TRAIL CAM TECHNOLOGY

When you use these cameras you must understand placement very well, and this means that the better you understand placement the better your results will be.

EXAMPLE; I recently gave a predator calling course outside Bethlehem, and TRAIL CAMS was one item discussed and USED. We made a set at a suspected jackal den, (we know if he thinks humans visited the hole they will move the pups, BUT he either is in the hole or outside and if not will return once, and if he then suspects something he will be on camera, so either way we get a photo.

We set the camera ( this was a course and all students needed to see how the camera was set, so many people at a jackal hole, a bakkie and touching all over the place isn’t a good idea) But we set the camera to demonstrate how it is done.

At this set we got 3 photos, see the times. This means we made a good set with a good angle for pictures and selected a busy place (Minus jackal) So, this told us the area is unused by predators at this time with pups.

3 Porcupines- mommy and two little ones, note time, date & temp.

Mr Rabbit came to say hullo at 7-00 in the morning and we have about 9 photos of him - he stayed at this hole till 7-02 eating etc before he moved on. This tells you also that the hole is totally FREE of any predator.

At 12-45 these fowl showed up and decided that PILCHARDS taste real good, I used a tin of smelly pilchards at this hole to keep any animal around longer to get photos, these fowl stayed here for 3 minutes.

By studying a trail cam’s photos will tell you many things, and if a rabbit or bird is around a suspected den for so long that tells you the hole is dead and predator free.  By placing a bait station down in the correct spot will get you photos dead centre most times.

ANOTHER SPOT // CROSS ROADS

This photo below is of a young black backed jackal, it came from the right at about 18m away, and the camera gave us 3 photos, one from the front, another from the side at also about 15m and this one 8 m away. It is standing at an acute angle looking straight at the camera, we enhanced the quality of this photo and you can see the head, Giles and big ears easily. NOTE the time, just at dusk. I have not edited this picture here yet.

What happened here was the horizon was light still, but the ground was dark, so although it was darkish the camera was confused and never fired, if it had 5 minutes difference the infra red flash would have fired.



If you look carefully before this photo is worked on and edited you can see his ears, head and legs. I will put the edited photo in PHOTOS for viewing. It is best viewed on computer in this state in total darkness in a room as seen below.

REMEMBER this ; If you set a camera with a bait station ( a food smell so a passer by will stop and smell, this will give a camera more time to fire). BUT if the animal is 150m away it will pass the camera and you won’t know he was around so you need to lure him in…..

LURE HIM; By this I mean place an attractant, an appealing sound, of a birdie that is tweeting and tweeting at a low pitch, a sound that can travel about 100m at night.

 

These are 2cm thick, 10 cm long and 6cm wide. They run on 4 AAA battery’s and a set of battery’s will last 6 months – as it draws hardly any current at all.






 

Here is a very cool unit, an Edge Expedite electronic caller, it has a standard tweety bird sound and chirps on and off once switched on. See them on my site under PROMOTIONAL.

PLACEMENT OF ALLURING BIRD CHIRPER

I put this electronic bird chirper smack dead centre at an angle of the camera under a few small twigs and small bush or reeds etc, so the animal must move around near that station and it will cause the camera to flash. See this photo just right of the X is the chirper under a few reeds and leaves. See how the two birds got attracted to the sound; they are standing next to the caller. Note the time they are walking around! Distance to camera from bait spot is 4m. These poor birds must wonder what the heck is going on! Thinking that their cousin is chirping away but they can’t see him!

BIRD CHIRPER UNDER REEDS AND GRASS JUST RIGHT OF THE X

After you get used to Trail Cams they are amazing to use, it will give you tons of information about your farm, I love to set the cameras, on a course also – the guys in the morning jump off the bakkie and run to the camera and look at the screen as they want to see how many pictures we have. The two days we set up here we had 12 pictures the first morning and 17 the next, you can view them in the field or take out the memory card and view it at another place.

A link to that chirper bird sound; http://www.africanpredator.com/promotional.html