I've read a lot of stories on this forum about stolen trail cams and felt lucky that my cameras were always intact when I went to retrieve them. Never even so much as got a picture of a human on any of them. Mostly figured that I had them buried so far in that no one would see them unless they were a pretty dedicated soul and they would not likely F* with them anyway.
I had been getting a little bolder about where I posted my cams and about two weeks ago I took a chance and put one in a tree within about 50-80 ft of a logging spur near the end and several miles behind a locked gate. Never saw signs of humans in there before so I figured I was relatively safe. If you knew where to look, the camera could be seen from the road. Bad move.
Went in yesterday to pull it; I just had an uneasy feeling that it was risky to keep it up during hunting season. Even though I had it secured with steel cable someone broke the plastic case and the cam was gone. Pieces of plastic near the tree and a bend in the cable made me think whoever took it had to do a little bit of work to free it.
Question to all: Do most of you who post cameras, pull them before hunting season? Seems like it would be a good way to get the latest view of animal movement if you were tracking something but that has to be balanced with the greater risk of theft.
