game cams, page 3

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Choosing a Location

With most subjects, such as deer and other more common animals, it is a relatively easy task to anticipate location and movement, and set cameras accordingly. Not so with rare — or, as in this case, undocumented — animals. Factor in our general lack of the subject’s habits, making it nearly impossible to anticipate activity, and it makes it all the more difficult to anticipate location. This is a likely reason that no photos have been forthcoming thus far, given the rarity of the subject, and the difficulty of choosing a camera location.

Camera location is obviously the single most important aspect of a successful program. Pick the right location, have an active camera there, and bingo…success! However, that’s been part of the problem to date. Choosing that location relies on research, knowledge of the equipment and its limitations, and a good measure of gut feeling and guesswork.

Research should begin with choosing your location; you should have some indication that your subject might actually be in the general area. With Sasquatch, this is obviously the big question. Most of us have no way of knowing whether or not they are in an area, or that they even exist for sure, but if you are one of the lucky few who have had a sighting, or activity at a location you have access too, this is the best case scenario. If not, you are limited to choosing a location based on second hand reports, or just gut feeling…which, given the success rate thus far, may be just as effective!

Once you have chosen a general location, you need to pick a more specific spot to set your camera or cameras. This location will determine your “set;” in other words, the specific location and placement of the cameras. The best case would be to have a location with consistent activity, in a very small, localized area. Such a situation would occur with a target subject making frequent visits to a specific location, be it a natural one such as a food source, a river full of migrating salmon or a patch of wild berries, or a man made one such as a home, smoke house, shed or barn. If such a situation were found, then camera placement would be at least marginally easier. Simply arrange the camera or cameras where sightings are happening, or where tracks are being found, and place them close enough to overcome the aforementioned limitations. Unfortunately, no claimed scenarios of this nature have so far proven to pan out, at least to the point of generating any solid, measurable evidence, photographic or otherwise.

Another more likely scenario is one of scattered but consistent sightings over a slightly larger area; an entire farm, several farms, a large swamp, or a stretch of river, for example. Camera placement in this case will require a bit more thought, and while the specifics of placement will be a bit less exact, the chance of finding this type of situation is much greater. This situation, ideally, would employ a number of cameras. Classic locations such as bottlenecks, travel routes, food sources (crop fields and orchards for instance), river crossings, and downed fences can be targeted. If several sightings have occurred, or other evidence has been found in a specific location, a “picket line” of cameras can be deployed. This may well represent the best chance of success. The set is simple: arrange a line of cameras so that the detection field of one covers the area up to the next camera. This can be continued in a line, with as many cameras as are available or required to cover the area in question. The end result is that anything crossing the line of cameras will trigger at least one of them. If tracks, sightings, or other evidence have been found in a fairly localized area such as tracks along a particular section of river or lake shore, or several sightings along a stretch of road or field edge, then a picket line of game cameras covering the area should eventually result in capturing something on film. It is my belief that this scenario is the one most likely to result in success. It employs not only multiple cameras, and thus a larger coverage area, but also “locks in” an area with total coverage…and if an area is found to be hosting numbers of sightings, it is likely that cameras arranged in an array will be the most likely to successfully capture an image.

Individual camera placement in such a situation will be determined by simply setting the first camera in the line, then setting each following one at a point within the detection zone of the previous one. Single sets should be placed at locations such as downed fences, breaks in cover, field corners, river crossing points, or even along remote trails or roadways.

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