Short history of the trail-camera

[DT33]

I had a CamTrakker back in the late 90s. Out of Georgia if I remember. Over 500 bucks and then film and developing. I still have have thousands of pics in shoeboxes in my attic. I just can’t bring myself to toss them. Lol.

 

[DoubleRidge]

Interesting history...thanks for sharing....I too started with a film camera and remember clearly the first buck I got a picture of.....that camera eventually got stolen and I switched to digital..... still have two old Stealth Skouts that are working very well.

 

[Mike Belt]

I started out with a piece of thread strung across a deer to see if they were using it. If they were you could only guesstimate the time of usage based on what time of day you set and then checked it. I graduated to the Trail Master that also used a piece of thread but when a deer crossed the trail it would record the time of the event. It was good for only 1 event. I then went to those that incorporated a camera. My first were the Non-Typicals and then the Cuddebacks that used film. My processing bills were killing me to only get pics of everything except a few deer. I was so fed up with them and all the wasted time and money that I jumped straight in to Reconyx because of their reputation and that's all I've used since. Still great cameras but on the expensive end. Different companies have come out with cameras that do a good job since then but I think I've bought my last camera.

 

[Antler Daddy]

There used to be an entire forum here dedicated to the "homebrew" community. After a LOT of work, it started fracturing off into other forums (jesse's hunting page, hagshouse, and some that i forget) . Its about that time that some individuals started building their own boards for use in the homebrew cams (BG2, snapshot sniper, etc). The first affordable "commercial" cameras that i remember, had the same camera's that we were using (samsung, sony, etc) but they had their own boards, but they could manufacture a lot cheaper thus the cheaper prices.

When we moved out here to CO and i had to clean out my attic, i found a couple of sony film cams and some of those walmart motion sensors, no less than 15 or so completed trail cams (film) , and 4 or 5 digital homebrew trailcams. I kept a few working ones just for nostalgia .

I believe I read somewhere that the original thread on the topic was about 160 pages long. I don’t know, it was before my time.

 

[BSK]

I had a CamTrakker back in the late 90s. Out of Georgia if I remember. Over 500 bucks and then film and developing. I still have have thousands of pics in shoeboxes in my attic. I just can’t bring myself to toss them. Lol.

The Camtracker was basically a commercially produced homebrew. But for it's time, it was a good unit. Just very pricey.

 

[TheLBLman]

Fascinating stuff. I still remember using Trail-Timers - Wow have we come a long way.

x 2

I believe I purchased my Uway cams right before BSK did.
Mine worked great, when they worked, and at the time, they had superior imagery, and extended true black flash range. Unfortunately, my Uway units suffered from extremely poor quality control, forcing me to entirely give up on the brand.

Most of the various brands I've used have worked at least somewhat as advertised.
Exception would be the Cuddeback No Flash and the Uways I had. I suspect I may have just gotten a bad batch of Uways, but the Cuddebacks were just poorly engineered from the get-go.

Count me among the old fans of Leaf River cams as well.

Today, although I am using several different brands for different purposes, I overall most use the Browning line and believe they're giving me the most value for the money.