Bears and Trail Cams
 

I was looking forward to posting some trail cam picks from my bear bait. It's was 3 days since i set the bait and put up the cam. got there today to it laying on the ground, strap buckle broke, good thing i locked to the tree with a wolf snare. Anyway there was 17 pics about 6 nice ones of me setting up and unlocking the cam the other 11 were fogged up by the rain DARN IT!!! They would of been sweet pics. I'm gonna build a metal case and put it back up later this week. I'll keep you's posted

A buddy of mine has had 2 trailcams eaten by bears this year, and another fellow on the same lease lease had one ruined by a bruin also..

They are in the process of buying bearproof boxes for thier trail cams..

I have been told that bears do not bother trail cams by a few on this board. I have to laugh at them when they state that. These next 2 pics is from my Stealthcam which is an IR camera. The bears found it and lowered it to the ground a couple of times but never hurt it. I have a security device on it that saved my cam..
Here it is looking into the cam last year.


Checking out some lunch with it..

Get yourself a bear box cantrap! They make them for nearly every trail cam out there.

Made one up the other night looks like a zippo lol...just gotta get it in the bush now

Nice Pics btw phil!! i hope to have some like those shortly

One of my buddies keeps telling me that trail cameras don't last in bear country. I have oodles of bear pictures and they've never even looked at the camera.

Put out two trailcams. Each one looking at the other. One of them should get pixs.

I've been lucky with the bear pics I got. They weren't interested in the camera. Perhaps because it is an IR and not a flash.

Mine is ir as well but has a little red light when it is taking a pic????

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:

They like moving my camera ,but they haven't ever broke one.

I know the old cams that used film were said to have a sweet smell due to the film inside. Not sure why they would mess with the digital cams but around here they will eat one and not touch one hanging next to it. Who knows.

I had 3 different cameras knocked of the tree carried by bears within the last 3 weeks

Most of my game cam pics look like this (fast forward to 45 seconds in):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiIBy6j5Sv4

Bears love playing with them for some reason, and I seldom get good pics of anything other than closeups of hair, claws, and nostrils.

As I posted earlier I've had two different cameras that the bear have seemed to enjoy. Neither camera was near bait (as I didn't bait for bear until this year) I don't know why the bear will use a camera for a toy sometimes but not others. To be on the safe side, buy a bear safe box (or build your own). It takes a lot of worry out of wondering if your camera will be there or not. I built my boxes so that they padlock onto the tree pretty easily and it would take someone a long time to steal it yet are easy for me to check (if I remember to bring the key for my padlock).

If you have any food scent on the cams they will mess with them. I never had one bothered. No sugar, mollassis not even a drop.

Good to know!! stinky Camera=good bait:party0005:

Have any of you tried a security box for your cameras? I got mine at outdoortrailcams.com and it does a great job.

i made my own seems to work good, did the job anyway!!