Trail Cams With John Nicholson Part 1

A trail camera can feel like a simple tool until you’ve watched an elk beat it up, a bear pry it open, or winter condensation turn every clip into a blurry mess. We’re joined by John Nicholson from Trail Camera Adventures, who’s spent years running a huge network of cams around Mount St. Helens and worked inside the outdoor industry during the early wave of modern trail camera development. He shares what changed as cameras went from clunky “toasters” to compact units hunters could actually trust, plus the real story behind a feature packed trail cam idea that failed for one brutal reason: price.

We also get practical about keeping trail cameras alive in the Pacific Northwest. John explains why water and fogging kill more cameras than people expect, why a tiny weep hole can extend winter survivability, and how different animals react to cameras once they’re discovered. If you’ve ever wondered why some spots eat gear, or why your setup works great in summer then falls apart in cold weather, this conversation will save you time and money.

From there we dig into the everyday decisions that matter most for wildlife scouting: non-cellular versus cellular trail cameras in low service areas, battery strategies that scale when you run multiple cameras, and when solar panels help versus when they just create another target. We finish with SD card guidance and John’s argument for video mode over still photos, because animal behavior, approach routes, and follow-up movement are the details that make you a better hunter.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Welcome back to the Blacktail Coach Podcast. I'm Aaron. And I'm Dave. All right, this week we are here with John Nicholson from Trail Camera Adventures, the YouTube channel. And we're gonna talk about trail cameras. We've had a lot of guys in the classes this year and emailing us asking us, hey, what do you recommend for trail cameras? And every question you could imagine about trail cameras. So I've told everybody just hold on. We've got a couple episodes. Here are those episodes. So thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it. Why don't you just start by telling us about how you got involved with the outdoor industry? And then we'll get into talking about the YouTube channel.

From River Guide To Bushnell

SPEAKER_00 0:49

But just the outdoor industry, trail cameras and trail cameras. Yeah. Yeah. I was in the RV industry, it seems like a lifetime ago. And on my days off, I went ahead and got a river guy license. And on my days off, I would fish. I found a way to pay for bait really well. Sturgeon fish on the river. And my boat was called the sturgeonator for some of the old timers that are they'll remember that. I had a big sticker sturgeon before wraps on the side of my boat. And I would, I had a friend that was in the medical business that said, Hey, if you get that license, we can take all my doctors and we can take my radiologists and all the people I work with, and I'll pay you to take them out there and guide them because we catch sturgeon all the time. Would you do that? And I said, Heck yeah. So I got my guide license, which wasn't that hard back then. And then we started taking these uh these clients, these clients of his out. And then one day, some clients on there were they were in the sporting goods industry, they worked for a company called Michaels of Oregon, and that was an organization that had many different companies under its portfolio hoppies, gun cleaning oil. Oh wow, Michaels of Oregon, which was holsters, and anyway, it was like 26 different brands of Uncle Mike's holster, Uncle Mike's holster. Okay, that's all law enforcement stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Mike and Steel Carry holsters and Uncle Mike's. Yeah.

Trail Camera Evolution And Trophy Cam

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Any sporting goods store back in the day that you walked into, three-fourths of that stuff came out of our company, out of Michaels of Oregon. And anyway, they were looking for a guy that would travel all over the nation and handle the big accounts, the key accounts, the distributors. And that's what I did in the RV industry. And they were looking for somebody like that. And my friend said, What about John? What about John? John, John Who? The guy that took us out sturgeon fishing. Like, we're not looking for a guide, we're looking for a businessman that can sell sporting. That's what he does. He just does this for paying for bait. And I interviewed, and I was doing really well in the RV industry. And I didn't think I was going to make any changes. And then they finally, after a year, talked me into going into their company and seeing everything they made. And I was hooked. I was like, really? Can I make this happen? And a guy by the name of Todd Seifert made it happen. We went and so I left that industry, went to Michaels of Oregon so many years ago, was in charge of all those brands for the key distributors, key accounts across the nation. And then as we were buying companies under our sporting goods companies, under our portfolio, the owners of that company decided maybe we can sell ours. And that's where Bushnell bought my company. So I was one of the few people that went from Michaels Wargan to Bushnell, and now I had optics and everything else. And all of a sudden, in a matter of just a few years, I had everything but firearms, basically, that I that I had Stony Point stuff. There's so many different brands that were underneath our umbrella, shooting sticks and cleaning supplies, muzzle loading stuff. And at that point, I really was in deep in sporting news. And the first few years of Bushnell, we had a product development manager. His name was Darren Stevens, and Darren was responsible with getting into trail cameras. And back in the day, you go far far enough back, the first trail cameras that were really successful were Cuddybacks. I think a lot of guys that are certainly my age, they remember that. Cutyback owned it. Absolutely owned it. Yeah, yeah, they were the top. It was a brand.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Oh, the brand.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

It was a brand. And nobody else was even close. Before Cuddy Back, there was strings basically attached to the timers. And I I went out and bought all those, and I was doing that. And then there was, I went from that. This is a great history lesson. I see how you're smiling over there. You remember those games?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

I've lived through the stone age.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

So then there was one other one in there. If you remember, it was like a it was like a time clocking in machine. And what would happen was that was the first ones that were used in motion. When the deer would come across the trail, it would there'd be a timestamp. And so now you would pull out a timestamp card that showed when the deer were going across. And that was really great, except that clunky, that clunky wasn't good. And then there were and then there was Cuddyback that came out with a smaller size trail camera. And then everybody else, including our first year at Bushnell, was a great big. Yeah, yeah. And that, and I was like, I was into it. I had everything that we were making. They're all sourced over C's. And working with Darren, I said, we got to get away from this toaster size. We got to get to this smaller, we got to get silent. White lights were a big deal then. And as we get into it, I want to talk about bucks in particular, how they react to white lights going off and everything. There's really an evolution in that. And so we came out with Darren's help and my pushing, my passionate pushing, we gotta have this small size. We basically came out with a Bushnell trophy. And when we did the trophy, the small one, it took off. And I really, there's no way to really track the numbers, but I think we dominated the trail camera world early on. And when that came out as a guy that was responsible for it and into it, I started loading up Mount St. Helens all over the place with trail cameras, and I've got some amazing stuff, especially in the early years. That's awesome. That yeah, it's quite a way into it. And then early on, I had access to as many as I wanted. Like today, I buy them. I am an affiliate with one company, so I don't necessarily have to buy them, but you're talking trail cameras can be anywhere from if you find them on marketplace, maybe$35 used to cellular that are 200 or more plus your plan. So that's a whole nother topic, too.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Uh-huh. Yeah. And they become a lot more user-friendly, they're a lot easier to operate now than they were when they first came out, as far as what we know as the modern trail camera. I because I had Leaf River.

unknown 7:47

Yeah.

The $600 Sound Camera Flop

SPEAKER_01 7:47

And that was a high, that was a high, that was a spendi trail camera. And you almost had to have a college degree in computers and programming and all this. And it was one of those things where it wasn't like it is today. I had to read the manual every single year to figure out how to get this thing to program, not just to get the dates and everything, but to actually work. And it was really a difficult thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

I want to tell a story. It's one of my favorite trail camera stories in the history and the evolution of trail cameras, of one that I came up with that was an absolute failure. So we got the trophy going, and that was doing really well. And the next step was what's the next evolution, the next best thing? And I was a pretty avid predator caller at the time and uh working with the guys of Fox Pro and everything. And I was like, all we got to do now is incorporate sounds and the timing mechanism is in there into the trail camera. And after it took about a year and a half for Darren and his sourcing agents to come up with this, it was a medium-sized camera. It wasn't as small as our smaller trophies. It was medium-sized, but it wasn't a toaster. Finally came out to market and it had rattling bucks on there, just the primary important calls. It had Turkey's Goblin, we had elk bugling, which I never was really happy with the elk calls on there, but they were it was happening. And then there was we had we had rabbit and distress, all the key ones. If you're gonna go through, there was probably 15 of them, and you could program your camera to intermittently, intermittently go off. And so now you're calling basically without bait, and the animals eventually theoretically are gonna come in, you're gonna get pictures of them. Outstanding idea, huh?

SPEAKER_01 9:34

I'd never heard of I have never heard of that one either.

SPEAKER_00 9:37

You'll find out why here in a second. So I and this is one of those projects that every couple weeks I would call Darren, where are we out with this? Where are we at with this? And he's got to work overseas and just super passionate about it. And I just thought it was gonna be another one of the revolutionary industry products that I could hang my hat on. I know I did that, it's not gonna have my name on it, but I know I did that, and so it came out and I was presented with it, and it was six hundred dollars. Oh my goodness. Absolutely killed it at the time. That was wholesale cost on it to all the distributors and everything. And I think we had yeah, and I was like, we can't do that. I was never talking about the cost at the time, but that's that's when it came out, and I I honestly think at the end of the first year, I don't think we sold any of them to our key accounts. I think I ended up discounting them just to get rid of them, and that was the end of that. It's still an absolutely brilliant idea, and I've done some things with separate screamers and leaving them out and had all sorts of things come in, but an all-in-one deal, maybe there's one of your listeners gonna say, I can do that and make it affordable, and it's doable. You just gotta make it affordable.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

That's the part that's part may not be doable there.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

That's one of my favorite oops, I blew it stories.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, there you go for any of our listeners. If you are if you are tech savvy and you can create something like that's affordable, yeah, there's your free idea. We would like a finder's fee for all of us, the Blacktail Coach Podcast and John Nicholson, especially Washington, since we're not baiting anymore for those that were heavy on bait.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah.

Why He Started Trail Camera Adventures

SPEAKER_02 11:23

So let's because you were talking about the how many cameras do you have that that you leave because yeah, actually, let's talk about before we get into that. Let's actually talk about Trail Camera Adventures. So it's your YouTube channel, and it's you're posting all kinds of you'll have ones on cats and elk and bear and compilations, but you'll do the shorts and all kinds of stuff. But how did that all start? How'd you get started with wanting to get on YouTube?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Oh, that yeah, that's a whole different thing. So my passion up to four years ago was all personal because nobody's gonna sit around like you guys are today and listen to these great stories because I didn't have all the guys that were that into it. Your listeners hopefully are gonna be, and you guys are gonna be, and it was just all me. And there's something about the outdoors and sharing that is as I get older, is really missing in society now. I and I feel as I'm getting older that I want to share it because my kids, I have grown kids, and our lives are. I even said this in one of my latest videos, our lives are so busy today, we don't take the time, we don't know how to take the time, we can't afford to take the time for nature for most people. Yeah, and so I felt that coming on five, six years ago. And our grandson, our first grandson, James, we call him Jib Jam. It's like, how can I pass on this legacy? Because in my lifetime, I've seen change things change on the mountains, the populations of the elk and the deer and different things. How can I pass that on? And there is no greater way to pass it on if you're not around video and audio. There is no greater way because they can learn from that. And I've always fiddled with editing and film and stuff like that. I can do something like that, and it was purely a passion project for my kids, but mostly for my grandson. And we've got another one on the way, by the way, which is awesome, but that's where it came from. So it came from the heart to pass this knowledge on animal behavior and nature and what's out there for my kids and their friends to learn because they're not going up there like I am, and they're not sharing that experience with the dogs like I do. And I want them to have a piece of me and a piece of what I know, and it's working. I can tell it's working. Like my little grandson now, who's too Jim Jam, he's watching them. And one of the first things he said when he walked into our house, we have a we have a big bowl on the wall. He's ek ek. And that's yeah, he can name all the animals ever. Nice. Yeah, he'd have a blast in here, by the way. So that's how it that's how the passion started. And I looked into starting a channel on YouTube. Anybody can start a channel on YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Anybody can do it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Technically, we have one.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 15:38

Not for the podcast, but Blacktail Coach has one. But I we've really done nothing with it as far as yeah, posting videos. It's mostly, yeah, it's just something that we have in case we ever need it.

Running 75 Cameras On The Mountain

SPEAKER_00 15:52

But I for all your listeners that are interested in doing something, I will tell you, I will say, do it if it's your passion and do it for the reasons like I did to pass it on and share it. If you I think if you go into it because man, all these guys are making tons and tons of money on it, they probably aren't. And that's a very tough thing to do. Yeah, but if you do it because you're passionate about it, that will come through. And before you know it, you'll be monetized, which used to be such a big deal with me when I started. I gotta get monetized. When I started seeing people subscribe, oh I got excited about that. Then I got monetized, which is pretty hard to do, really. And then I realized after that point, you know what, that's not why I got into it, and that's not what's important about it. And I just started putting the passion and the storytelling back into all my videos, and it's got even bigger, and I'm happier as a result of it. Yeah, it's a it's a journey with the dogs and wildlife, and it is a video, our time. Ten years from now, my mountain's not gonna be like that because 10 years ago it wasn't the way it is now. Just some pros of wisdom from a 60 65-year-old guy.

SPEAKER_02 17:13

So, how many cameras do you have? And you are uh around Mount St. Helens.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Mount St. Helens, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Now, before you answer, John, I'm just gonna guess it's some odly number.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Yeah, but I mean out in the field that you monitor on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

This is radio, isn't it? The best way to answer that is to show you my Onyx screen, and it looks dots all over the place. I probably have more cameras out there that I forgot to put on one of the GPS's that most people have ordered in their life bought in their life, but there are I'll stick with the number 75. I don't think I have more than 100 right now, but I have so every year the elk are brutal on cameras, by the way. Bears are tough, but the young bulls, they're the worst. They like to beat up my cameras and they destroy them.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

I've heard that elk are the worst. Now I've never had an issue with elk messing with my cameras. A couple of them have kind of looked over where they're at, but I've never had a mess with them. The bears have. I've had bears not destroy a camera, but damaged one camera. And all and then that's when we started, and we'll get into how we how we put them up versus how you do it. Because we we had up at the POLUP show, we had a really long discussion about where we're placing our cameras and stuff, but yeah, that's so you you'll start naming these different bears and an elk because they pick on you, so that they're particular.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

I had one three-year-old bear that went to five cameras that were three miles apart, one after the other in the same day, and destroyed all of them. It's the same bear. I know the bear. I knew the bear's mom when it was a little one, and it just yeah. So he I think he knows me. And his oh, there's another one of John's cameras. I'm gonna destroy it, and it does, but it's fun at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Bless his little heart.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Oh, yeah. He keeps trying, it's the same guy.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

I and I was wondering if you started recognizing the animals that were yeah, and I have relationships with I really do because we're doing it for hours in our deer sets. We're very specific in where they're at, and there might be one or two on a set, but it's of course we're and we're naming our deer and everything. You don't really name the bears. I did one pair of bears, one of my sets. I named them, but for the most part, I don't name the bears. But yeah, you're getting them over. It's interesting listening to you say because over several miles that he several miles in generations, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

I know their moms, some of the bears. I know them when they were little cubbies coming in at puff balls, and now they're beating up my cameras with this one, and the other one isn't, you know. It it's really interesting what's happened on the mountain with my cameras and my my my areas. So I have probably uh I'm gonna say 75 that are working. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

You have 75 running cameras right now.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Out maybe more out in the woods, and have had for years and years.

Winterproofing With Weep Holes

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Wow. Now, how many get destroyed every year by 25 or just so weather is a tough thing on it too during the winter? Yeah, and that's an interesting topic. Some of the most fantastic video shots are winter shots and snow and rain and mist in the middle of the night coming in, even though it's they're black and white, you got this mist coming at you, and then all of a sudden, out of the mist comes a cat and it comes up and the lights are shining off its eyes and stuff like that. That's really cool. But that's also the weather, the weather that destroys cameras, right? And the reason for it is you can do a lot of things to keep the mechanics, the circuit boards waterproof, but you can't keep condensation out of an enclosure. You just can't do it. And over the years, for those people that are sourcing cameras, the very best way to keep water out of your cameras and have them survive during the winter is wee poles at the bottom. We poles is actually allowing the camera to breathe. Because if you don't allow the camera to breathe because of the heat changes and stuff during the winter, now condensation is just going to show up and it's going to show up on the inside of your lens, and now you got nothing. A video or a picture, and you got to wait till the midday, and then it's clear again, and then at nighttime or early morning or evening, it you can't see. So if you have a weep hole at the bottom of the battery case, which is usually on the lower level, you're best off. They'll they will survive longest. In the past, when I've covered up those weepholes because that's not very smart, you would think it's not smart to have a hole in something like that. They get destroyed sooner because the water builds up in there.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

A weep hole is the best thing for winter time cameras.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

And because I can hear somebody asking this question, how big are you an eighth of an inch with a drill into there, or how big are your big enough so that the what do you call them?

SPEAKER_00 22:31

The sugar ants can't quite get in. So it's big enough for a sugar ant can't get in because the ants that's natural attracted for the ants, a hole like that. So it's just that's not very big. So what is that less than an eighth inch?

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Okay, yeah, yeah. Maybe sixteenth of the smallest drill bit you can find.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah, and some of the ones, some of the some of the trail cameras that have a coaxle cable hole, or and what they'll do is they'll because that's optional whether you're gonna use it or not for an auxiliary battery, they'll give you a little rubber plug. If you leave that rubber plug out and use it for your condensation, the moisture to go in. Now that's too big a hole. So now you're inviting all the critters to go in there and live, and that's not good. You don't want bugs in there either.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

But bugs is better than water. And honestly, that's a question we get a lot at a lot of the seminars and stuff. How do you get the cameras to last longer? And my whole and I've explained it to them that that it's like car parts. If they last forever, there's no money in it. You know what I mean? And so typically speaking, I'd and I have trail camera sponsors, stealth and muddy, and there we have great luck with them. They're fantastic. But typically speaking, you're only gonna get three and at the most five years out of a camera.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Oh, you nailed it. That's exactly right. If you get three three years, that's excellent.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Yeah, and I bring them in every year after hunting season, and that's usually in December. Take the batteries out, never store them with the batteries in them, guys. Air dry them, make sure they're dry, and then stow them away.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

But with mine, because my uh my gun safe has a built-in dehumidifier. Oh I put them in there. Yeah, but I'd never thought about yeah, a weep hole that works pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

When you I've got a video that guys have probably seen it. I'll open up a camera, pull the SD card out, and a shot full glass of water will come pouring out. Oh, that's not good. You can take those home, put them in front of your dryer vent, and you can salvage most of them. You're gonna have to move the camera back and forth for several days, but they'll work again.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

I had one I opened up and it the water didn't pour out because it was a block of ice inside there.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Oh my goodness.

Cellular Vs Non Cellular Reality

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Yeah, it was which was funny. It was this year because it was so warm this year, but it was when did I it must have been when I went and pulled those? So it was that cold snap after we had those atmospheric rivers. So it probably filled up then, and then before it could drain, it froze. And yeah, just a big chunk of ice fell down out of there. So are yours all or for the most part, are you using cellular or non-cellular?

SPEAKER_00 25:19

I get that question asked a lot. I am all non-cellular, but there's probably I have both, yeah, but I am non-cellular because of where they're at. There are the I have no cell service in that area, and so I just don't use the cell service actually on any of them. With all those cameras, I could sign up, but it wouldn't, there's no cells where I'm at. I am really in the bush, deep in a lot of places.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

And even mine, there's no cell coverage where I'm at. And so I'm like, I purposefully looked for the non-cell cameras because even the cellular ones, because they keep searching for that signal, yeah, they're draining the batteries while they're searching for that signal.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

That's a great topic.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

And non-cellular cameras, the batteries all year, and I might use a quarter of the batteries. Or if literally if I put them out for a year, they would the batteries would last a year. The cellular ones, two months, maybe two and a half months, and then I gotta go replace the batteries. So I don't want to spend a bunch of money on batteries, so I just go with the non-cellular, and plus camo fire, rest in peace, which was a great source for buying those kids. I got four for a hundred bucks. And another time I Muddy also does some pretty good deals, but three for a hundred bucks. Yeah, you can get a lot of camera switches when they're that cheap.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

I would love to talk about batteries because that's that is one of the big topics that I get asked all the time because oh, yeah, let's talk about it. Yeah, I think I got the battery thing figured out, I really do. We're not gonna tell my wife how much I spent on batteries, but I have used all of them, okay? All the different double A's. Well, if you go back and we were using D's and C's, you remember that those toaster ones, okay? And nothing you could do about that. Actually, I was getting the rechargeable ones, even for those, and even second, third time around, it's almost worthless their time. So I don't use rechargeable double A's on any of mine now because after you recharge two or three times, you just don't get the same kind of longevity. We'll say longevity. And then if you for years, I took a battery charger with me and I would check every single battery to see where the level was when I was pulling my SD cards. And for those that are really into this, they'll know that in most of your cameras, you'll have two banks of four. It's the way it operates the circuitry. And generally what happens is the number one battery, depending on how that trail camera is put together, is the one that dies first. And when that dies first, either on the lower four or the upper four, then it'll switch over as a backup. And that's how the trail camera industry got longer times for the banks of batteries. They got eight, and it'll start with four. The number one battery in the bottom four is dead, it switches over to the top, and then it works on that number one battery on the second bank. Okay. So if you take a not a charger, the battery indicator, the testers, yeah. The testers, yeah. Sorry, guys, I said charger earlier. You take the tester and look and you pull each battery out, you're gonna find that number one, either the top or the bottom, and it is gonna be the lowest. You can get rid of that and put a brand new one down there and get more life out of whatever batteries you have in there.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Okay, or could you just rotate them?

SPEAKER_00 29:06

No, because you still got that lower battery that could be at a level that it would kill. Yes, you can, but it would it's gonna die really quick.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So, what I did for the longest time was check every battery and then pull out number one, and then it's good for many more weeks. And then the next time I went through there, I had a logbook. Uh-huh the next time I went through there, I gotta really pay attention because I may need to get rid of all of them and change them out. I found out that was taking a lot of time when you have it, it's like Christmas, you want to open up as many presents as you can when you go out there, honestly. So that'll take a lot of time. What I started doing was swapping out whole banks and then testing at home. Okay, and you got this pile of bucket of batteries at home. Then you test at home and you tap them on the there's all sorts of ways to check batteries. So then you start buying. Well, this is my history, you start buying batteries in bulk off eBay and where am you wherever you can buy it, and then you start testing batteries. One battery just lasts long, and these really cheap ones that are odd colors that you find at different stores. You try those and you find out they don't even some of those don't even last a few weeks. And yeah, so then you go back to the then you get lithium, and lithium you dig really deep in your pocketbook and you buy these lithium batteries, and they man, they last longer and everything. And then you go to buy them the second time, and you're like, I can't do that every time. My wife's gonna kill me. So there's a balance. If you got all the money in the world, just use lithium. Okay, but that's not us, that's not my peers.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

It's like your average hunt, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, so then you start buying them on sale, but you got to be careful which ones you get by brand. The average Duracell and ever ready battery is good, it's gonna last you for a while, and depending on where you buy them in bulk or the larger packets, Home Depot, Walmart, wherever, it's better for you. But you can pay up to a dollar a piece when you break it down today's price. Didn't used to be that way, but today's price. I started testing all these non-brand ones, like from wholesale foods, and I say non-brands, we don't recognize the brands. And then I started doing the Harbor Freight ones because I you can buy that, I forget what they call it. It's like a frequent flyer. You get a if you're in Harbor Freight all the time, you're uh you buy one, and then they do sales now and then. They have three different color batteries. There's a blue battery that's their best, there's an orange battery that's medium, and there's a yellow battery that's their local, their lowest one. Well, the lowest ones are terrible, and the orange ones, the middle ones, they're not much better. And the blue ones, they actually advertise on their package. I don't work for Harbor Freight, but they advertise on their package that it's better than Ever Reddy's Endurance. So I'm like, oh, that's a pretty strong statement. Yeah, and right off the get-go, they're less expensive. So I'm like, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try it on masses because I got the masses, and guess what? They do last longer from what I was discovering, and then because of that valued customer frequent, uh, I can't remember what I what it's called. Every quarter they put those things on sale, and it works out to be about 20 cents a piece for a battery. And I go in there and buy several hundred dollars worth of batteries, and then I'm good. So the blue Harbor Freight batteries are, in my experience, the way to go now.

SPEAKER_02 32:55

Okay, they just pile up on them and get your Harbor Freight rewards program.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah, yeah, so if you're listening, you really need to get on that because it's gonna be a massive influx of guys going to Harbor Freight to get the blue batteries, and you gotta do it right away because they sell out.

SPEAKER_00 33:09

I'm obviously not the only person that's buying those aware of this, yeah.

Solar Panels And Bear Attention

SPEAKER_02 33:13

So the day they drop, be in line outside their door. Yeah, now you obviously have too many cameras to do this, but the solar panels.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

I do have some solar panels out there, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

And now, are those do those work well?

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yeah, they work well for longevity.

SPEAKER_02 33:33

Okay, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

But if you're putting all right, so this is the con. When I put one of those up, okay, it's now something else to attract the bears. Yeah, okay. And they do get beat up, it's almost like a target. I don't know if there's some kind of extra, I wouldn't say scent, but they the animals are attracted to those things. They really are.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Now I've heard, and I those panels know if it's not the panels, but because you had mentioned lithium batteries, that bears animals can smell the NICAD batteries, and they can't the lithium doesn't have as much of a smell. So I don't know if you've noticed anything or heard anything that that that's true or not, but what's your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Well, I'd buy into that. I would say I would say yes, but there's only one animal in the animal kingdom that has a stronger olfactory sense system than the bloodhounds, which is what I run my cameras with, and that's a bear. And the bears seek out all cameras, they know they're there, yeah. They they really do, and so I don't is it worse? I don't think it's like putting jelly on it, but yeah, they all know that it's there.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

They do find them, yeah. It's no matter what, they do find them.

SPEAKER_00 34:54

It's yeah, when we start talking about black tails in particular, it's with the evolution of the cameras. I want to talk about the lights, and it's just amazing how some cameras work better than others.

SD Cards And Video Settings

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Okay, so we've talked about batteries. Yeah, do we have actually? Can you think of anything else that we want to ask about batteries?

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Let's talk about SD cards. Okay, we'll do that.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

Yeah, but let's before batteries. I want to actually now the solar panels. Do those work thinking about our weather? Are they still picking up enough solar to keep them running?

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Yeah, okay. So those have a battery backup too, don't they, John? Yes, they do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it'll de it'll deplete that.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

It'll it charges the battery. The battery is what operates the camera.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

I was um, you know what? I I'm not gonna give any misinformation here. I think it's an addition to. Yeah, I I I really thought too.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

Yeah, I thought I think it's an addition because Chris, one of our pro staffers, has he has one and he has to every now and then pull the battery out, take it back, and charge it because there's not enough sunlight get to it, so it will slowly deplete because we don't get enough sunlight to keep a full charge.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Okay. Um that's what I was wondering if with our weather, like during the summer, it's probably fine. Although we're in such spots that it's not getting any direct sunlight. So it just made me wonder.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

Well, here's here's where I'm at with that. So I've got about a hundred cameras out there, let's say. All right. I can't go out and check a hundred cameras on any given weekend. I there uh quite a few of those are once a year. Okay, quite a few of them are once a year. The most I'll get on uh, and I run the cameras like a trapperwood trap lines. Okay, I have a trap line of six over here, I got a trap line of 12 over here, I got three on this artesian spring on this one over here, and I'm lucky anymore, even with help from my friends, to get to more than two areas.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

So if I come back with six to twelve SD cards on any given day and put a few new ones out, that's a good day. That's a good day, that's an average day. And the other part about that, since I switched from pictures to video, that's a lot of material, that's a lot of content to go through. Hours and hours of content because those cameras have probably been out there for several months before you pulled them.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Yeah. So how big are you? How big is the SD card?

SPEAKER_00 37:32

32 gigs. Uh almost all of mine are 32 gigs. And the reason I pack so many 32s is 32 is as big as many cameras will accept. A lot of people don't realize this, but the programming on these cameras sometimes won't, especially the older cameras. Some of my earliest cameras that we came up with wouldn't take more than a one or two gig card. Oh, okay. And so you go put in, oh, I was running out of space, you put a four gig card in there, it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03 38:01

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

I don't know of a camera today that won't take a 32, but a lot of them will take 64s. Okay. So now that's not never a problem with me. Even cameras that I've gone to that are over a year old in video mode have not used up 32 gig, primarily because I'm not baiting. I haven't baited for years. And so these are animals that are doing natural things. Yeah, they're not coming back to an apple pile or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

And but as soon as you put down apple pile or you put down molasses or salt or something like that, now you start really hitting a lot of videos and a lot of stuff you just don't need.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Because then they yeah, they would just hang out.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

And we know this from running scents that we do now, they usually breeze through there and they'll stay for a few minutes, but then they take off. Now, when we did have bait, we could have deer or bear coming by and maybe stand upwards an hour and a half. Yeah. And so you get picture after picture every time they move. Twitch. Yeah, you're gonna get another picture. But so the average guy who's doing this for hunting, right? How would that no?

SPEAKER_00 39:19

Get a 32 gig because they don't cost that much more than the smaller SD cards, and that way you're never gonna, you know, you're not gonna run over. And all of mine, by the way, are on 30 seconds. Okay. And when setting up your camera, here's how I set mine up.

SPEAKER_02 39:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

First of all, if you're just taking pictures, you're missing an amazing amount of animal behavior that you can learn. I'm not telling everybody they have to switch over to pictures, but I'm telling you, you'll be a far better woodsman if you switch over to videos because you'll really understand what's happening, how they're coming in, how they're leaving, what's coming in behind them. Videos are absolutely the way to go for all hunters, naturalists, whatever you're gonna categorize a video. Now that's why you need a 32. Okay. And you also need to keep it at least 30 seconds. Okay, a minute is better, but you don't usually I don't have all my cameras on a minute. I have them on 30 seconds because that's enough. And plus the time lapse, the the time sequence that I put in there is either one second or three seconds or five seconds, whatever that camera will allow me on the shortest intervals. Okay, that's a setting in there. So I always doesn't matter what camera it is, I always switch it to the shortest setting. Deer comes in, I get 30 seconds. Deer leaves in that 30 seconds, and it doesn't go again until another deer comes in.

SPEAKER_03 40:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

Deer comes in, stays there for a minute. I have two videos of 30 seconds, and for my editing, they just go right together.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:01

And five seconds, you're not missing anything, even if it's that longest interval. That's that's how I do it.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

And you would not years ago, the way I the reason I found that out was because everything was on single shot, and I had say 30 cameras out there, and I would have my uh meal blocks and I would have my salt blocks, and the elk would come in and they're all around it, and they're I got pictures. If I had a card that didn't have 2,000 pictures on it, I would consider it a failure station. Okay, and so then when you start doing that, you have to get into file manipulation. So you start get I was buying programs and I could take all those individual pictures, load them up, and then I start racing through them. Boom, and guess what? I turn it into a video, and then all of a sudden you see two elks stand up and start boxing, and then you go, Oh, that's a good one. You slide it over, save, slide it over, save, slide it over, save, and then all of a sudden a bull runs through and bugles and oh, there's those. You slide over, save, slide over, and then I dump 1700 pictures because it's just a bunch of cows standing around licking and biting each other. I switch over to video, and now I get it all, and I understand how the deer, the elk are interacting with each other, the direction they're coming in, the direction they're leaving, all those things you may think you know, but you don't know until you really start watching the videos.

Next Week Tease And Wrap

SPEAKER_02 42:38

And that makes sense. Yeah, we get them, they're there, and then they're the next picture, they're gone. But maybe did they turn around and head back? Because we think that they walked in one side and left the other side. So that makes sense. So I'm going to wrap us up for this episode here, because this is we do a commute length podcast, and we'll actually get into positioning cameras to get your best shots. We'll get into that next week. So join us next week. If you could go on, like, subscribe, heart, follow, do all those things at your platform asks, share this with a friend, check out our affiliate links down below. We'd really appreciate that. And we will talk to you next week.