Bark Cam Deployed Pics

[SAMCRO]

I made a post a while ago, showing how I'd used bark to better hide a Moultrie camera I keep near the house. Here is that camera:

cam4.JPG (84.47 KiB) Viewed 1910 times

I also showed how to make a mounting bracket that lets you mount these without the use of the strap. The strap is the most visible portion of a camera, and I've read before that theives look for straps as much as they do cameras.

Now, I've never had issues with people messing with my cameras. In some of the places I hunt, it's just too remote to worry about. We just strap them on and go. Behind the house, I've only seen one person who was uninvited, and he strolled past my camera and never knew it. So, this is really not necessarily needed, but I wanted to try it.

I think the use of a security box done like this is a better idea, but you'd lose the mounting options. I strayed away from most of my original mount idea, because I wanted to be able to have a few more mounting options.

So, this mount, that you can't see in these pictures, uses a wooden shim through the strap sleeves on the back of the camera as the main mounting point. I just took a shim, cut to length, sanded until it fit snugly, and painted flat brown. I ran an eye screw threw the shim, with two wing nuts so you can adjust it however you want. Just snug the wing nuts when it's how you want. The eye screw runs to a bolt, and also on the bolt is another eye screw. All of this was painted flat, as well. Run the eye screw wherever you want, adjust the angle how you want, and tighten the bolt. Adjust the shim how you want, and tighten the wing nuts. Then, just slide the cam onto the shim and you're done.

These aren't good pictures, because I used my iphone instead of a real camera. You'll get the point, however. I mounted the camera to a downed tree, to test the mount and because that's where I wanted it.

In this picture, I'm standing about 18 yards from the camera. This is where several trails intersect:

18yards.jpeg (226.18 KiB) Viewed 1910 times

Here, I've walked to within 15 feet of it:

15feetfront.jpeg (241.4 KiB) Viewed 1910 times

[SAMCRO]

Here is how it looks when I'm right in front of it, maybe 3 feet away.

3feetfront.jpeg (208.72 KiB) Viewed 1909 times

Here is about a foot away, looking down at the camera.

nexttocam.jpeg (198.17 KiB) Viewed 1909 times

Finally, I'm directly inline to it here, so you can see the side profile of this kind of set:

3feetside.jpeg (224.99 KiB) Viewed 1909 times

I'm sure I'm not done. I'm going to play around with making a security box, and figuring how to get more mounting angles and options, and then lag-bolting it in place. I'll "camo" it the same, with tree bark. That is probably the most secure way to do this.

However, thieves don't steal what they don't see, and I'm pretty sure this isn't going to catch someone's eye.

I'm also going to continue to work on the mount I made. The wood shim is temporary, just to test the concept. I'll make one out of better material before I'm done.

[Limbshot]

That's pretty freaking slick, Samcro. Nicely done.

[PoisonSnake]

I'm wondering if this bark cam can do miracles and repel water because I am certain one and maybe 2 of my cameras are being flooded right now. Oh, and Cro, I realize that sentence probably breaks every rule for literary correctness that there is. So, STFU before you even start on me.

[RB]

PS, are they in the bottoms at the HFA? If so they just might be wet like you said.

[PoisonSnake]

Yep. I'm thinking one of them might be OK. The other is probably under water right now. Hopefully my wheat will be OK.

[RB]

Yep. I'm thinking one of them might be OK. The other is probably under water right now. Hopefully my wheat will be OK.

If the wheat goes under water and the water stays on it then its probably toast. If the camera goes under it might be lost as well. Hope it doesn't flood too much in there. That's quite a funnel for water and if you are getting the rain we are then it will probably flood. Right now water is over our entrance so we can't get out of here until it goes down.

[SAMCRO]

As an update to my Bark Cam, the name was more appropriately chosen than I realized. I went to check it a while ago, and when I got there, most of the bark was laying on the ground, instead of attached to the camera. The bark is hot glued to the camera case, for ease of later removability and installation.

I had a similiar set, minus the bracket, out for weeks last season, so this surprised me. I couldn't think of how or why the bark had fallen off. The camera was also slightly out of alignment. Not much, because the bracket is fairly sturdy, but some.

These are the pictures on the card just before the cam turned. I believe this is the culprit who decided to remove the camo.

PICT0165 - Copy.JPG (74.69 KiB) Viewed 1871 times

PICT0166 - Copy.JPG (72.09 KiB) Viewed 1871 times

PICT0167 - Copy.JPG (23.89 KiB) Viewed 1871 times

[SAMCRO]

This is the last picture of the dog, right after the nasal MRI you see above. You can see from the small tree on the far right of the screen that clearly the barker made contact with the bark cam.

PICT0168 - Copy.JPG (73.21 KiB) Viewed 1871 times

[SAMCRO]

SAMCRO's wheels are always turning, and I have begun the intial stages of Bark Cam 2.0, code-named "TreeCam".

treecam.png.jpeg (187.32 KiB) Viewed 1870 times

[Limbshot]

That dog needs an arrow.

[RB]

That's similar to what I told you about last year that a buddy of mine had done the same thing in a dead tree that had the bark on it. I asked him if he had a picture and he didn't. He lost the lease so the set up is no longer there. It did work really well and was really hard to see it even if you knew it was there.