Yeah, you most likely were lucky. Mine is an IR camera and there is a lot of them up here that get attacked by bears.

I've had two camera's taken by bear, one an IR and one a flash. I build my own bear boxes now to keep my camera's safe and I lock my camera's tot he tree as well. The first camera I thought someone stole, but now i think it was a bear(I never did find the camera) but the second camera was laying about 8 feet from the tree and I was able to salvage it with some epoxy to the outer casing. No good pictures of the bear that tried to eat the camera either, just it's ear right before it took it off the tree.

I have had two stealth cam destroyed by bears. I have a pic somewhere of the bears open mouth as he was about to bite the cam. I'll post it if I can find it.

I didn't know bears eat cameras. This is good information. I really like the pictures, wish we could get some better one though. I did some research and it looks like many manufactures make security boxes for their cameras. Looks like Skypoint, Moultrie, and Covert II all make them. Anybody tried any of these? Would love a review or two.

get a bunch of big branches and make a mess of them at the base of the tree you put the camera on. The odd curious bear won't bother it with this obstruction in the way.

I have a bear box on mine but I am told if they want to rip at bad enough the bear box will just rip off with it.

Here are some pics i got, good thing i made that bear box because he was at it again. Had a timber wolf, lynx,and a couple big bears pass by my Cam.

If I hunted over a pile of trail cameras, would that be considered baiting? :D

We have baited for two years and have hundreds of pictures from our sites. The person that handles the trail camera must have clean hands(very important). Ours are simple flash cameras and without boxes and they have never been damaged. I have also watched bears at the site when the flash goes off and they don't even bother to look.

This has been my experience so far but that may change at any time.

Another bear on my trail camera and untouched. ;)

The date on the camera is wrong. This was from Saturday.

This advise is dead on. My first year baiting had my cameras messed with until I figured out the bears were just following the scent of the bait I had left on the cameras as I would set them up after handling the bear bait.

Last two years baiting haven't had any problems as I either check the camera before handling the bait or I bring along rubber gloves to handle the camera.

Enjoy the pictures, some of my best pictures and videos are of sows with their cubs playing around the bait.



Here's the "booner" I shot in 2008 who has just walked past the camera without a bother: