Trail Cam with empty card.

Strange things are afoot? Or maybe just a trail cam glitch?

I went to download all pics from all of my cams at the property yesterday. One cam had some strange issue I’ve never encountered before. This cam is a Bushnell Trophy Cam HD and it had NO pictures. The cam is on a main trail and deer and other animals walk by it all the time, so it should have had 100 or more pics on it. But it had 0. No pictures at all.

The cam was turned on, unless the switch somehow malfunctioned. I turned the cam off before I pulled the chip to download it. That’s when I saw there were 0 pics on the chip. The batteries are good.

I put the chip back in the cam, turned it back on, and it took 4 pictures of me walking back and forth in front of the cam right away. So the cam appears to be back working. The chip was not new this season, but when I put this cam up 2 weeks ago, I used the “format all” function of the cam because I didn’t know if this chip had been used in a different brand cam last season. It formatted and gave me the “ready” sign when I did this, so I assumed all was well.

I can only think of 2 reasons why a cam would be empty after 2 weeks along a well-used trai-:

1. Somehow it just hung up. Anyone ever had this happen before with a Bushnell or any other brand?

2. Someone was on the property trespassing, saw the cam, and deleted the chip. However, they would have had to literally do this no more than a day or so before I got there, or there would have been new pics taken on the cam after the deletion occured. I can’t see this as being likely, but it is possible.

Any other thoughts on what went wrong? Many thanks.

Grouse

Formatting issue? Some cameras get picky about formatting the cards.

Have had it happen, it’s almost always an issue with the card for me. Run cameras a lot all winter to monitor wolf activity and the cold does a lot of strange things to tcams and everything involved from the cards, to solar panels, connections and auxiliary batteries. Have had more than a couple cards just crap out.

I had things like this happening at the end of summer, and into fall last year. By mid fall it was like all of my cameras(Moultries) had just plain quit working. I happened to drop in a card I had never used, and the camera started taking pics of me in the living room. That suspected bad camera has been working flawlessly since winter. This year I bought all new cards for the cameras, and I have not had an issue since January.

It wasn’t cheap, but it got very frustrating walking so many miles to find empty cameras. And these were in spots that would routinely take 500-1000+ pics a month.

I suspect the contacts on card were not making a good contact. Try cleaning the contacts with a pencil eraser.

I have had 2 Bushnells just stop taking pics, wouldn’t work with different cards or new batteries… got them on sale from Roger’s in MO for $35 each so I wasn’t expecting much. When they worked they took good pictures.

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I am stumped. I have had bad cards, but usually when they are bad they are bad. If you put the same card back in and it took pics right away, that boggles my mind.

I am not going to lie, I have forgotten to turn the cam on before. You get in a routine and have 20 things on your mind and you forget. Go to get the card the next time and you open the cam, turn it off and grab for the card. Sometimes you realize it wasn’t on at all, and sometimes you think you turned it off, but were not totally focused on what you were doing, routine. Did I or didn’t I open this cam and turn it off?????

I am not saying you are a scatter brain Grouse, but then again I am not saying you aren’t either

Ive had that happen 2 times on on my trophy cams.. both times during the RUT.. really mad me mad. Couldn’t figure out why, just glitched up I guess? 2 weeks up, full battery and empty card, not possible.

sticker wrote:

am not going to lie, I have forgotten to turn the cam on before. You get in a routine and have 20 things on your mind and you forget. Go to get the card the next time and you open the cam, turn it off and grab for the card. Sometimes you realize it wasn’t on at all, and sometimes you think you turned it off, but were not totally focused on what you were doing, routine. Did I or didn’t I open this cam and turn it off?????

That would be totally possible except I clearly remember moving the 3-position switch from “on” to “program” like I always do. That’s when I saw the display screen read 0000/9999 on the photo count and I thought to myself, that can’t be right.

I even did a double take, took off my sunglasses and put my hat up to shield the screen to make sure I was reading it right.

Yes, that would be my first suspicion if I just pulled a chip and it had no pics on it, but in this case I did what I always do first on Bushnell cams. Move switch to “program” mode to see how many pics I have and to check the level of the batteries.

The only thing I did with this cam that I don’t normally do was that “delete all” move to clear the chip. I rarely do that, but I was afraid this chip may have been used in another brand of camera last year, so I thought that would format it and make sure it’s ok for this cam.

We’ll see at the next chip pull in a week or so. If it’s empty, this cam is coming down and coming home for in depth testing.

TomG may be onto something with a bad contacts scenario. Must check this and clean card contacts to be sure.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to get another cam or two. Just to have a backup in case this one goes down…

Grouse

I tried a Bushnell cam for the 1st time this past fall/winter. I’ve been running cams since they had film in them. I have 5 moultrie and 5 cuddebacks right now. Anyhow, I followed my usual procedure of placing a new camera. New batteries, new card. I returned 5 days later and the camera had taken 2 pics, both of me leaving after setup. It somehow had turned itself off. I tried for an hour and couldn’t get the camera to turn on. Tried 2 sets of new batteries, from 2 different packages. Nothing. I returned it for a new one. Same camera. Had nearly the same results. I tried it at home afterwards. I could occasionally get it to turn on, but in an hour or so, it would turn off. I returned the Bushnell for another cuddeback. No problems since.

I realize I could have got the only bad 2 they’ve ever made, but I’ll be very gun shy about trying them again. I’ve probably had 30 cameras in 15 years, and this was my 1st real issue.

I run about a dozen cams all year and notice about every 2 years I have a card start acting up similar to what you’ve explained ive had them start working again for a week or 2 and then back to no pics again I now just put a new chip in it and back to normal. I should note these are cards used in my Bushnell trophy cams blackout..

Since this cam has performed well, as have all my Bushnell Trophy Cams (6 of them total) for years, my first suspect is as Jr. and others have mentioned, the card itself.

This camera in question has never had this issue before and I believe this one is either 5 or 6 years old.

I’ll be back up at the property next weekend, so we’ll see if it was a one time glitch or if I need to bring the cam home and do some yard testing.

Grouse