Most winters, when we get decent snows, I put up a couple of trail cameras above my house, just out of curiosity. They are baited with road-killed deer. I am always surprised what species use these baits. I've had up to 17 species using them (not all at once). I found that the carcasses need to be wired securely, or the lions and wolves will move them out of camera range. Typically I get cougars, bobcats, red fox, coyotes, wolves, striped skunks, marten, long-tailed weasels, red squirrels, flying squirrels, bushy-tailed woodrats, deer mice, black-billed magpies, golden eagles, hairy woodpeckers, and black-capped chickadees. Very occasionally, I get domestic cats, domestic dogs, and curious humans.



















I'm sure there are lots of trail camera photos out there?

In the video it plays in the tube and runs on top of it. Older cat comes through and marks it at night.

Hoss -

That little striped piglet looks exactly like the Russian boar piglets. Amazing how they can disappear in the leaves and duff with a signal from mom.

Always like cam pics, Jack. They're like a box of chocolates...ya never know what you're gonna get.

I had a couple of bucket and bottle roller mouse trap set ups on the ground around my parking area. The set up that Patrice told everyone that she uses...a white five gallon bucket, with a plastic bottle skewered onto a stick that spanned the top rim of the bucket. Slather some peanut butter midway on the bottle, the mice run onto that and the bottle rolls them right into the bucket, and into water. Something kept cleaning off the peanut better , slick as could be, for three nights in a row. Setting up my trail cam, surprised me to see a skunk in the act. It never even tipped over the bucket. So I had to elevate the buckets...

I can well imagine my most concerning find would be to see a human in one of those pics. I'm sure others have seen that same uninvited predator too .

What? No artwork Sharon? Guess I picked a poor subject this week, huh?

Jack

Oh no sir, you never pick a poor subject. All your subjects are great. There are just so many animals in a cam capture, everything, really, that I couldn't make up my mind

Here's something that definitely is reason to set a cam on the porch...the resident dog food bowl being raided. Just like my cam captured the raiding skunk in my parking spot in the night..cams are the ticket in solving mysteries...

may be a migrant human passing thru?

I’ve noticed the same thing when hunting pigs at night. Slip in and shoot one or two and then don’t move. I won’t use any external lights during that time except maybe switch on WiFi on my phone and download the video from my thermal then turn it back to cellular to monitor cameras. I’ve had the sounder or remaining pigs come back within 10-20min and take multiple pigs again. Adults take the 20min, the shoats or piglets take about 10min.
I guess they hear the “boom” and it scares them initially. But with the wind in my favor and no lights or noise and they settle down and come back to the bait site. Most I’ve ever got was 6, with 2 larger hogs and 4 shoats. I’ve taken 3 larger hogs multiple times.
I use a Ruger Predator (bolt action) and hunt brush so an AR type rifle does me no good except to add weight. If I had fields to hunt I’d trade weight for more shot opportunities. Besides, I like to document mine with pics for pay purposes, although sometimes I’ve had to use buzzards for help, lol.

A neat one from last night

Those bears?

Haven’t had pics of pigs on this cam in three weeks. At that time I buried some corn there. That was also the last time I fed that spot so there was nothing topside for deer, hogs, or turkeys.
Last night they came back through and apparently smelled the buried corn, lol.

I went earlier and added some corn and buried it again. I also added peanuts and corn around it and will be waiting on GO tonight if they show up.

Wanna be, yep a sow and 3 cubs

That’s pretty cool! We don’t have those here, thankfully I guess, lol.

Lots of great photos and artwork. Thanks.

Wolves were using this trail regularly last winter. So I put a camera on it back about the beginning of July. They never walked past it all summer, but come the first snowfall, here one came through there again.

Plenty of other critters used it through the summer, including a surveyor, I didn't bother to save pictures of most of them, but here are a few.