Best Blacktail Trail Cam?

[TriggerMike]

What's the best trail camera for under $125? I would be using it in the westside jungle in deep dark timber so it would need to be weatherproof, and take good night pictures since it will most likely be extra dark where it's at. Good battery life is required as well.

[salt n sage90]

-Trigger

I have been going the cheap route and putting 2 or 3 less expensive cameras in each location.
-Primos Bullet Proof 2 (8mp) 40$
-Bushnell Bandit (14mp)  60$

I ordered them off amazon, I have three of each and haven't had any problems. They ship in 2 to 3 days.
The PRIMOS one is literally 1 switch and battery life has been fine as far as I can tell, green light is still on after 4 months. There are no adjustments, watch out for the video switch, it can take a lot if the SD card is large enough. I would suggest sticking with picture mode, but have fun with it, i did.

The Bushnell has more settings, but the default pretty much is all you need, it comes with instructions.

 I don't see a huge difference b/w picture quality either. Just make sure no ferns or branches are in the way or else when the wind blows you get a whole bunch of pictures to sift through. Night pictures have been fine, in both though it really depends on how fast the critter is moving. I don't have any bear boxes or cables on any of them and I hike back far enough off roads where nobody will find them unless they follow or track me. Remember, just because the ferns, salmon berries, etc aren't high enough to bug the camera when you set it, doesn't mean they wont be in 2 to 3 weeks of growth.

I would also suggest you get a little card reader (12$) for your phone so you don't have to switch out the SD cards every time you check them. This also comes in handy because with the PRIMOS cam it instructs you how to program the time stamp onto the SD card, so by not changing the SD card each time it will keep the time stamp.
Keep in mind I am still a greenhorn to the camera game as well.

Hope this helps, post any cool pics so we can all enjoy.

[TriggerMike]

Awesome, thanks for that info.

[hal]

i have used many different makes including Bushnell. I will never buy another B again. I left two B's out this winter and both froze and took a dump. Had 3 other makes out with no issues. had one other B that also froze. We are north of Chesaw and saw -35f this winter.

[smithkl42]

I've been unsatisfied with my Primos. It's very simple to operate, but unlike others at basically the same price point, it doesn't: (1) allow you to review the photos in-camera, nor (b) take videos at night. (You can set it to take videos, and it will - but only in the daytime, at least on my model.)

I've had good luck with this ApeMan: https://smile.amazon.com/VERSION%E3%80%91APEMAN-Camera-Hunting-Upgrading-Protected/dp/B01NAGLAMJ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1531686366&sr=8-3&keywords=apeman+trail+camera. It's a cheap Chinese camera, and the picture quality isn't great, but it seems to have been reliable for me. I put one out last October, and finally changed the batteries in it last week (still had about 30% left, but I figured...)

The only problem I've run into with it - and I've run into this with pretty much every cheap trail camera I've tried - is that they stop taking pictures when it gets cold (i.e., somewhere around freezing). Something about the cold messes up their motion detectors. So you'll be missing at least some winter shots.

One thing to note: most cheap trail cameras don't work with 64GB cards, so make sure you limit your card sizes to 32 GB (which should be fine, unless you end up getting 5000 videos of waving ferns, the way I sometimes do).

[yakimanoob]

i have used many different makes including Bushnell. I will never buy another B again. I left two B's out this winter and both froze and took a dump. Had 3 other makes out with no issues. had one other B that also froze. We are north of Chesaw and saw -35f this winter.

That's unfortunate.  I've had great success in winter with both of my Bushnell Essential E2 cams, but being in the Yakima area we never see anything close to 35° below.