My trailcams needed updating. The old ones had started to wear out. I was looking on Amazon a while back and saw a 2-fer offer that looked too good to be true– 2 for $99.
MAXDONE Solar Trail Camera 2 Pack
Turkey Season came and went, and I still had not put them out– hadn’t even opened the box. However, a few years ago, I decided to test them out. I set up one by the salt lick at Campground. The other went to the south field at Midway. This latter one, I set up for the timelapse mode. It took a shot every 10 minutes.
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My overall evaluation is positive. I have tried cheaper ones that did not pan out at all, and ones in this price range that did not give as much. The big pluses with this trail cam are as follows:
- Internal rechargeable battery. No swapping AA cells.
- Included solar cell. After a week, the unit still showed 100% charge.
- Unit is accessible from a phone APP. I was able to stay in my truck, well away from the unit and access it.
- Setup includes an option for time-lapse
With the mini Wi-Fi connection, I can get kind-of/sort-of in the vicinity of the camera and check it pics and insure it’s working. For me, that’s enough. I don’t need a 5G-enabled camera. Picture quality is good enough to detect sex, etc. I’m not generating artwork. I just want to know something is there.
The range of the camera is okay for my purposes. The clarity is passable. If someone can show me a sub-$50 camera that does better, I’d like to see it. After seeing the first set of pics, I ordered another pair. At this price, I can spread them around.
I think I bought my first trail camera well over 20 years ago. I just wanted to know what was out there. It took pics. It took them at night. It ran off a 6V lantern battery. It had a blinding strobe flash. It took crappy pics. I was happy. This is a side of deer hunting I never fully got. To each his own, but the sport loses something to me if the mystery disappears. As long as I can see some sign that the does are happy, I’m happy. I also try and keep my incursions into their territory to a minimum.
There is one CON about this camera. It uses the Mini SD cards. It comes with one that held over a week of timelapse photos. I ordered some 64 GB cards as well. Extracting those cards from the camera can be a bit tricky in the field, especially if you’ve got neuropathy in your fingers like I do. I had one card fall out of my fingers as I was extracting it. It took 20 minutes pawing through the leaf litter to find it.
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