Anyone have any experience with any of these? Just looking for a couple low end cam’s for around the woods at the house.
The L20’s are $80, and the Brownings are about $105 each.
Or any other suggestions for good versions of what I’m looking for (did look for Bushnell Essentials but cant find any for under about $130 now, did see the Trophy available tho for $100).
Thanks for any help.
I run all Browning dark Ops for the last 6 years.
Lessons learned – Never run the batteries completely dead
Don’t use cheap batteries
I’ve had 2 or 3 out of about 20 that the battery tray doesn’t slide easily in/out – my only complaint
Here is a night and day pic of deer at a longer distance. I don’t recall what I have the range set at on these
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I haven’t tried any of the Core series cams, so can’t comment on them.
All of my Browning cams have been good. The only issue I will bring up is that the picture quality on Brownings regardless of model is consistently lower than the picture quality of Bushnells. Even on maximum resolution my Browning cameras cannot equal the picture quality that the Bushnells will shoot on their lowest resolution setting. It just seems that Browning is using different electronics and the quality is just not there. But other than that the Brownings have been excellent cameras. Easy to use and long battery life.
Now whether or not this matters to you I can’t say. For close up pictures when watching a trail or Field road it doesn’t matter that much. For pictures where the animals are out in a food plot or field where you want the ability to zoom in it will matter a lot.
Thanks Randy and Grouse,
I am having a heck of a time, it seems like all of these cams are getting some really bad reviews the last 6-12 months. Cheap parts, battery packs falling out or not making good connections, only taking intermittant pics or just plain stopping to take pics within a couple months. Ughh.
These will be used for close in shots only, nothing over 30 yards probably.
Cedar swamp and thicker woods I’m looking at bow hunting next year. Might have to bump the price search up a little bit.
cams are getting some really bad reviews the last 6-12 months. Cheap parts, battery packs falling out or not making good connections, only taking intermittant pics or just plain stopping to take pics within a couple months.
If you sit down with any one of the available companies’ engineers, the very first thing they will tell you is to NOT BUY CHEAP BATTERIES. Consequently, this causes the largest amount of failures. I personally get it. I run 12 to 16 cameras at any given time. That quickly equates to about 100 AA batteries. Cost wise, there is a huge difference. But cheap grade batteries may give you 900-1000mha Vs 1800+mha on quality. As they explained to me, two things happen. 1 Loss of amperage needed and causes errors. 2. lessor batteries go dead faster and running trail cams with near or dead batteries will make them fail.
Too often, its trying to save a few $$$ on batteries that causes trail cams to puke
Trail Cams, at least in the 10+ years since I’ve been in the game, have been a crapshoot. It seems like the makers just get a camera model really figured out and working well and then they mess about with it to “improve” it. And then it doesn’t work well… Going back years the reviews were always all over the place and I suspect many of the negative reviews were user error.
I’ve owned 12 cams in the last 10 years (I number them and put the date of purchase on them with a sharpie) and 10 of them are still in service. One Bushnell that was 7 years old just died stone dead and could not be resurected by anything I tried. I had one cam that was bad right out of the box. Literally would not fire up. I suspect it had already been returned but somehow got put back on the shelf. That was 8-9 years ago and I don’t even remember what brand it was, it was from Cabelas and I returned it for a refund.
I have had cams that stopped taking pictures and to add to Randy’s comment about batteries, the other thing is the SD cards. Alway hard-format the SD cards before use. I NEVER swap SD cards once I get a cam working, I pull the card, use a card reader to download pics to my phone, and then put the same card back in the cam. If you have issues, swapping in a fresh, formatted SD card will fix a lot of them.
FWIW, I use batteries from Rayovac, you can get a big box of them on sale at Menards for a really good price a couple of times a year. These Rayovac batteries are consistently rated as good or better than Duracell and I’ve never had the slightest issue. I date the batteries with a sharpie, my current record is 8 Rayovacs in a Bushnell E3 cam lasted from May 2019 to late June of 2020 and took tens of thousands of pics in that timeframe. The cam was out all winter, it never was shut off or came in.
Basically, all you can do is buy the cam and try it out right away. I put any new cams out in on a post by the driveway so with lots of kid/people traffic I’ll see right away if it’s working. If it’s working right out of the box, I’d say a high chance it’ll keep working. If you know/suspect it’s missing pictures or there are other issues, return it right away.
These have worked good and frequently on sale
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These have worked good and frequently on sale
Those are the ones. Used those for years, never an issue.
And they’re cheap! As Mrs Grouse often says, I’m nothing if not cheap.
Good to know, I get a pretty good deal on those Rayovac’s up here at L & M usually.
I had an old Moultrie go down this summer (so old it took “C” batteries) and this/these will replace it. I guess I’m just gonna bite the bullet and pick one and try it. Even the Bushnell E3 is getting bad reviews the last year, guys saying they have multiple older ones that are great, but the model put out this last year is made cheaper and has issues.
Think I’m gonna go with one/couple of the Browning Dark Ops and see how it works.
Thanks for all the info guys, have a great weekend.
i’ve found the tests and reviews from this site to be very helpful.
https://www.trailcampro.com/
they’re selling cameras, so not completely independent in that sense, but digging into their test process and information has been educational and their reviews/ratings seem reliable.
a few things that caught my attention in particular:
– camera detection angles that are wider than the field of view (image) angle is a way they make up for slow(er) trigger speeds. it can result in triggers where no deer shows up in the picture if the deer stays in the gap between angles. i know i’ve experienced this with my Bushnell Aggressor cameras as there’s a 9-degree difference (many of the Brownings are 1-4 degrees); and there are quite a few out there with a 20-degree difference!
https://www.trailcampro.com/pages/trail-camera-detection-field-of-view-angle
– trail cameras have a “native resolution” that is often much lower than their advertised maximum resoultion. ie., a camera might advertise 20 megapixels in order to compete with the other brands, but this is software forces and it’s optical resolution is actually more like 5 megapixels. the camera settings are usually pre-set to the max amount, but manually setting it to the native resolution can improve trigger speed and actually make for clearer pictures.
https://www.trailcampro.com/pages/5-most-common-trail-camera-myths
– battery types matter, a lot:
https://www.trailcampro.com/pages/game-camera-battery-information
I’ve tried alot of different cameras. Had the big C battery Moultries that wouldn’t die! I was a big Cuddeback fan until the newer generations. Recently, I’m really digging the Browning black ops. I now have 4 and will probably buy a couple more. I generally have between 12 and 18 cams running all year. I love cool winter pics. I use the same Rayovacs as the other guys.
i’ve found the tests and reviews from this site to be very helpful.
https://www.trailcampro.com/
Thanks for sharing the links. It’s confusing enough for anyone trying to choose in today’s market. Good info for someone new to begin to compare
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