Tips for Setting Up Your Trail Camera System

When used smartly, trail cameras are great for scouting deer and other game animals

Trail cameras are extremely valuable tools for scouting and improving the overall quality of your hunt. The key to success in the trail camera game is understanding some basic fundamentals of how to set up your cameras for clean, useful intel.

Think about how challenging it can be to get a respectable shot from a handheld point-and-shoot camera. Framing the subject, getting the right angle and lighting, snapping the image at the perfect time. So, it's easy to understand how important it is to nail your stationary trail camera setups. You want to get it right the first time. Keep these tips in mind as you set up and optimize your trail camera system.

Where should I set up my trail cameras?

• Trails and travel corridors: These are arguably the best places to set up trail cameras. Many of these pathways offer productive hunting all year, and they also help you figure out where animals are coming from and where they're going. Finding the most active trails and travel corridors is also key for hunting the rut.
• Fields and food plots: No doubt, animals will be frequenting these locations to socialize and feed. Often, fields and food plots are great places to hunt with minimal impact while maintaining surrounding areas of heavier cover as “sanctuaries.”
• Water sources: All wildlife require water, and most animals need water daily. Stagnant water sources like puddles or ponds are often preferred by game species over flowing water like streams or rivers.
• Bedding areas: In terms of deer, even though you might never hunt inside bedding areas, deploying a trail camera in bedding can help you inventory your deer herd and determine when new bucks are in the area.

What settings should I use for my trail cameras?

• Thankfully, trail cameras are programmed to handle all the most advanced camera settings automatically - thinks like exposure and shutter speed - so you'll get consistently high-quality images without having to tweak settings yourself.
• The main settings in a trail camera that you do need to control are mainly how many photos or videos you want to capture, when, at what delay, and at what quality.
• For high-traffic areas such as water sources, feed or bait stations, generally you'll want to run a longer PIR delay and avoid multi-photo bursts. Animals tend to revisit these areas repeatedly and stick around for longer periods of time, so you probably don't need or want tons of duplicate images.
• For trails, field edges, and other passthrough areas, you stand to benefit by shorter PIR delays, more photo bursts, and longer video clips because you'll likely have a more limited window of opportunity to capture images of an animal.
• Photo and video quality settings in trail cameras are a personal choice. Higher quality images will take up more memory/storage space and drain batteries faster, but modern trail cameras are so efficient that these factors are rather insignificant. A photo with more megapixels or video at higher definition will give you a much better image of an animal for analysis and enjoyment.

How do I position/mount my trail cameras?

• Sun is one constant that you'll want to consider for trail camera positioning. Facing a trail camera north or south is preferred to avoid the direct light of a rising or setting sun from the east or west. This isn't always realistic, so don't fret too much if it's not an option. And if your trail camera is in a shady area, such as in timber, it's even less of a concern.
• For capturing images of deer, you'll want to mount your trail camera on a mounting post or a tree approximately 3-4 feet off the ground, parallel to the ground. This will allow you to capture more images of the entire animal.
• Mounting your trail camera higher on a tree is also an option. In this case, you'll want to point the camera at a downward angle. This can help reduce the aforementioned sunlight interference and, if mounted out of reach, can reduce trail camera theft and even damage from bears or other varmints. The downside to mounting a trail camera this way is you'll lose out on some coverage (field of view) and detection range.

What products do I need for my trail camera system?

• A trail camera system starts with, of course, trail cameras! The size and layout of your hunting property will determine how many cameras you need for effective trail camera scouting, but in nearly every case you'll want more than one camera to effectively canvas the area.
• By using the proper settings, most trail cameras will run for weeks or even months on standard AA batteries. But external power sources - especially solar solutions - are much more efficient and can allow you to run your trail cameras for much longer. This is critical if you want to service your trail cameras as little as possible and minimize human disturbance in a hunting area.
• For trail cameras that utilize removable SD cards, it's important to use high-quality SD cards with a Class 10 U3 rating and 16-32GB of storage. (Most trail cameras will not function properly with storage above 32GB.) Your best bet is to check the trail camera product manual for the manufacturer's best SD card recommendations.
• Trail camera mounting posts and tree mounting accessories give you much more flexibility for trail camera positioning. Mounting accessories allow you to easily tweak the height and angle of trail cameras, and free-standing mounting posts are great for fields or other areas where tree mounting options are limited.