The Elk Factory

[Bean Counter]

They are arriving now.... Or as they would say in Chinese: hea dey kum. Pulled cards for the three I set out last month and seems as though I did ok for my first time hangin cams. All of these photos are from May--I can't wait to see what another 2-3 months of growth will do!! Must post acknowledgements for Jackelope  and Bobcat  Thanks guys!

[jackelope]

Holy crap. Can't wait to see what the coming months provide at those cameras. I really can't wait to see what you do with your tag.
That one bull is going to be a pig.
Keep em coming!!

[Solohunter84]

Dang. Awesome pics. Keep em comin!

[Bean Counter]

LOL ok guys, I won't hold out... 

[MountainWalk]

Awesome!!!! Pics like these make me wana get one.. Always In the woods, might as well check cams while im at it.  Good job, great inspiration, and hope you score!!

[Solohunter84]

You have cams set up at nw trek? Haha. Excited to see which one you choose lol

[Bean Counter]

You have cams set up at nw trek? Haha. Excited to see which one you choose lol

It was easier than that. I threw a dart on the map and went there. Only my drunk monkey could be more precise.

[pd]

Looks like Bean Counter is going to have lots of friends this year. What a popular guy!

[Curly]

Pics like these make me want to move to AZ.

Sent from my SM-T900 using Tapatalk

[hollymaster]

Looks like Bean Counter is going to have lots of friends this year. What a popular guy!

  No friendship needed just GPS coordinates. 

[Bean Counter]

You guys are making this too hard. I'm not even kidding when I said I just picked a place and hung cams.

[vandeman17]

You guys are making this too hard. I'm not even kidding when I said I just picked a place and hung cams.

Its funny because I have had cams set in spots I found that I thought for sure would be dynamite and they sucked and I have also had cams hung in places that I picked because I was tired of hiking and wanted to get the salt out of my pack that were awesome. Go figure

[bowhunterforever]

Gonna be a few dandy bulls

[bobcat]

Great photos! But why are you cropping them? At least I assume that's what you're doing since there's no time and date?

I'm curious which cameras are working best for you. Didn't you get a couple of Brownings and a couple of Primos Truth Cam 35's?

[Bean Counter]

Great photos! But why are you cropping them? At least I assume that's what you're doing since there's no time and date?

Yes, they are cropped.  Is it proper nettiquette to leave the info strip at the bottom?  It just seemed kind of distracting to me. I also cropped the images as a whole when my photography  bug clicked on.  Rule of thirds, distracting backgrounds, etc.

I'm curious which cameras are working best for you. Didn't you get a couple of Brownings and a couple of Primos Truth Cam 35's?

Yep.  Good memory and thanks for asking for follow up.   Two browning and one primos.  Both can be had for around $70-80 on a good deal so IMHO its fair to compare them.  I liked the smaller size of the Browning but all in all I think images were better from the Primos  this despite browning boasting 6mp and the Primos only having 3mp.  Primos once again shatters the megapixel myth in photography.   

The primos had far more false activations.  The brownings both had some weird pink artifacts populate shadows but even that didnt bother me.  I didnt expect to make big colorful printouts from these photos so im grtting exactly what I want--more photos for my buck. The browning have time lapse feature that I set for one of the cams and I can report back on that in a few weeks.

Battery life: the primos runs on expensive D cell batteries.  However, it shot 8,000 photos over three weeks until the card filled up.itused 20% of the batteries to do this.  I didn't  change them. The brownings each shot 1,200 and 1,700.  One cam used up about 50% of its 8x AA batteries to do this and the other used up about 25%.  Difference can be explained thatnthe more battery hungry cam was in a woodsy area and chose the flash more whereas the other was in the open.

All 3 cameras were licked and molested by the elk.  You can see some of the residual haze in one of the photos above.   Seems like the filters self cleaned well enough.

It took 5-6 hours to delete all the crap photo's of the few jack wagon cow elk who just couldnt leave the salt alone.  I started with10,000+ photos and whittled my way down to 1,800 and a favorites list of 30. Idecided next time I kight increase the interval and decrease the number of photos but im also glad to have many angles on these racks and when inches count perhaps more photos is better than less.  I can chalk up those hours editing to scouting expense. 


Ican see how spending only $50 per cam may have left me with junk but im far more glad that I spent about $115/cam (cam, box, cable, padlock) and afforded three as to one nice Reconyx or something.  Quantity over quality seems to be an appropriate mantra for trail cams. Well see if I change my tune in a year or two if they stop working.  A few ppl, one hippie hiker and two spring bear or turkey hunters, walked by oneof the browning and they were either honest or the cable and padlock were enough to keep them honest. 

Did I leave anything out?

[Bean Counter]

If I were buying another one today I'd get a primos assuming I could get the sale price.  The large size seems antiquated and obnoxious  but with the eBay bear box,  cable, and padlock I feel good enough leaving it out there.

Oh yeah, the browning has much better out of camera night time photos but using shadow recovery and exposure compensation in Lightroom made the primos cams usable enough.

[bobcat]

Thanks for the report. I was curious about how those Brownings would work. I have one Primos 35 and it works great for me. I've had it a couple of years and have not had one issue yet, which can't be said about several other cameras I've had.

Cropping the pictures is fine but it's sometimes interesting to see the time on the pictures, plus I would've known which were Primos pics and which were from the Browning cams.

[furbearer365]

Im about 99% sure I know where that meadow is.  I had a camera in that timber on the other side.  Nice pics for sure

[bobcat]

Im about 99% sure I know where that meadow is.  I had a camera in that timber on the other side.  Nice pics for sure

Do you live in Arizona too?

[furbearer365]

Im about 99% sure I know where that meadow is.  I had a camera in that timber on the other side.  Nice pics for sure

Do you live in Arizona too?

LOL, no. I didn't know he lived in Arizona.  I will have to find my game camera pics, it literally looks EXACTLY the same.  The shape of it, trees, everything.  I even had a pic of a bear in mine.  That's funny

[Bean Counter]

Well regardless I thank you for not just blurting it out publicly. Very low class to burn a honey hole like that  Lots can be transacted via private message 

Bobcat here is an example of the shadow artifacts. They didn't show up on all the pictures, but do show up on several.

[bearpaw]

Great photos bean counter, thanks for posting! 

[Bob33]

Awesome photos. What a great place.

[gundogr]

Awesome Bean Counter! I snapped these a couple weeks ago they should be branched bulls with a few more weeks growth but like those you posted!

[Bean Counter]

Keep an eye on 'em! 

[et1702]

Awesome growth on some of those boys already.  Thanks for posting and keeping us up to date.

ET

[furbearer365]

Well regardless I thank you for not just blurting it out publicly. Very low class to burn a honey hole like that  Lots can be transacted via private message 

Bobcat here is an example of the shadow artifacts. They didn't show up on all the pictures, but do show up on several.

LOL. Yeah there is no way my mouth would of opened had it been.  I have a problem with keeping too quiet, if that's possible.  Just eerie how exact that spot looks.  Like I said before, great pics

[Thehowler]

What an awsome spot. Great pictures and keep them coming!