Gap

I haven't been out in the woods since last May, so there was some catching up to do. It was a little bit of everything, including something I don't believe I have seen before at this location in the Custer National Forest south of Red Lodge, a bighorn sheep. It's not a good photo, but it undoubtable what it is. I also mixed in a few images from over the summer from the greenhouse. Lots of moose.

As mentioned, I pulled my best cameras out of the woods in May so these images were taken with my oldest Brownings. There has been no more interference with the cameras from the dumbass criminal vigilante, so I am putting my newest Reconyx back out for the winter. I will secure it as well as I can. All it was getting this summer from this camera was deer eating lilac leaves in our back yard...through a cage.

Browning #6 had a gliche and lost the date/time. Through the sequence of moose images I was able to determine that it happened about 12:41pm on August 14. That's why the elk image has a date/time that looks different.

Back end of a mountain lion:

Transient bighorn sheep:

I count the drone as a remote camera:

Catching up

I haven't checked the cameras out in the woods for six months due to knee surgery and chronic procrastination. If I had gone out earlier I would have seen this HUGE mountain lion from October sooner.

Three coyotes, a bobcat, a couple moose, and an evasive rabbit also made an appearance.

Unfortunately I felt the need to pull all of my good cameras out of the woods. Some dumbass vigilante thinks it is illegal to put trail cameras in national forests, WHICH IT IS NOT as long as you aren't using them to track game in real time. For wildlife observation, they are legal. But this idiot stole the SD card out of one of my cameras, and I'm not the only one he has targeted. Even though my other four cameras were not tampered with, I don't want this dumbass looking further than his usual base of operations and stealing my cards from them also. I put my two crappy Brownings out there just to maintain a presence. Unfortunately, the cable lock only secures the camera, not the SD card, so this criminal could conceivably steal those. Anyway...

Greenhouse snapshots

Two images from April at the greenhouse that I'm finally getting around to posting. These are from the crappy Coleman camera. For better or worse, I pulled my good cameras out of the woods for reasons explained in the next post, so I now have my best Browning in this spot and I am considering going all in with my best Reconyx. These images prove it still snows here in April, and if the forecast is correct we will see some snow in mid-May also.

Impulse purchase

I needed a camera for my greenhouse, and decided to get the cheapest camera I could find on Amazon. It carries a famous brand name, Coleman, but obviously it is a Chinese no-name with the Coleman logo pasted on it. It cost $39.34. It did come with a nice mount to screw it to a wall, which I am planning on using inside the greenhouse...with a different camera (the Gardepro). The Coleman images seem especially soft on the left side, and I don't think it is just because that's the distant part of this image.

This is the latest shot of the Greenhouse interior, taken with the Gardepro. To minimize the constant glare, I'll try mounting it higher up/further to the right and point it down and back toward the middle. Basically it is a security camera. The outside camera will capture all the deer, turkeys and (maybe) moose and bears. For that, I'm planning on using my best camera, the newest Reconyx.

Unless there is a snowstorm, next week I will collect my five cameras from the woods. After I clean them and make sure all the batteries are charged, I'll put three of them back out there. That gives me seven cameras I can use in town, but there's this crappy Coleman and the always-crappy Primos, and two extremely old Brownings included in that number. Here's my preliminary plan, with the best cameras in bold:

• Woods
• Reconyx #7
• Reconyx #2
• Browning #11
• House
• Browning #15
• Browning #5
• Browning #6 aka the Melted Browning
• Primos #4 (sometimes useful for video, not stills)
• Greenhouse
• Reconyx #19 (outside facing the front)
• Coleman #20 (outside, off to one side)
• Gardepro #14 (inside)