Bear Bait

[Double Beam]

I had a bear play with my video camera. He/she came in from the side, so it's not like I had photos of it coming straight at my camera. Bummer!!!

It messed with the camera for a few minutes and then left it alone. I'm guessing about 10 minutes. Moved it around the tree a bit. Clawed through and ruined the fernsel lens, busted a few things off of the Pixcontroller LANC board. I need to get that fixed, but other than that the camera was OK. It was still cycling and taking video. It would run for 2.5 minutes and shut off for a while, then fire up again for 2.5 minutes, and so on, and so on. It did this for 3 days. Thankfully it didn't rain, as the camera ended up pointed at an upwards angle. It would of rained into the opening where the fernsel lens had been located.

You could see the bear at times biting and rubbing it's-self against the camera case. The Pelican case was hardly damaged. Just a couple of scratch marks. It didn't break the glass or on the side I have a piece of plexiglas just to look in and see how much tape has been run off.

I had cleaned the camera case with Isopropyl Alcohol to remove my scent from the camera when I put it in the woods. I had just used a couple of locks and a piece of chain to mount the camera to the tree. This was only the second time that I had the video camera out. The first time I didn't like how the camera hung with the locks and chain, so I had a bungee cord around the bottom of the cam. Maybe the bear smelled my scent on that cloth-like bungee cord. It wasn't one of the rubber ones. But I know bears will chew on rubber too.

 

[Tinhorn]

boy those bears must be a pest, ha ha. DaveRed1 got a good pix of one grabbing one of his with a 2nd camera off to the side once, looked like a teenager up to no good to me.

Did your camcorder pick up any sounds of him?

Tinhorn

 

[Double Beam]

Just him pawing, scratching and licking at the case. No grunt, groans or growls. I wish I was up on video production more. And I had some kind of video capture something or other, than I could plug into this laptop. Then, I'd post a picture of his mug. I saw a thing at Sam' Club called "Dazzle". It was suppose to capture video. I think it works through the USB port. Guess, I'll need to go check it out.

 

[D Letho]

Double Beam ,

I have Dazzle . It works off of a 1394 fire wire . If you have a digital camcrder you can send the video thru with the digital hookeup . If you do not have a digital cam you can use RCA jacks to send the video .

You still need a video editing program like Movie Maker or Pinnacle Studio 8 , something to that effect . I use Pinnacle .

If you do get the video on your computer make sure to put the clip on Huntingfootage.com . I know we would all love to see it .

Don

 

[steve-o]

Yeah, bears really like to chew on cameras and bang them around. I got so many closeups of bears playing with my cams that I put out another cam next to the first one, so I could finally get some good pictures. I've also got some videos of them too. My favorite is the video of sow with 3 cubs investigating my cameras.

My bear pics and videos

 

[Tinhorn]

Steve-o, you have an excellent web site going, nice and clean

 

[steve-o]

Thanks Tinhorn. It's hard to keep it simple with all the hundreds of pictures I have. I try to only post the really good pictures I get. I recently backed up all my trailcam pictures onto a CD and I have over 700 MB of just trailcam pictures!

On a bear related note: I stopped putting my cam in the woods where I was getting all those bear pics because every time I went to check on the cams, I walked up on a bear. Last week there were 4 bear attacks in my area. Apparently the bears are attacking the bowhunters. I think the bears must be more active (and aggressive) this year because it's so warm and they haven't thought about taking their winter naps yet. In any case, it was just too unnerving to keep walking up on these bears about 20 yards away. I never saw the sow or the big male. Just cubs and yearlings. But I figured it was just a matter of time before I came across the mom and made her angry. I always carried pepper spray with me, but in that particular area, I'm not allowed to carry my Glock, so I felt a little vulnerable. My wife's friend was one of the guys who was mauled by a sow last week, and I don't want to go through what he's going through.