I use Spartan cellular cameras on all of my active hog traps. Each hog trap is equipped with cellular wireless control units whereby I control the trap gates via my cell phone from home or anywhere in the world. I catch 99% of the hogs from home using that technology and save some money not having to make trips checking empty traps.. Using the cell cameras has numerous advantages. It allows me to be very selective of what is trapped, i.e. no unintended animals caught (deer). Also, I can identify and get an exact head count of my target group and then not trigger the gate until every one of that target group are inside of the enclosure. That all or nothing catch approach reduces the possibility of spooking hogs that are outside of the trap and causing them to avoid traps in the future. I can also see how animals react to the trap, bait, etc. and whether they avoid it or not.
I also have and use some Browning and Covert IR flash type cameras and have seen many deer, hogs, coon, coyotes and cats on those cameras. Some critters alert or spook, some don't. That may depend on the camera because some cameras make a barely audible click when snapping the picture. On a still night or in a quiet room, you can test your camera and hear the click. If you can hear it, so can the animals. Many of the critters get used to the camera and don't pay any attention to it. Coyotes are definitely the most spooky and do react to the click or red IR flash.
The IR cameras have a very brief faint red glow when they take a picture. Critters facing the camera quickly notice that. The black flash type cameras have no flash that a human can see, not sure if animals can see it or not, but those cameras get no reaction when the picture is taken.
Beware that when mounted high and facing downward, the camera sensor area and range are greatly reduced to a small area. In that case the camera would only trigger if the critter was inside that small area.
Frankly, I enjoy going to the woods regardless of what I am doing and I will never quit doing that whether using cameras or not, but the cameras reveal what is going on out there all day and all night when I am not there. You will see animals on the trail cameras that you would never see or know that were there. The cellular cameras allow you to see all of that from your home.
Hope this helps.
In your sentence, at
Dave
Funny you mention that about being able to catch from home or anywhere in the world. We we’re in El Paso to catch a flight back to GA after turkey hunting NM and the camera went off alerting me to activity. I normally consult the manager before releasing the gate but he couldn’t be reached. So from El Paso TX I hit the button and caught the boar we were after all the way down in SWGA. We had already caught a large sounder of sows and smaller pigs at that location.