If you are a hunting enthusiast, you might want to use a trail camera to monitor your hunting ground, observe the bucks activity, and even capture some amazing photos. But did you know, if you don’t pay attention to hiding your camera, you might scare away those cautious bucks, or even affect their walking routes, thus reducing your hunting success rate. In this article, I want to share with you some tips on how to hide your trail camera, so that you can capture more bucks, without letting them discover your camera or your stand location.
(We are the GardePro outdoor research team. Our team consists of professionals who have been working in hunting and wildlife management for 15 years, experienced outdoor survival experts, and young new members. Our team often uses trail cameras to observe and record bucks behavior, and provide materials for my videos, articles, or team research and development. In this regard, we have also accumulated a lot of experience and insights, and want to share them with you. Here are some tips from the GardePro outdoor research team.)
First of all, you need to understand that bucks are very sensitive and alert animals, and they will be curious or fearful of anything unnatural. So, when you set up your trail camera, you must keep in mind one very important thing: how deep do you want to hide your trail camera. Yes, you need to hide them, rather than casually put them on a tree or a pole, which will easily be noticed by the bucks, or even cause their dissatisfaction.
I remember the first time I used a trail camera was many years ago, when the cameras were all offline cameras, I put them on a good trail, because there were often bucks passing by, I thought I could take a lot of bucks photos, but I found that the bucks avoided that place, and even formed another trail, I hardly got any photos, which made me very frustrated, and also made me realize that if a bucks smelled your camera, it would sniff the human scent, and leave a danger message, which is not telling other bucks that this place is safe, we all know that scent usually means territory marking, territory marking will keep the bucks away from me, I had to change my approach.
Since then, I started to study how to hide trail cameras, including learning from other experienced people. I found that the key to hiding trail cameras are the following points. These points are universal but for the purpose of not letting animals smell our cameras:
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Choose the right location. You want to put the camera in places where bucks frequent, such as water sources, food, scrapes, or mating points. If you don’t have such scenes nearby, you can create them yourself, so that you can capture more bucks, because they will be more focused on these places, rather than your camera, bucks’s attention is usually alert, but if there are other scenes to distract them, your camera will get better hidden. You also want to avoid putting the camera on the bucks’s walking path, which will make them uncomfortable, or even change their route. You want to put the camera on the side, or diagonally, which can reduce their alertness.
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Choose the right height. You want to put the camera above the bucks’s head level, which can reduce their field of vision, and also avoid their sense of smell. I suggest you put the camera at 6 feet or higher, sometimes I even put them on the ground, because I found that bucks don’t look down, or look up, so this is also effective. Of course, you also need to pay attention to the camera angle, to make it able to capture the bucks’s whole body, rather than just a part.
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Choose the right camera. You want to choose a camera that has good performance, small size, dark color, low noise, and light that can’t be detected by animals, which can reduce the camera’s attractiveness, and also reduce the interference to animals. Why do I recommend using GardePro Cellular Trail Camera X 60 PMB With Rechargeable Battery & 32 G Built-in Memory SD Card, because it uses 940nm No Glow IR LEDs, adopts adaptive lighting technology, can automatically adjust the power of the infrared LED according to the distance of the animal, avoid overexposure at close range and underexposure at far range, and the power can’t be detected by animals.
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Choose the right cover. You want to hide the camera behind some natural cover, such as leaves, branches, bushes, or rocks, which can make them blend in with the surrounding environment, and also cover their shape, color, and light. You need to pay attention, the cover can’t be too much, or too little, can’t affect the camera’s field of view, or make them too exposed. GardePro Cellular Trail Camera X60 PMB’s small size is suitable for most scenarios. Of course you also want to put the camera close to the cover, rather than too far away from them, which can reduce their space, and also reduce their risk.
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You also want to choose a camera that has long battery life, large memory capacity, fast trigger speed, and clear picture quality, so that you can capture more photos, and more clear, and more realistic. Battery life is not a key factor in determining the camera quality according to my experience, but if the battery life is low, resulting in us needing to frequently change the battery, and the behavior of frequently changing the camera battery has already increased the chance of exposing the camera, through the scent. And GardePro Cellular Trail Camera X60 PMB comes with a rechargeable lithium battery, and also built-in 32 G SD card. It integrates 3 PIR sensors, ensuring 0.1s fast trigger speed, 0.5s recovery time, wide 120° detection angle, 85ft/27m detection distance, these functions can help you get the best picture quality. And GardePro Solar panel 300 supports you for more than 30 days or longer without changing the camera in normal weather conditions..
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Choose the right time, as I mentioned at the beginning, to reduce the chance of animals or bucks smelling your camera. You want to choose the right time to set up and check your camera, according to the bucks’s activity habits, generally speaking, morning and evening are the most active times for bucks, so you want to avoid disturbing them at these times, you can choose noon or afternoon, when they are resting or grazing, which can reduce their alertness, and also reduce your scent. You also need to pay attention, don’t check your camera too frequently, which will make them uneasy, and also increase your traces. You can choose to check once every two weeks or every month, so GardePro Cellular Trail Camera X60 PMB’s cellular function supports you to receive the camera remotely through GardePro app, which allows you to view your photos anytime and anywhere, without having to go to the site. And the distance problem is not something to worry about, the working principle of the cellular camera is similar to the phone. How far can the phone connect and transfer photos to each other?
If you follow these tips to hide your trail camera, you will find that you can not only capture more bucks, but also they will be more natural, more relaxed, and more interesting. You will also find that your hunting results will be better, because you won’t scare away those cautious bucks, or affect their walking routes, you will have more chances to see them at your stand location, this is the whole meaning of hunting, isn’t it?