Trail Cams – More false triggers in the spring?

I was out checking trail cams yesterday, and I wonder if anyone else has noticed that in the spring, there seems to be WAY more false triggers?

I have mainly Bushnell Trophy Cams, but one Moultrie as well. Yesterday, I checked all 5 of my cams. At this point, it had been a week since I’d last checked them.

Now that warmer weather is here, I’m suddenly getting hundreds of false triggers per week. Back before the temps were up into the 60s and higher, I got almost none. Honestly, before the warmup, I would maybe get 3-5% false triggers, or at least triggers where I couldn’t see what tripped the cam. Now that it’s more spring/summer like, I get them by the dozen.

I started to notice this last year, the number of false triggers went way up in the mid spring.

Another interesting thing I found is that at night, the cams almost never false trigger. Virtually every false trigger is a daytime pic.

My solution was to turn the sensor sensitivity to “low” on a couple of cams. My theory is that without leaves, the shadows and the temp differential between shaded and non-shaded ground, trips the sensor. We’ll see if adjusting the sensor works.

Has anyone else noticed this? I have to think this is related to weather conditions because as I said, the rest of the year it’s no problem. What was the solution?

Grouse

Could there be more small bird activity until green up? Maybe more ground foraging for food items and nest materials. Just guessing…

Grouse,
Turn down your PIR sensor (Passive IR). its dependent on temperature and movement. AIR (is the active IR) its dependent on movement they dont use that really anymore.

I had this trouble in summer when I put mine back out until about late September, then they would go away. My best guess was that the higher sun angle was affecting the sensor giving it the ‘heat’ and then any movement triggered it, be it grass blowing around or anything. It seemed to be worse in morning or evening, where way that camera faced (morning on easterly pointing ones, evening on westerly). This only seemed to apply to cameras more in the open though, also leaning towards my theory since the one in the woods had the forest canopy for protection.

Now I position then differently in the summer to account for sun angle (place higher amd angle down more sessions to work) and it seems to work

I’ve turned down the sensitivity on 2 cams as Sktr suggests. I’ve set both those cams to “low”, so we’ll see how that works.

This is a rather strange problem, it’s almost certainly something to do with the time of year. I’ve noticed in many of the false trigger pics, there are strong shadows and, of course, in the woods this time of year there are no leaves, so it’s very stark shadows caused by the bare trees. My guess is that shadows and uneven ground temps might be what fools the camera.

As I said, I noticed this last year as well, but come May, the problem suddenly went away and all cams were back to normal.

I love trail cams. I got some really cool videos last week, I’ll have to share them.

Grouse

I’ve caught a lot more song birds tail ends in the spring. I don’t get a ton of them, but enough that that’s what I suspect is my issue with the empty triggers and it seems to be an odd spring right if passage. I have assumed it’s to do with breeding and less food in the spring vs fall, so they are just more birds and they are wickedly more active for multiple reasons. All speculation on my part, but that’s my theory on it.

basseyes wrote:

I’ve caught a lot more song birds tail ends in the spring. I don’t get a ton of them, but enough that that’s what I suspect is my issue with the empty triggers and it seems to be an odd spring right if passage.

It could be part of it. I guess I could see it being more of an issue in the spring because with the lack of foliage, the camera can “see” farther into the woods. Maybe.

I’ll be up there starting tomorrow for turkey hunting, so I’ll check the cams that I adjusted to a lower sensor setting and see if that did it.

Oh, another interesting thing. The cams that I have facing out on food plots don’t false trigger at all. It’s only the cams in the wooded areas. More credence to my shadow theory or the bird theory.

Grouse

Sure is annoying whatever it is. Takes some time deleting all pics of nothing.

Grouse, I have a pretty new Bushnell trophy cam that false triggers every day of the year. I will trade it to you for one of your Moultrie A5’s. Even up!! There are no updates for this model to fix the issue, but you could use it as a plot watcher, you never miss a thing with this cam

I don’t seem to notice much difference in false trigger with the time of year on any of my cams and I run them 365 days a year(some of them)