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.

 

[Hunter 257W]

I bought 5 of the - I Think - "Trail Timer" brand devices like Mike Belt mentioned that used a thread across a trail to stop a little timer at the time the thread was pulled out of the little box. Then they came up with an infrared model that timed up to 5 events. It was crude and surprisingly had 5 of the same cheap little digital clocks in it that the thread triggered model did. Each event would stop one of the clocks so you could tell when something had crossing in front of it. OF course you never knew if it was a deer or not.

When that same company - "Trail Timer" brought out a film camera I got 2 of them. I recall paying $150 each but that was true wholesale back when having a FFL could really get you wholesale on all kinds of sporting goods besides guns. This was in the Fall of 2004. These were homebuilt obviously as they were a standard camera with a wire harness added that was mounted inside a hinged box and held in place with foam. One of them worked great and the other was very finicky. I recall sending it back for a rework and I could tell I was dealing with a very small company based on the way the emails read when corresponding about the repairs. Still that one never worked as well as the other and finally quit. The other was stolen in August 2008. It was getting hard to find a place to develop film by then anyhow so it wasn't much of a loss really.

My 1st digital camera was a huge disappointment. I got something like 300 pictures in one week and was fired up to see all the deer that I would never have seen when limited to only 36 exposures on a roll of film. Got to the computer and the danged camera had about 300 pictures of nothing but the woods. It had a trigger time of about 7 hours.

I've had various different cheap Chinese cameras since then and most worked from fair to pretty good. Some didn't work at all right out of the box. The worst of the lot that did work gave only 3 weeks battery life with 6 C batteries and the pictures were very grainy. It didn't matter how many pictures it took either, the batteries lasted 3 weeks. Thankfully it got stolen too. The 3 Browning's I bought this past year are the best so far by a long shot. Ease of use, battery life, quality of picture, trigger sensitivity and time are all outstanding by my standards. These are the "Good ol Days" of trail cameras right now if you ask me.

 

[BSK]

These are the "Good ol Days" of trail cameras right now if you ask me.

Absolutely. Features, consistency in quality control, lifespan of the units; everything has gotten so much better.

...and prices are way down from what they were. I remember years ago paying $600 for a black-flash camera. Now, around $200 for a really good black-flash.

 

[DMD]

I used to get 36 picture rolls developed and have 36 pictures of crows. 18 flying into corn and triggering camera - the camera would make such a "clunk" noise, I'd have 18 picture of crows flying away from corn pile. All 36 pictures would be taken in a ten minute span!!

 

[BSK]

I used to get 36 picture rolls developed and have 36 pictures of crows. 18 flying into corn and triggering camera...

Boy do I sadly remember those days!

 

[redblood]

I still have a few cheapos that will fill an sd card on a windy day

 

[BigAl]

I agree, one of the coolest and most frustrating innovations in hunting. Often, I used to get sick of the failures and quit using one for awhile. Then a year later, I'd try it again. I still get frustrated often, but its not as an expensive failure as it used to be. I have a box of non working cams. Are they worth anything these days? Do people still fool with them?