I have never owned a camera but wish to buy a few. Where I hunt our property does not have cell phone coverage. Please tell me what to avoid and what you recommend. I visited a friend who had a seperate reader for his pictures. If I have a laptop, do I need a reader? How do I get pictures from a SIM card to my laptop? What do you recommend for me? What is the range of the camera?

Call brand names please, and mail order sources.

we have bigger problems to worry about, Charles.

... don’t do it Mr. Charles! ... there’s already more than enough deer paparazzi turning the woods into a giant photo shoot! Lol

I'll let other people with more experience with cameras answer that part.

Does your laptop have a slot for reading SD cards? If not, you'd have to buy an SD card reader... they're cheap... plug into the laptop via a USB cord.

OR you can buy a standalone SD card reader which is basically a little tablet that you take with you into the woods to read the SD cards. They're a bit more expensive.

You can get a card reader for around $15 at tractor supply or hunting stores. It plugs into your phone, put the sim card in the reader and all your pics can be seen on your phone.

What could be more important than hunting-fishing- trapping!

FREEDOM!

Hunting in the Fall is sort of my freedom. Who wouldn't like to know what has walked across a logging road or visited a food plot. Think I would probably stay on the stand longer.

well I guess when you forfeit your REAL Freedom, it's the best you can do...

You can spend as little or as much as you want when it comes to trail cameras. I have some $28 Tasco’s from Walmart that aren’t that bad. Pics during the day are fairly good and at night they’re decent. Video isn’t all that great, but not horrible.
I also have some $150 Brownings that take outstanding pics and videos. The pics are print worthy and the videos are high quality.
I have buddies that use Tactacam and love them as well.

Most cameras can be set for pics (trail), video, or even time lapse.

When set on pics or trail, you can set the time between shots and even up to a three or more burst at every shot. You can also pick the quality of image you want. The higher the quality the less space on the SD card. I run 32G in my cameras, but I like taking a lot of videos.

With the camera set in video mode it takes video, lol. You can also set the time between and length of the videos. I keep mine on about 30sec videos with a 5 second delay between each. This is helpful when using strictly on a trail. On a food source I’ll keep it about 30secs to a minute apart.

Most cameras now a days are IR for night shots. Not too many folks are producing the white flash anymore, but I wish they would. There was a time people thought that scared the animals. Lightning flashes and falling stars put off more light than those older cameras did and that never seemed to bother the deer.

And yes, I really enjoy using cameras not only for deer but predators as well. I’ll put them on different food sources even during the “off” season just to see the animals that visit a plum ticket, or maybe persimmons, or even a rouge pecan tree in the middle of a pine thicket.