July 22, 2019
By Bowhunter Digital Staff
There’s nothing that replaces boots-on-the-ground scouting, but the problem with that method is you have to go into where the deer live. A little is fine, but too much intrusion and you’ll change your target buck’s patterns before you even get a chance to hunt him.
That’s no good.
Traditional trail cameras can partially remedy this problem, but you still have to hike into the woods to check them. This leaves you with few, low-impact options that will provide up-to-the-minute intel on deer activities. There is also no way to know if your SD card is full, your batteries are dead, or if a curious bear has swatted your camera sideways unless you head out and physically check them. While useful, traditional cameras aren’t perfect.
Enter cellular-enabled cameras.
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There’s nothing more low-impact, or as useful if you’ve got hunting properties located a few states away. That’s why the Bowhunter staff plans to deploy several of these cameras during the back half of the summer and throughout the fall. While we hunt all over the world, whitetails at home or in a neighboring state are our bread-and-butter.
With Moultrie’s new 20mp XV7000i and XA7000a cameras, we can now see what’s going on in core areas, as well as deer ground that is five hours from our homes — all through the free Moultrie Mobile app. Cameras operate on AT&T and Verizon 4G networks and don’t require contracts, which is perfect because it allows you to use them when you want to and not pay for a plan when your cameras aren’t strapped to a tree.
These new cameras promise at least three months of battery life on a fresh set, which means that when we set ours in August to monitor velvet bucks, we’ll be good to go well into the heart of bow season. If any of those velvet bucks happen to make our hitlists, we can use the new Sort & Tag technology to keep track of them specifically while filing through our images. That, hopefully, will lead to a few grip-and-grin photos sometime this fall!
Check out Moultrie’s new cameras at www.moultriemobile.com .
