I brought along two home made digital trail cameras this year. What a great source of entertainment and education. The ability to scout areas while I was in another location became a fantastic means to make tough decisions on where to concentrate my hunting each day.
These digital cameras are an ideal tool to verify activity and quality of game in the areas we considered hunting. Some locations we discarded right away due to lack of potential and others we hammered hard because we knew the game was in the area.
It's nice to be able to know from the scouting photos that game we want is at least within the area we have chosen to hunt. 10 day hunts have about 20 hunting periods, of which the 10 evenings are the primary peak times. Make a poor choice a couple evenings and you start having a bit of pressure to find game the remaining days. The scouting cameras really help to confirm what the quality is and what is active in each area. The time and date stamp is also a nice feature.
This year there we had record rainfall. The bush was lush and green even in the middle of winter. Hunting was as difficult as I have ever seen it this year. There were countless waterholes making the game spread over huge tracts of bush. There was fewer animals per area then in a more normal season. With the cameras I was able to make some very well thought out decisions on where to hunt each day.
Here are a few photos, I have 288 saved in the two cameras memory.
impala sparing
some kudu
cape buffalo which have not been seen in this area for th last four years!
A nice bull Rhino
What a lucky photo this was to capture!
A very nice bull
big female warthog
ostrich coming by for a drink
Giraffe coming to drink in the middle of the night
I have way too many photos to post of every kind of African Animal you can imagine, monkeys, badgers, hyena, lynx, porcupine, dozens of different birds etc. The scouting cameras are a wealth of great information. They will certainly have a lot of importance in my future hunting and scouting in my African hunting camps. Here are a few more. This game camera thing is a very nice way to have a photo safari and a hunting safari at the same time. 288 photos of game and I was not there for any of them! I was hunting with my clients the whole time.
Although I did check on a water hole one evening and we saw some Eland come drink. We stayed hidden to see how big they were. As they approached the open area and walked past the "camera tree" we saw the camera flash go off and the Eland stood amazed for a moment by the shock of the flash. So I was infact there for at least that one!
jackal
Honey badgers at a gut pile
Zebra, Eland, and a warthog......anything else?
Nice fat impala ram
This big guy must have been a couple feet away!
A very odd lone blue wildebeast? Must be more just out of sight.
These digital cameras are an ideal tool to verify activity and quality of game in the areas we considered hunting. Some locations we discarded right away due to lack of potential and others we hammered hard because we knew the game was in the area.
It's nice to be able to know from the scouting photos that game we want is at least within the area we have chosen to hunt. 10 day hunts have about 20 hunting periods, of which the 10 evenings are the primary peak times. Make a poor choice a couple evenings and you start having a bit of pressure to find game the remaining days. The scouting cameras really help to confirm what the quality is and what is active in each area. The time and date stamp is also a nice feature.
This year there we had record rainfall. The bush was lush and green even in the middle of winter. Hunting was as difficult as I have ever seen it this year. There were countless waterholes making the game spread over huge tracts of bush. There was fewer animals per area then in a more normal season. With the cameras I was able to make some very well thought out decisions on where to hunt each day.
Here are a few photos, I have 288 saved in the two cameras memory.
impala sparing
some kudu
cape buffalo which have not been seen in this area for th last four years!
A nice bull Rhino
What a lucky photo this was to capture!
A very nice bull
big female warthog
ostrich coming by for a drink
Giraffe coming to drink in the middle of the night
I have way too many photos to post of every kind of African Animal you can imagine, monkeys, badgers, hyena, lynx, porcupine, dozens of different birds etc. The scouting cameras are a wealth of great information. They will certainly have a lot of importance in my future hunting and scouting in my African hunting camps. Here are a few more. This game camera thing is a very nice way to have a photo safari and a hunting safari at the same time. 288 photos of game and I was not there for any of them! I was hunting with my clients the whole time.
Although I did check on a water hole one evening and we saw some Eland come drink. We stayed hidden to see how big they were. As they approached the open area and walked past the "camera tree" we saw the camera flash go off and the Eland stood amazed for a moment by the shock of the flash. So I was infact there for at least that one!
jackal
Honey badgers at a gut pile
Zebra, Eland, and a warthog......anything else?
Nice fat impala ram
This big guy must have been a couple feet away!
A very odd lone blue wildebeast? Must be more just out of sight.
