn't be happening. I know that 1200 deer did not come by in a night but I also do not know how you can position a camera where it will not have a branch or twig in front that will move with the wind?  It seems like everyone with a field camera should be getting a very high number of "empty" images but of course you never read about this in the advertisements! HA

[Stump73]

I use to have one a few years back when they used 35mm film. At first I would get the back ends deer but never the whole body until I put some apples out in front. Then I had great pictures. We one time to check on it and it was opened , at first I thought someone had tried to still it. After waiting about a week to get them developed ,I found that it was a 4 point buck had some how opened it and was caught red handed on camera. I had to end up putting a lock on it to him from breaking and entering.

[Whip]

I'm no expert on the things - I do have one that I use.  But do check your manual to see if there are sensitivity settings.  The model that I use has one, and when I tried it set to be more sensitive last summer I ended up with a bunch of blanks.  Went back to medium sensitivity and things are much better again.
Also make sure that the camera is not pointing toward the sun, especially east or west when it is low in the sky.  But it sounds like yours is happening at night as well?

[cloudbaseracer]

Yes, mine is at night and random throughout but still very frequent.  It is definitely too sensitive but I do not think that can be adjusted.  I will check again.

Do you guys clear a big area out to use them or just put it in a normal spot and get good results?

I feel like I have to clear out a huge area to get it so I am only looking at large tree bases!

[swampdrummer]

Unlikely but something to check for. I've had ants get in the camera and set it off thousands of times in a 3 or 4 day period.

[Kenkel]

I just bought a new cheaper one from the big blue store and tested it against my cuddeback.  They are both infrared cameras set up to as close as the same as possible.  Had both of them set up on the same spot as far as time between pictures and sensitivity settings.  The cheaper one false triggered on the sun in the morning quite a few times.  It also had two blurry pictures of deer while the cuddeback had quite a few pictures and 10 second videos so I know that there were deer in front of them.  I am not impressed at all with it.
I can set the cuddeback in a thicket and get good pictures, it falses some but will get a lot of good pictures and videos.  It may crap out tomorrow but it has worked good for me for about three seasons now. I try to set it up on scrapes and trails.