Bushnell 8.0 MP Trophy Cam – Field report.

Some of you may recall me agonizing over the huge number of options for trail cams last month. Based on advice from folks here, I finally settled on the Bushnell 8 MP TrophyCam from Cabelas.

I spent more than I’d wanted to, but the consensus seemed to be that you are getting more for the money when you move up past the $150 mark. I got this camera for $159, but that was on sale.

The camera has been up in one location for nearly a week and I’m very happy with performance across the board.

In the current location on a main trail next to a stand in a grove of oak trees, the camera does very well. It’s semi-shaded and out of 150 frames shot so far, only a few dozen have been “false triggers”. By that, I mean something other than a large animal must have set the camera off.

Currently, I have the sensor on medimum sensitivity and the frame interval is set at 20 seconds.

I’m running at the 3MP setting with a 16GB memory card because I didn’t know how many frames the card would hold at a given setting. With 150 pictures on the card, the card shows as 10% full, so even shooting at 5 or 8 MP shouldn’t be a problem if the camera can be attended once a week. If that can’t happen, I’d probably put the capture rate down to 1 frame every 60 seconds or more.

The TrophyCam takes 4 or 8 AA batteries. As a test, I installed only 4 batteries and I’m going to see how long the camera lasts with 4 vs 8. After a week, the camera meter still registers the batteries as fully charged.

Here are a few picture examples:

1. Look, it catches humans too. Yours truely in the foreground, my father is holding up the deer stand in the background.

2. Nighttime pics have been very good. No blurring and the range seems to be effective, so far at least.

3. Busted! It appears that the camera makes some kind of noise when it comes out of sleep mode. The doe in pic #3 had the camera totally busted. But the low-light and daylight performance are great as far as picture quality.

And just as a side note, dang these things are really fun! I’ve seen plenty of pics and have helped others tend cameras, but this is the first one I’ve owned. Both pa and I are getting a kick out of it, it’s almost a hobby in and of itself.

Grouse

Great info, I was just going to ask you about this the other day.

Yes, trail cameras are a blast. Which is why I get at least one new one each year. Pictures like this are fun. Not just for capturing deer.

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I’m running at the 3MP setting with a 16GB memory card because I didn’t know how many frames the card would hold at a given setting

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When you are in Set-up mode on the main screen you should see how many pictures it has taken and how many pictures are available represented by two 4 digit numbers. So 150 pictures out of 7995 available would show up as 0150/7995. I think mine on 8mp setting will hold just shy of 8,000 pics on a 8gb card. After you are done setting up you can always check there to see how many pics you can hold and make adjustments as you see fit. I have mine set to 5 second interval and 3 pic bursts.

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I’m running at the 3MP setting with a 16GB memory card because I didn’t know how many frames the card would hold at a given setting

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When you are in Set-up mode on the main screen you should see how many pictures it has taken and how many pictures are available represented by two 4 digit numbers. So 150 pictures out of 7995 available would show up as 0150/7995. I think mine on 8mp setting will hold just shy of 8,000 pics on a 8gb card. After you are done setting up you can always check there to see how many pics you can hold and make adjustments as you see fit. I have mine set to 5 second interval and 3 pic bursts.

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I saw that, BB, but unless I didn’t close enough or whatever, the total pics available doesn’t change based on the MP setting of the camera. since I have a 16 GB card, it just says xx/9999. Obviously the max is greater than 9999, but even at 8 MP it still says 9999.

I guess it doesn’t matter that much. At the current setting and in the current location, it’s shooting about 100-200 pics a day. At that rate, it could stay out there a month and not fill up.

I got another batch of picks today and finally there’s a small 6 pointer there with some does. First buck I’ve gotten on cam.

Performance still very good with only a small % of false triggers. Night pictures especially have been exceeding my expectations.

Grouse
Grouse

Got ya
Usually false triggers are a bird flying by or on real windy days it can be brush moving. When it gets colder if you see an increase in empty photos change your sensor to low.