Best Trail Camera – { Top 10 } Trail Camera for All Your Need

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How Do Trail Cameras Work?

Trail Cameras function as stand-alone devices which once set up only need maintenance to replace their batteries or to collect recorded images from their memory card, some higher end models will even send images directly to your phone or email. 

They are equipped with motion sensors which activates the camera, and they can generally be set to take either stills or video depending on your preference. I find that video is generally easier to capture as with stills, if you are filming along a game trail you will often just get the animal leaving the frame as by the time the sensor activates the camera it will already have crossed the frame. There are tricks to avoid this and some cameras have features to improve your pictures, we’ll cover those tricks later but the features which can be used to avoid poorly framed  stills need to be discussed if you are to understand how atrial camera works.

The sensor, or sensors which activate the camera are passive infrared sensors, normally referred to as PIR and they detect infrared light radiating from objects, most models can be adjusted for fine, medium or low sensitivity and many have multiple sensors. You do need to be aware of the effective angle of the sensors on your camera some will have a wide angle sensor while others will have multiple sensors to increase the effective angle in which motion can be detected. Those cameras with a narrower PIR field will generally only detect a subject as it comes into frame but additional sensors set at angles to either side of the cameras frame, or a wider angle sensor can detect your subjects before they enter the frame and activate the camera in time to get a decent still photo of it or a video. Bear these sensors in mind when you purchase your cameras for the best results.

Most trail cameras will also be equipped with a bank of infrared LED’s to illuminate subjects at night and allow the camera to take pictures during the hours of darkness.

Most of these cameras have no internal memory and will require an SD memory card to store images, some more advanced models can send those images directly to you or be transferred to you by WiFi if you have the right device. Some models provide a direct output to a TV or monitor and some also allow you to view captured images directly on an built in viewer screen.

Most models hinge open providing access to buttons for setting up the camera, a screen, memory card slot, batteries and other functions and will close with a waterproof seal and sturdy clips. Some can be sealed and fastened with a padlock, and dedicated armoured boxes are available to provide additional protection and security and prevent the theft of your trail cameras. Nylon straps are normally provided to secure your camera to a tree or post.

They really are very simple items to use but with some very clever technology that is becoming cheaper and cheaper and making these items more accessible. When I first started using trail cameras they couldn’t be had for less than a couple of hundred dollars each and while there are still some commanding those prices simple models can now be had very cheaply.

What is a Trail Camera Used For?

Most Trail cameras will be used for wildlife watching, particularly by hunters to help identify where the game is, and the time which it normally passes by and whether there are any good trophy animals to pursue, hence the alternative name of trophy camera. They are also useful for securing your home, property or livestock.

For General Wildlife Watching

For Professional Wildlife Management and Ecological Surveying

Trail Cameras are used a lot in professional wildlife management, surveying and research. They allow ecologists and wildlife managers to observe wildlife without having to directly be on the scene and also with a network of well-placed cameras to cover vast areas that would be impossible with the limited time and budgets that most of them have.

They might be used to observe and document the distribution and habits of a rare species, or to get an idea of the number of invasive species in an area so they can be controlled, or to keep an eye out for poachers, or to record the numbers of a particular species. They can also be really useful to record whether work carried out i s effective in terms of attracting new wildlife to an area or in documenting damage by invasive species.

As a professional countryside and wildlife manager I’ve used trail cameras for all these reasons and they are so useful, survey work that would have once taken a long time or large teams of people now takes very little time and a network of inexpensive cameras. I can document the value of the work I do by filming the wildlife in the woods I manage or demonstrate a need to control deer in a certain woodland because they are eating the newly coppiced trees.

For  Hunting

For Security

Whether for the security of your own home or for your livestock trail cameras can be very useful. As they are motion activated they can record people or dangerous animals who may approach your property or livestock. There are smaller more discreet cameras available for home security but trail cameras are often a cheaper alternative. While many of them will blend in well in the woods and some models have camouflage casings they blend in less well around urban areas unless they are set up in some sort of box and perhaps disguised as a mail box or something similar.

For securing your livestock though, especially from predators trail cameras are the best option as they are weatherproof and can easily be set up remotely. I use them to record comings and goings around my pheasant pens in case of human poachers or of predators such as foxes. With the evidence of the trail cameras I can then plan my approach to dealing with any threat to the security of my livestock whether that be to report poachers to the police or to set traps or head out with the rifle.

How to Set Up a Trail Camera?

Whatever your reason for using trail cameras; as a hunter, ecologist, for security or just for general wildlife observation here are a few tips and tricks that will help you get the best results possible;

#1 - Set your camera trap so it looks up or down a trail rather than across it; This will give you the best pictures or video rather than a crossing shot of something as it goes in or out of frame.

Trail camera set looking up a woodland trail captured this young roe buck

#2 - Remember to clear undergrowth out of the way of the camera; It might seem sensible to camouflage it with leaves but these will obscure the view and maybe even prevent the sensors from functioning properly.

#3 - Choose the sensitivity setting wisely; Most trail cameras have variable settings to choose between highly sensitive, medium or low sensitivity. Unless you are trying to film moths and insects the high sensitivity setting is often a waste of time. I’ve lost count of the hours I have spent flicking through and deleting trail cam footage of nothing but a moth flitting across the lens.

#4 - Use a security box; If you are in very remote areas where people aren’t likely to interfere with your use of trail cameras this won’t be necessary but if you are operating on public land particularly if it is visited a lot it will be worth getting a security box for your trail cameras just to avoid people tampering with them or stealing them.

#5 - Don’t forget a memory card; It sounds obvious but very few trail cameras have internal memory and if you have hiked out somewhere to set a load of cameras and have forgotten the memory cards you will have wasted your time. Also consider how large the cards are and how often you are planning to check your cameras you don’t want to come back to your camera after a few days and find that the memory card was full after the first day or two.

#6 - Change batteries regularly; Modern trail cameras are quit e efficient in terms of battery life but it is worth changing them regularly, if you use rechargeable batteries changing them every time you check your camera won’t necessarily cost you any more in batteries and will save you the frustration of finding that your batteries ran out shortly after you last checked the camera.

#7 - Choose a stable platform; Don’t attach your trail camera to something that flops around too much in the wind, a tree that is constantly swaying in the breeze will trigger your camera and give you loads of pointless pictures or videos.

#8 - Take a test shot; It can sometimes be difficult to predict exactly where the camera is pointed, once you have it set up step back to where you hope it is pointing and wander around a bit to deliberately trigger it and then check the results to see if you need to adjust the position of the camera. Don’t just wander off once its set and hope for the best you might be disappointed.

#9 - Use bait; Bait can draw the subject you want to the place where you have set your camera, it could be food but it doesn’t have to be, salt or mineral licks are great bait for some species. You can also set your trail camera to watch watering holes rather than having to set out bait yourself. Don’t be too reliant on bait though if you are using your cameras for security around your livestock and to keep an eye on predators you won’t be baiting them to draw things in and for ecological surveying when you want a more accurate representation of the behaviour of wildlife baiting isn’t always in keeping with the method of they surveys.

#10 - Use a combination of videos and stills; Many models of trail camera will allow you to take videos and stills simultaneously so you can get the best of both worlds and have some nice still photos to share as well as videos.

#11 - Use more than one camera; If you are filming a baited area then one camera might suffice but to carry out a proper survey or for security purposes multiple cameras will be required, the newer cheaper trail cameras make this possible even with a limited budget as individual cameras can cost as little as $50 so setting yourself up with a whole suite of cameras doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive.

#12 - Don’t just set the camera randomly; If you just set a trail camera randomly on any old tree you probably won’t get the best results, it will still catch anything that’s passing which might be useful to someone conducting a proper wildlife survey, setting out a network of cameras in random location might be a ‘fair’ way to conduct the survey and give a reliable result but if you are trying to get decent pictures you will get better results if you learn a bit about interpreting wildlife signs so you can set your cameras in a place that will give you the best results.

Tracking and Wildlife Signs

The key to selecting suitable locations for your trail cameras is being able to interpret the signs you can see in nature that tell you where wildlife has been, and spotting where they move about regularly so you can set the camera in the best place for regular results.

Another reason that tracking is so important in setting up your trail cameras, and the reason that trail cameras are so useful in viewing wildlife, is that many wild mammals are most active at night or are at least so sensitive to human encroachment that they will stay out of the way of most casual observers very easily. Not only does tracking help you find the best location for your camera but it also gives you additional evidence of the presence of wildlife.

Tracking would once have been an important skill for our hunter gatherer ancestors who would have had to learn and practice their tracking skills probably on a daily basis. The ability to interpret tracks and other signs such a droppings and feeding sign would have enabled our forebears to understand what prey species, or potentially dangerous predators, used an area and also how they used it; for food, water, shelter, as a migration route, etc… It would have allowed hunting trips to be accurately targeted, in the same way we want to target the placing of our trail cameras and for our ancestors literally could have made the difference between life and death for a family group.

Tracks and signs come in different forms, footprints are the obvious one but there are all sorts of other signs you can look for too;

Footprints

Being able to distinguish between footprints is important so that you can choose where to put your cameras for the species you are targeting, there is no point trying to get pictures of deer by setting your camera on a coyote run. Muddy river banks are often the first visual indication of their presence. Deer tracks at the point they cross a ditch or push through a hedge can indicate where they access an area of woodland. In winter searching in fresh snow is a great way to see what has been out and about recently. You can also create a simple sand trap if there is nowhere else to look for tracks, baiting these sand traps should guarantee you a few tracks to check. 

Don’t forget that birds leave footprints too, and sometimes wing prints where their wing tips and tails touch the ground, especially in snow.

Trails

Sometimes when animals move through an area in herds or are moving over very soft, or hard ground their individual tracks are indistinguishable from the mass of other footprints. Instead you are left with a general trail or run which might give you clues as to the animals using the trail or just a general clue as the size and numbers of animals frequenting the area. Well defined trails are a great place to set trail cameras.

Many mammal species use droppings as a means of marking their territory, placing them in obvious visual positions on a distinctive feature (e.g. foxes) or in a latrine (e.g. badgers). Droppings under trees or other structures can give away favoured roosting areas for birds. Owl pellets, while not strictly droppings, provide a range of information including their diet if you prise them apart and identify what the owl was eating. Droppings are a great additional clue as to the identity of the animals you are tracking especially if you can’t get enough clues from footprints, droppings will help you confirm what you suspect is in the area.

These signs are often far more difficult to identify, and certainly harder to pin to a specific species. Some are obvious; badgers or wild boar rooting in fields or under trees are fairly easy to identify, beaver sign can’t really be anything else but there are less obvious signs that might just provide a bit more evidence as to the animal you are tracking in conjunction with other information from prints and droppings. Places with lots of feeding sign are great places for setting up your cameras.

Feeding sign doesn’t just have to be signs of browsing or grazing on plants such as stripped bark or nibbled shoots and leaves but could indicate the presence of a predator. Plucked feathers beneath a high up perch or a post may indicate the presence of a hawk or marten and the way in which feather have been either bitten off or plucked out could help you work out whether the predator of that particular bird was a mammal or bird of prey.  

Nests & Couches

Some species build nests, others such as deer and hares create ‘couches’ or scrapes on the ground, these can give you general clues as to the presence of wildlife or more specific clues to the identity of a species with practice. Deer couches for example are normally roughly kidney shaped and could just be a depression in the surrounding undergrowth or be an area scraped clear of leaves and debris for them to squat down in. Some birds’ nests are very difficult to tell apart, others are very distinctive. Certain birds will create elaborate spherical nests of moss tied together with spiders’ webs and stuffed with feathers or long nests of mud and reeds and others just piles of twigs and sticks.

Fur, Feathers etc...

Hair caught on barbed wire fences or undergrowth could identify whatever has passed as a deer, fox, badger or just a domestic dog, shed feathers under roosting sites, sloughed reptile skin; all can give useful indicators if not of a specific species, then at least that the area is used, and by what sort of animals.

Burrows & Holes

Badger setts, fox earths and other burrows not only prove the presence of a species, as long as thos burrows are active which can be determined using other signs but they give you an idea of the range of the resident animal. Burrows normally sit in the centre of an animals range and can be good places to set your cameras as long as you do so carefully to avoid disturbance.  

Holes in trees can be home to squirrels, bats or birds and some birds also dig burrows, kingfishers and sand martens for example.

Recognising tracks, well used animal paths, regularly used feeding areas or ‘home addresses’ will enable camera traps to be placed where they have the best possible chance of capturing the target species, or indeed any species! All these signs if interpreted correctly and used wisely can help you set your trail cameras ensuring the best results.