Bad Bad Bushnell Brown

Arrggh, that sinking feeling when I open up my Bushnell HD Trophy trail camera and the date says January 1, 2013. It's not January and it isn't even 2013. Rats, the camera reset itself! I know this means the Bushnell has probably missed some shots and quite possibly has a completely blank memory card.

I check the battery level, the memory card, and every one of the 20 steps in the complicated menu. And I check them again. Everything seems to be working fine, at least right now. One of the batteries is sticking out a little. I tap it. Was it loose or not? I don't know but the rangers are waiting for my advice and I've got a dreadful feeling.

(click Read More to continue but be forewarned there are gory photos of a deer carcass coming up and predator photos)

An eviscerated yearling black-tail deer. The initial incision into the belly, the removal of some of the organs, and the cracked-off ribs indicate that this may be the work of a mountain lion.   

In my head, I roll back to when I set up the camera on the fresh deer carcass five days ago. I see myself putting in freshly charged batteries, formatting the card in the camera and checking the date setting. The ranger stakes down the carcass to give us a chance to capture photos of what comes to feed on it - the feasting animals may be scavengers or they may be the original predator that killed the deer, but at least it will give us some information. I watch the camera do its count-down flash as we hurriedly leave the site so I am confident it is working.

Puncture marks in the neck also indicate a mountain lion kill although they could be from a dog.   

Now I need information about what happened at this carcass over the last 5 days and I'm worried the camera didn't take any photos. I know animals have been here because the carcass is now gone, and there are drag marks and smeared tracks in the trampled mud.

In the hour it took me to go find a trail camera and return to the site, more feeding had occurred on the carcass. Knowing the predator(s) were probably still around, we approached the carcass carefully and this was probably the fastest I ever set up a camera.   

What's wrong?  Why can't I get this camera to work?

This panicky feeling reminds me of being a new mom. Your baby is crying and crying and you don't know why. You check the diaper to see if it needs changing and it doesn't but you change it anyhow. You pat and rub and hold the baby upright or tilted or horizontal to see if that relieves some gas. You guiltily try to remember what you ate today - was there something you passed on through your breast milk that upset the baby's little stomach? You wrap the little guy tightly in a blanket and rock him, and when the simulated womb doesn't comfort him you loosen all his clothing so he can kick free and wave his frustrated little fists and then he whops himself on his red-red cheeks. You sing to the baby, play music, and then try being silent and desperately yell at the other kids and dogs to shut up. While everyone else goes to bed, you walk back and forth in the hall holding the baby and trying to make soothing sounds on and on for hours. You can't put him down because then he goes for full bore screaming and the rest of the apartment complex is trying to sleep.

Nothing works and you don't know why.

The next day your apartment building neighbors say, "Oh, your colicky baby seems happy this morning." You are so exhausted you can't remember what colic means or your neighbors' names.

What am I doing wrong? Talk to me baby.

Here the Bushnell Trophy camera catches a night-time photo of a dusky-footed woodrat. I know this camera can work.    

And here the same Bushnell captured a passing mountain lion at a nearby location about two months earlier.  The mountain lions are out there and sometimes these cameras catch them making their nightly rounds.   

When I go back to the office and slip the Bushnell's memory card into a computer, we confirm that the card is completely blank. I've got nothing. No shots showing what predator returned to the carcass. No confirmation of whether those two puncture holes in the neck were from a mountain lion. No idea if the feeding that commenced on the carcass on that first day in the hour it took me to retrieve a trail camera and set it up was from coyotes, or if the juvenile mountain lion we've been getting photos of in the general area finally killed a deer on its own. No information to decide whether to move the carcass farther away from trails and people. Nada.

Some of the tracks at the carcass site were clearly coyote tracks with two front and two side toes and claw marks. Others, although smeared by rain and subsequent bootprints like this photo were possibly feline tracks with rounded toes curved around the front and no claw marks, maybe bobcat by their size.   

I rein in my pride and contact colleagues who primarily use this Bushnell model. Several of us suspect that the batteries on our Bushnell Trophy cameras sometimes loosen. The springs which hold the batteries in the slots twist at odd angles if you don't push the battery in straight.  Because I sometimes have a hard time getting the batteries out with my little lady fingers, I've taken to carrying popsicle sticks around with me to pry them loose. To eliminate just one of the possible reasons why the camera is resetting itself, I've just modified the sticks to wedge into the case over the batteries and hold them firmly in place. Now I just need to come up with a design that encapsulates desiccant into the popsicle sticks.

The Bushnell camera retrofitted with two popsicle sticks wedged across the battery compartment. The tips of the sticks are trimmed to fit into the square corners and around the electrical wire. The round ends are still available for carefully popping out the batteries when new ones are required.   

So one night at 2 am,  I decided to take that colicky baby for a car ride to get him to stop crying. During the day, he usually fell asleep in the car within a few minutes of pulling out of the driveway. I drove down the dark quiet streets of Menlo Park with baby wails pouring out of my Subaru. I tried an urban expressway to see if the tire drone soothed him but he just changed pitch at 35 mph. Finally, I drove up to Highway 280, one of the most beautiful highways in the world with the fog-draped coastal mountains and loch-like Crystal Springs Reservoir to the west and rolling spring-green hills of Edgewood County Park to the east. The highway was empty and the baby cried on. Then a highway patrol car passed me. Then the highway patrol car switched lanes, slowed down and I passed it. Then the highway patrol car turned on its blue flashing lights and I pulled over.

Dear Bushnell camera: here is a gray fox caught by the Reconyx camera.  Surely you can work long enough to get such evidence of our nighttime predators.   

"Ma'm," the officer said, "have you been drinking?"

I rested my weary head on the steering wheel.

"No sir. I'm just trying to get my baby to stop crying," I said and pointed to the dark backseat.

Suddenly, I realized the baby was making sweet little cooing noises. The officer and I looked back and the baby was kicking his feet in the carseat and waving his arms at the flashing blue lights bouncing off the windshield.

And Bushnell, here's a photo of another feline, the bobcat, taken by a camera that is nearly three years older than you, the Moultrie 100. That's old technology in the camera trap field.   

The embarrassed officer explained that he pulled me over because I didn't turn down my high beams when he changed lanes in front of me and that type of behavior from a lone driver on the highway late at night often indicated a drunk driver. He didn't make me take the sobriety test but told me to take my happy baby home.

And another predator photo taken by the second oldest working camera in my stock, the Moultrie 100. Bushnell, you can do this.   

The Navigator grew out of his colicky stage. Last week, he was advising me to replace the odd brand memory cards that originally came with the trail cameras because his industry tests show that there are a lot of poor quality cards being manufactured right now. "No-one wants to lose data," he scolded me, "It's too valuable."

This is pretty much what we are going for Bushnell when I put you out in the field. This may even be the very same lion you missed but taken by the Moultrie 880 here. Let's get it together.   

I can't count on the Bushnell camera to grow out its colicky stage, I'm just gonna have to steel myself through that frustrating stage of not knowing what's wrong, and try different things step by step. Ironically, the popsicle sticks I am using to retrofit its battery case are left over from a long ago project when the Navigator was in grade school. I have a pile of them in the junk drawer. If this works and you are local, I'd be happy to share my popsicle sticks to fix your Bushnell. I am not going to share any of the leftover cloth diapers, however, because they are much too valuable.

Okay, I am ready for the next carcass. Bring it on.

Testing the newly retrofitted Bushnell camera on the house variety of cats.