Setting up on new property

Last week I went and pulled my cameras off of public land. Bow season will be here before you know it and I did not feel comfortable leaving the cameras out there this close to season. When I pulled the Spypoint IR-6 I had over 400 photos of deer and bear in the two weeks it had been on that tree. Needless to say I was stoked.

So I was more then a little down today when I went and checked the cameras on a new piece of private property I have permission to hunt. Instead of 400 or even 200 photos I had around 50 or so on four cameras! Luckily one cow horn spike who happens to have a kicker was gracious enough to give me some shots on several cameras.

Setting up on a new piece of property can be a real chore. You have to figure out where the deer are and where they want to be. You need to find an area that they will stop to feed or stage in to get plenty of photos. I chose poorly this time and got almost as many cow pictures as deer pictures. Granted two weeks ago I had almost 500 cow pictures on this new property so I am doing better.

Today I moved my cameras around again and feel much better. This property does not have any type of food plots and very little grazing grass. The woods are full of acorns, hickories, apples and grapes. Deer are not feeling the need to move as much since food is everywhere this year. Instead I focused on water. I found a nice little sink hole littered with acorns and fresh deer sign. Now the hard part will be waiting until Friday or Saturday to check the camera to see if my plan worked.

Bear Safes Work

I went and pulled a Spypoint IR-6 cam that I blogged about a couple weeks ago. As I walked into the saddle where the camera was I knew something was going on. My tag end for the master lock python cable was hanging loose from the tree. Upon closer inspection there were nice chew marks on the tag end.

When I looked at the picture count I was shocked to see 470 photos in the last two weeks. The camera was hung in a wilderness area in the Jefferson National Forest. You get pictures of game but not like you would on a farm. Out of the 470 photos about 75 were of bears.

A lot of the bear pics were very blurred due to the bear "playing" with the camera. One is very clearly a bear eye and snout starring into the camera. Another picture twenty seconds later is of the bear walking away.

Not sure what the attraction is to the bears but I am very glad I invested in a bear safe. This was the first trip out for this camera which retails for $210. A $50 bear safe with two lag bolts and a master lock cable lock saved me $210 on my first trip.

Bear Safes

If you have used a trail camera in an area with bears for longer then a week you know they love trail cameras. Not sure why they love them but they will eat them, chew on them, lick them and turn a $200 camera into a pile of junk in no time flat.

When I upgraded my cameras to Spypoint I knew I wanted a safe that would stop a bear and hopefully a low life thief. I was getting enough pictures of bears that I knew it was only a matter of time before one went into chew mode on one of my cameras.

I ended up ordering two custom fit bear safes for the Spypoint IR-6 and Spypoint Pro-X from Custom 1 enterprises.

When the package arrived from Custom 1 first thing I noticed was the weight of the box. I could not believe two bear safes with padlocks could weigh that much. The next thing I noticed after opening the package was the quality of the product. This safe is heavy duty to say the least. 11 gauge steel that has been powder coated in a nice olive drab green. The cover has been cut to fit the Spypoint cameras exactly. There are holes for a cable lock to pass through at the top and also on the bottom that matches up with the cable lock holes on the Spypoint cameras.

With the shrouded master lock this is one tough bear safe. Another way to protect your investment is the two holes drilled through the back of the safe. I used these to lag the safe to a tree tightly with hardened lag bolts.

As we all know, nothing is full proof. Hopefully though this will be fool proof!