Trail Cams – False triggers in April/May.

I have chronic issues with my trail cams filling up with false trigger pictures. But ONLY in April and May!

This has been happening for some years now, but yesterday I got really, really annoyed as I unloaded all my cams and I’ve got thousands of junk pictures.

And it’s not just one brand of camera. I had Bushnells and Moultrie cams out and both brands had lots of false pictures. Even the Bushnell cams that allow adjustment of the trigger sensitivity still false trigger with setting on “low” sensitivity.

Whenever possible, I aim my cams north or south, but there is some variation in direction. I have cams watching open areas and cams watching trails in the woods, and they all had false triggers. It’s not just in the woods or just in open areas.

Is this just weather and temp related? Was there something strange about the weather, sunspot activity, moon phase, etc last week? I notice that the vast majority of false trigger pics are between noon and 5 PM. No false triggers at night at all and none in the early AM. Just the “heat of the day”.

In past years, I’ve noticed this issue in April/May, but yesterday was the worst. I had 5 cams that had last been unloaded a week ago. I had 200-900 pics on each cam and the vast majority of them were false triggers between 12 noon and 5 PM.

Has anyone else noticed this problem with trail cams at this time of year?

Grouse

Birds, squirrels, lots of small animals moving around once the warmth of day gets going.

Holy crap, that’s bad. I do have some issues in the spring, but not like that. I just checked 5 cams on Friday that were soaking for 3 weeks and I bet I could count the number of false triggers on one hand for all 5 cams combined.

If you just buy 12 new cams every spring I am sure the issue will be solved

Honestly I don’t have an answer for you Grouse:???:

Yes. I’m familiar with the situation you speak. Noon to 5pm on sunny days before leaf out. Doesn’t seem to happen anywhere near the extent on overcast days. I know you have multiple cameras. Are you seeing a high number of falsies in cameras out in the open or mainly cameras that are in the timber? Or both?

Maybe people can school me. My impression is many of the current cameras on the market have temperature sensing in addition to motion sensing. I’m wondering if it’s a thermal thing. I can see a cool spring morning heating up when the sun gets overhead. Are thermal differences tricking the camera based on wind currents, passing clouds, etc? Seems to die off significantly once the leaf canopy develops. I’m wondering if a camera placed in a predominantly shaded area (during the same time of year) produces the same results.

Imo it’s birds.

I’ve attached a couple of “typical” false trigger pics. This particular cam is facing east looking down a trail toward a creek bottom.

icenutz wrote:

Birds, squirrels, lots of small animals moving around once the warmth of day gets going.

Yes, that’s certainly possible. It’s just funny that I never seem to catch any of the little buggers on camera. Maybe I’m not looking close enough or the trigger speed is just too slow to get them.

tegg wrote:

Are you seeing a high number of falsies in cameras out in the open or mainly cameras that are in the timber? Or both?

It seems to be worse in wooded areas, but only marginally.

Some cams are worse than others, but is that the cam or the location? Very difficult to tell.

I know this is wacky, but has anyone ever heard of sunspot activity freaking out trail cams?

Grouse

Attachments:

1. 

   EK0004551.jpg
   

2. 

   EK0008611.jpg
   

[/quote]
I know this is wacky, but has anyone ever heard of sunspot activity freaking out trail cams?

Grouse
[/quote]

I highly doubt it. The most recent solar maximum cycle was 2013-2014. Also, solar wind effects would be sporadic at best and randomly happen at any hour of the day.

My Dad has this issue on some of his cams and it’s only bad this time of year. The only correlation he could find was the days with the false pics were windy and clear. Maybe it has to do with the lack of canopy and the moving branches with the bright sunshine. He had thousands of pics on a couple of the cams.

Trailcam sensors need to sense both heat and motion to activate camera to take a picture. In spring and fall the temps are cooler but during the day branches and grass absorb the heat of the day causing a temperature difference. When this happens and the wind moves the grass or branch it senses it and triggers camera. By the same token in the summer when it gets really hot and you have camera in shaded area pointed out to sunny area it can cause false signals when something moves in front of camera.

tegg wrote:

highly doubt it. The most recent solar maximum cycle was 2013-2014. Also, solar wind effects would be sporadic at best and randomly happen at any hour of the day.

Oh sure. Go ahead and wreck my perfectly plausible “It was the sunspots what did it,” theory with science and whatnot.

Matt Moen wrote:

#1689024
My Dad has this issue on some of his cams and it’s only bad this time of year. The only correlation he could find was the days with the false pics were windy and clear. Maybe it has to do with the lack of canopy and the moving branches with the bright sunshine. He had thousands of pics on a couple of the cams.

Yes, this correlates pretty well with the false pictures I’m seeing on the cams from last week. The worst periods of false pictures seem to be when there are dark shadows visible, indicating that it was sunny. I’m not sure about the wind, but the brighter sunny days are when the most false triggers seem to occur.

Tom, I suspect you’re right and this is what I was thinking last year when I noticed a lot of false triggers. It seems to be the combination of bright sunlight which produces deep shadows that makes for the worst false trigger days.

I just deployed my third brand of trail cam yesterday. Up until now, I did not have any Browning cams out, just Bushnells and Mountries of various ages and models. So now Browning joins the fray as well, we’ll see how that cam does.

Grouse

Grouse,

I leave all my cameras out year round now. My worst false triggers are in the early summer as I always put a few on the back edges of my hay meadows. The grass has grown up in front of the camera. Once had 3000 pics of a tuft of grass going back and forth in front of the camera for the months of June/July. Makes me question the accuracy of the heat detectors.

A few running theories I have for false triggers:
– Shadows; I know that I get shadows triggering the camera.
– I know on a few of my cameras the motion detector range is broader than the camera viewing range. In particular, directly below the camera.
– How about squirels running up and down the tree it’s mounted to?
– Swarms of bugs I think can also trigger it, would they be detectable in the photo?

I have Browning, Stealth and Moultrie.

Sunspots!

Attachments:

1. 

   images.jpg
   

Just got back from checking tcams and had a ton of fale triggers off one camera. It was the shadow of a tree that was triggering it at certain times of day. The camera was higher in a tree than I normally put them on a small plot edge, at a higher downward angle. Most of my tcams are in video mode all the time and it sucks the cards dry in no time. Run 11 moultries and 2 other tcams. Pretty sold on moultrie and dealing with their customer service. But their triggers suck for wind. Wind is something it seems I’m always having issues with. I’ve played with height and angles a lot. It seems the higher the tcam, the more false triggers I get from wind no matter the tree size, but I rarely mount them on gigantic trees. Foliage is a huge irritation, but that’s not really a false trigger, just a poorly executed site, I do it all the time. Just get lazy and tired. The higher the camera, with a steeper angle facing the ground the more false triggers I get. Have a system for height based off of if the camera is on a small plot edge or on a mineral lick or on a little bigger field edge or on a trail in the woods. Spring is by far the most false triggers. IMO the bird matting, nesting, feeding season, etc is the biggest culprit, followed by shadows on the ground because of matted down vegetation and trees having no foliage causing contrasting shadows on the ground and wind, if that makes any sense at all. With shadows and the matted down vegetation in the spring, have found the direction the tcam is facing makes no difference at all. In the summer and winter I like them facing north, and will go out of my way to face it north or pick a secondary spot over anything facing south. Fall and spring I’m not quite as picky.

Off that left pic, I’d bet it’s the sharp shadow on the right/center of that tree. It’s a very sharp shadow. The pic on the right there’s nothing that stands out?