I also had similar problems with a camera we bought from Cabela's. The most expensive one they had to offer was me and my dad's combined Christmas present in 2003. $600.00 later, we had a camera that took crappy pictues...sometimes. It worked well for about 1 day, then it would no longer sense.

After that, we decided that homebrew is the way to go!

We were able to build one for around $200.00 that takes excellent pictures. Anytime we've had trouble with our control board (the brains of the setup), the guy who builds them was more than happy to fix the problem for $5.00 - the cost of return shipping!

Here is a link to some detailed photo's of our home built trailcam: http://frontpage.auburn.edu/henrynr/
Here is a link to some of the pictures our trailcam has taken: http://community.webshots.com/user/nehilow

We liked our first one so much that we have since built two more for ourselves and two for our impressed friends!

If any of you have questions, please feel free to e-mail me ([email protected]) as I don't check the forum often.