Fawns

As you might expect most of my pics last week were at the mountain pond. We're getting really dry here. I helped my farmer buddy drill four post holes yesterday and it was nothing but powder 3' down. The little pond has dropped about 6" in the last two weeks. So a lot of animals are coming to the pond for water and a cool dip.

Here's momma and a couple of fawns at the pond.

Gray Fox

Sort of a rare series for me of a Gray Fox in the daytime. Most of the pics I get of the Gray Foxes is at night.

Twin Fawns

Had a really good camera trapping week last week. Got a ton of good pictures of a wide variety of animals. I'll start out with a set of twin fawns. In the first three pics they're nursing and then they came back by the set the next day just browsing through. I hope to get two or three more sets posted this week. Our temperatures have dropped a little bit but I still don't think I'm going to jump into any major outside projects.

Covert Reveal Review

I’ve had several people ask what I thought of the new camera I got to replace the flood damaged one so I thought I’d write a little review. Besides it’s too hot outside to do anything else. So let me begin by saying I’m in no way connected to the DLC Covert Company  nor receive any monies from them. This is just my personal views and experience with one of their trail cameras.

The first thing I thought when I opened the box was wow this thing is small. It will pretty much fit in my hand. The actual size is 5.5”x3.5”x2.2”. It has a nice camo pattern and is well built.

I’ve had the camera out in the field since early May and it’s taken over 1500 pictures. The battery life is a three bar indicator on the remote control unit that plugs into the camera for setup. The first week it dropped back to two bars and I was thinking oh no the battery life doesn’t look good. But it has held on two bars ever since so I’m pleased with that. The camera will run on 4 or 8 AA batteries.  I’m using the 8 battery set up.

One the main reasons I went with this camera is it has a white flash that gives you color pictures at night.  This is one feature that I have been very pleased with. The flash really lights up a big area and I’ve gotten some great night time shots with it. Another thing that pleased me is the sensing range. It’s picking up animals at least 35’ to 40’ out if not a little bit more. One thing I have noticed is the sensing field is wider than the camera field of view. I played around with it a little by walking past it at different distances and the first shot usually just had me walking into the picture frame. Now the trigger speed could be that fast but I don’t think so. The camera technical data says the trigger speed is 1.2 second but I’m guessing it’s more like 1.5 to 2 second. Again I don’t do a controlled test and that’s just my observation from the pictures I’ve gotten. But 1.5 second isn’t bad for a camera in this price range.

I’ll let you form your own opinion on the picture quality from the pics I’ve posted but overall I’m pleased with the quality and color. I attached a few pics from last week at the end.

Another concern I had was whether the camera was quiet. By quiet I mean does it have a filter clunk when it takes a picture. I’ve found that the animals in my area are much more affected by the loud clunk than they are by the white flash. I’m happy to say that this camera is quiet. I haven’t noticed any pictures of the animals staring at the camera as they do with another camera I have that does have the clunk.

I haven’t needed to deal with Covert’s customer service so I can’t help you with that. But I count that as a good thing also. The cost of this camera is around $120 and I got mine on sale for $99. With the security box and python lock cable (highly recommended in bear country or high people areas) you can get a very good trail camera for around $150 if you shop around. All in all I really don’t have anything I don’t like about the camera and I’ve become a big fan of the Covert cameras. To the point I’m thinking about getting another one.  YES, I’m totally addicted to this camera trapping thing.  If the pay wasn’t so bad I’d quit my day job and do it full time ;).

If I missed something and you have questions please don’t be afraid to ask. You can email me at jsmith0359@gmail.com.



Twin Cubs

I didn't want to leave out the twins this week as they visited the mountain pond a couple of times also. In the first set it looks like the one cub's fur is still wet from taking a dip in the pond. The last two pics show why I have all of my cameras in security boxes and occasionally have smudges on my camera lens. I learned early on in my camera trapping hobby that bears have a wild fascination for cameras and can't resist checking them out up close and personal.

Triplet Cubs

Momma bear and the triplets visited two camera sets last week. One set out on the farm and the other at the mountain pond. The mountain pond set is a little hazy due to an earlier visitor sticking it's nose on the camera lens. I'll be posting those later this week. The pond sees a lot of action during the hot weather. The bears like to take a dip to cool off.

Fawns at Last

I finally got some fawns on camera last week. I had hoped to get a few of some really young ones but just didn’t have any luck this year. I’m thinking the Does tried to keep them hidden from all of the bears running around until they were big enough to have a chance of getting away from any hungry bears.

A First

I scored a first as far a camera trapped goes last week. I caught a Red-Tailed Hawk making a kill in front of the camera at the Mountain Pond. I'm not sure but I believe that it caught a squirrel. There appears to be a little bit of a brownish bushy tail sticking up above the log in the second pic. The squirrels like to run along the top of the log. I'm guessing this is one of the hawks favorite hunting grounds because I've seen it around this area before and found a hawk feather on the trail leading to the pond a couple of weeks ago.

Tuff Battle and Gray Fox

Another tuff battle between the deer and raccoons.  I like the way they keep eyeing each other. Then the deer and gray fox just seem to ignore each other.