I've seen a bobcat on the trailcams in Custer Gallatin National Forest south of Red Lodge, MT a few times and repositioned Browning #6 closer to its apparent trail to try to get a better shot. I checked yesterday and did not get a bobcat in the past month. But my cameras did pick up a mountain lion and two bears. The mountain lion showed up on the two Reconyx cameras, #2 and #7, on June 23 a few yards down the trail from #6. The bears were on #6 just a few hours before I checked the cameras. The adult obviously is a black bear, and the bear cub in the second image has to be a black bear even though its fur is very brown. The bear images posted here are almost five hours apart, but there are blurry images (not posted) of an adult black bear climbing over the log at 1:43 PM just ahead of the cub. I presume it is the same adult as in the earlier image at 9:00 AM since it has been two years since the last image of a bear at this location.
The mountain lion is a first at this location and the first I've gotten since May 2020 when #2 was positioned near Luther, MT. In the past month, the cameras also captured a moose cow/calf pair, the usual deer, and hundreds of ground squirrel images.
The bears were very close to #6, so I moved it back near where it used to be to get a wider view. However, there seems to be a problem with #6. It lost the time/date twice in the past month, once around July 1 and again around July 5. That's why the date/time are blacked out on the bear and squirrel images. I was able to calculate the date/time by comparing the camera settings to my computer. The camera says the batteries are at 97% so I don't know what the problem is. An unpostable image from #7 of the back of a black bear confirms it passed through the area July 20. The same camera picked up a black bear at 10:05 PM on July 9, but it's also an unpostable image.
The three cameras are spread along a trail covering a couple hundred yards, with #6 positioned near a creek, and #2 and #7 further to the north. Along that trail I found a couple of large rocks dislodged, and in the uncovered areas there were ants and other bugs. Extensive internet research I conducted in the past five minutes indicates black bears do flip over rocks and eat the insects they find. My brother's camera which got the last moose image shown here is perhaps about a hundred yards downstream from #6, to the east.
To repeat what I've said before, I'm disappointed in the image quality of trail cameras. They tell you what wildlife populates an area, but the images are crap. Even midday images are motion blurred because the forest is a dark place. But that's where the animals live. I don't know if the shooting information is accurate, but #6 recorded the information for the bear cub image as ISO 100, f2.4, 1/40th of a second. I suppose they set the ISO at 100 because the tiny sensors in these Chinese cameras would get completely noisy at 400 or 800. My American-made Reconyx are somewhat better, with a recorded ISO of 800. Newer models claim an ISO up to 3200, but I wonder how grainy that is.
The possible solution, other than getting another Reconyx to replace the Browning, would be to deploy a real camera trap. I already have the 1D Mark II camera #9, the motion sensor, and a spare lens. But I would need to build a box to protect it from weather and vandalism/theft, buy a flash designed for unattended operation, and figure out a way to power it. Or camp out in the woods with my DSLR and wait for the bears and lions to come by once every 1-24 months. For now I think I will swap my cameras around, put #7 close to the creek, and move #11 from backyard duty to the woods to replace the glitchy #6.
We've had bears in town recently knocking over garbage cans and being a nuisance. I could get a picture of a bear walking down an alley if I wanted to, I suppose. But there's something about capturing an image of a bear in the wild, relatively free of human influence, and that's why I do this.
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