BearClawCam - Wireless/Cellular Trail Cam

I just picked up one of the new Bushnell trophy cam HD wireless units and it's working pretty darn good so far. I had been thinking about a wireless/cellular trail cam for a while but the monthly subscription and adding a line to my cell phone plan was looking like $40-60/month year round when I only wanted it for the fall/winter/spring. This one worked for me because the sim card is in the camera so you dont have to add a line to your phone plan and the plan is $9.99/month for 1,000 images through bushnell. The images are small but you can download larger ones for $1 each(not planning on that) or just pull the full size off the card later on. The camera is pricey at $599 but I think worth it in the long run.

I looked long and hard at those. Went with the new covert 3G instead due to the smaller pics that get sent. I assume those pics are straight from what it sends to your phone. If that's the case, they aren't too bad.

I was lucky and adding a line (unlimited call/text) to my ATT was only an additional 10/month. So I get unlimited text for 10 bucks extra, and not limited to the 1000/month like bushnells plan, and judging on the activity level I think I would either turn down the settings or go over 2000 pics in a month come cooler weather, as I am darn close to that now in the summer months. Wake up every morning with about 50 pics form the night before and get some in dawn dusk time too.

I like Bushnell cams, would love to hear a follow up report as you use it more, there just aren't that many reviews out there for this camera.

Cool I think DNS has had good luck with that setup too. I don't have the unlimited data, and I didn't want the images texted to me or emailed to me. The Bushnell has an iphone app you can check whenever you like and just sends push notifications if new pics are available.
What size pics get sent through the covert?
Can you put multiple covert cams on the same plan? At $10/month unlimited pics that would be a steal.

With my current ATT plan, I think they call it the family share plan, you can add up to 10 lines all with unlimited calling and texting and share a set amount of data per month. I have three kids and my wife and I and we share 20GB of data, way too much, but it gives us a lot of overage room. We usually use around 11-12GB of data (dang group texts and instagram/vine the kids use)...anyway, I can add another 3 coverts or other lines to my service all for an extra 10/month. Haven't gone there yet, as my wife would kill me, but it is a possibility.

The pics it sends are decent. Not great, but they are typical cell phone text pictures. Enough to see the details. I couldn't tell you the exact size they are sent as, but it seems to me the size of 60kb seems like a setting I clicked on at some point. May be wrong there.

A couple things I liked about the bushnell cam were the lack of jacking with a sim card and having the plan run through an app...pretty cool.

What kind of battery life are you seeing out of it, or is it too early to tell. My regular Bushnells get about 6-9 months on about 2000 pics a month. Pretty darn good. My covert I am setting up with a solar panel.

Picture size on the emailed/texted Coverts? Here ...






These are pretty low res images, only about 40-80k in size (depending on night or day), but they are usually enough to see what you need. You just can't blow them up too much.

Those pics look much better than mine. I thought I had discovered something, but you two are already on top of it!
I wonder why the covert cams get bad reviews online? Think it's user error or spotty service?

I have HCO's. $10.00 a month to add a line to AT&T. Doesn't use any data, just uses your unlimited texting plan.

He's back

I don't know if it's your intention to market the bushnells but the coverts will move a lot better and you don't have to deal with the warranty work. I have seen very little bad press on the covert black ops and personally own 3 of them which have worked flawlessly for the past 2 years.

No I don't sell these things just a camera I picked up for fun. The difference in the Covert and the Bushnell is the app and data usage. If the covert works for you more power to you that's great. I didn't see an option on the covert to not get emails or texts? Maybe it's there and I just missed it. To me it's annoying to get 50 text messages or emails in the middle of the night. I would much rather just check the iphone/android app when I feel like it. The black ops looks nice and is a couple hundred bucks cheaper so that's good. Just doesn't have the app which is a deal breaker for me.

No, it is not there on the Coverts. They don't have a separate service for the images to go elsewhere. However, you could just set up a separate email and then just check that like you would check the Bushnell site and that way not have it blow up your phone like mine sometimes does with the Covert (which I actually enjoy, but am not running a business from my phone).

The important thing is that folks find what works for them regardless of the platform. Either way, it is cool to be able to know remotely about things going on where you hunt. It has been a key factor in several of my hunts where I have specifically gone to where the camera is because I knew it to have hogs. You can do that with either type of platform.

so do you get the texts as soon as pics are taken? explain how it works

Ordered a Covert Black Ops 3G yesterday. Waiting for it to ship.

Yeah that is a good idea, plus you get unlimited pics. Combine that with Bushnell's less than great service reputation. Now I am feeling the buyer's remorse coming on strong.

Here's one of the hi-res that you can download for $.67

The camera takes a picture and then uploads it to you (or as in this case, to Bushnell's site). Depending on various factors, the pics usually arrive within 1-3 minutes of when the picture was taken. Depending on where you are when the picture is taken and how your game is behaving, that information can be actionable. In my case, I have been up in Montague County twice when pics came in and drove to my property and successfully hunted pigs. Once I was hunting a different stand on the property, got pics, and headed over to where the hog was an took it. Seven or eight times I have tried to go from Denton to my property in Montague (about an hour away). Three or four times, I have managed to get a hog. Twice, I saw hogs, but didn't get a shot. The other times, the pigs were just gone. It is hard to drive the speed limit knowing you have hogs and that they are going going to stay as long as the corn.

Now, if only you could remotely set off your feeder to keep the game there longer. It would also be very cool to have the ability to Take a picture and upload on command.

With the covert you can text it a command to take a picture. There are times when I ask it to take a pic and to shows animals in the background outside the range of the detector, but still showing the animals are there. Have a feeling I will be using that this hunting season quite a bit.

I believe the bushnell can do that too??

Would be awesome to be able to set up a command driven system to spin the feeder at will, that way you can keep hogs there until you get there. I don't think any of the current cell cameras have that capability, but that means there is a potential market for an add-on...

Basically, you are talking about a wifi, blue tooth, or IR command to a receiver on the feeder, from the camera, to trigger the feeder?

Yes, do you know of a system like that?

Thanks guys for this topic. I'd love to view my pics without driving 2 hours to check my camera card. I'm definitely gonna study the wireless trail cam options.

I've been wanting the Bushnell , nice to finally see some pics and over view on one. May have a couple of them going by next summer.

Well, after a few months the Bushnell is still going strong so I ordered another. It has been very nice not having to check cameras.
The batteries have run down once so far and I am thinking I should add a solar panel setup to increase the battery life.

Are you using Lithium batteries ?

Yes energizers. I had the delay set to 1 second with multiple triggers and a high IR flash intensity for a while just to test it. Too many pictures on those settings, so now I have it on a 5 minute delay with 1 trigger and a medium flash intensity when I am not at the ranch. When I am there I put it back on 1 second delay. I think the batteries will last a lot longer this go round.

Add a solar panel and battery and forget about it for a couple two or three years...

Texting cameras are a blast to use but can be costly. I have 3 of them. With my lease 450 miles away it is nice to get an idea of what is going on year round.

I am concerned about the cell company's doing away with 2G which is what mine use for the data transfer.

Nice pics!
Caught this little cat on camera last night

Like...

Back again!

I went back and read all of the other posts. You don't add the covert to your current cell phone plan. It's on its own plan and no contract. You can adjust the size of the pic that it sends you(up to 400KB converted from up to a 12 megapixel picture). You get about 1 GB of data over a three month period for $25. I have two of them and they work very well. $600 for that camera, that's getting close to two of the Coverts. As far as bad reviews, I find bad reviews on just about every trail cam out there. I'm sure at some point something's going to happen and tick me off with the Covert, but that hasn't happened yet. I never had much luck with the Bushnell or the Primos to last more than a year with me so when I started looking for something else I ran into the Covert trail cams and I like them.
There are some times when the batteries run low and the setting automatically change to not send to the camera. That is a default that is annoying if you don't remember to change the batteries. And the buttons can be hard to press when they are brand new out of the box. I guess that's too irritating to some. But its also something that once you figure that out it hasn't happened to me again. I'd rather have those little dilemas than the camera just stop working or not trigger at all, which happened to the Bushnell and the Primos cameras in my experiences.

It's been about 16 months with both cams. The pictures displaying on my facebook page are the compressed images that I receive from the trail cam. I need to change the quality up to 400KB and see how those turn out.

I have 11 of the Bushnells and have had 2 quit working. Bushnell replaced both of them no problem. They are not on your cellphone plan either. $10 per month for 1000 pictures. Check out www.WirelessTrophyCam.com I find them for around $300 but Bushnell just came out with another model that is more expensive.

The reason I went with Bushnell vs covert is because the Bushnell has an app where the pics are sent instead of a text message or email. 50 text messages throughout the night is annoying vs just checking the app when you want to. My one gripe about the Bushnell cameras is the plastic housing and how easily it breaks when trying to attach with a strap and those plastic pieces. The newer model has metal attachment pieces so that's good except for the fact that I have 11 of the older model, and don't really need any of the newer models right now.

The new Covert (code black 12.0) is $34.99 for 3 months for 2 gigs of data. which is over 15k pictures. And now uses only an app. no more txting or emails of the pics.

This is the first one I have bought, but sends really good photos to the app. and they can be emailed or sent via txt. Plus can adjust all the settings on frequency of pics sent and trigger time.

Now that I like! Thanks for the info I will have to check it out. Can you share data on multiple cameras? Right now I am running 11 so its $110 per month. If I could run all of those for $35 per month that would save a bunch of money.

I believe they are all independent of one another. You pay for 3 months at a time. No Contract. And I think you can suspend service on them to stretch the time out, maybe?

I like the extra option the covert has. The extended antenna if needed. and the cable to run a external battery/solar panel. I mounted a solar panel onto an ammo box and hooked the cable from it to the camera. So now I don't have to go disturb the site until the corn runs out.

I can also have it send a real time picture from the camera using the app or website. Example when a hog is there eating and not moving. And you want to make sure he is still there before you walk in there on him.

I have no idea what all the Busnell or any other does, just sharing my experience with the Covert.

Bushnell can't do that and I have wanted to do that many times.

Interesting. Be nice to have one side by to compare. Maybe add a couple others to the game for testing.

Not sure what this one is.

That's an interesting pic.

I have the Moultrie field modem and a m-888i gen 2. I like having the flexibility to move my modem to different Moultrie cameras.


[img]https://texashuntingforum.com/forum/pics/...cam_mfdc0210.jp[/img]

Yes they work very good added it to mine early and has run for two years with no issues

curtis...what model of covert did you get..been thinking of getting one for some time now

nice

Need to resurrect this.

I own property in Southern Montague County but live in Hurst. I have a mobile home(white trash trailer house), tractor and several out buildings with tools, etc there. It is quite secluded. Somebody cut the lock on my gate Friday night. I assume that they came in and left when they saw my pickup and Wifes car. I figure the druggies will be back and have reason to believe that they know I don't live there. I hauled a lot of stuff home but need to get more from there this week. Also need to remove the battery from my tractor or install a kill switch of some kind.

I'm in the market for a game camera and non AT&T phone plan that will send pics to my Email address. From 70 miles away, I can only expect to get pics to give to the Sheriff. Also a good chance that the cam will be stolen when the pic gets taken. I'm not wealthy but can live with that. I did put up a couple of no flash cams but the nighttime pics are pretty poor.

Suggestions and/or thoughts?

BTW, my Wife nixed the idea of a shotgun and trip wire.

Sorry to hear that.

If your on Verizon the HCO Spartan Gocam can connect for $5 a month to your cell plan, after tax is somewhere around $5.92 I believe. Uses very little data and seems to be easy on the batteries. If you go a different route they also sell bear boxes for most of the cameras nowadays.

I think I've figured it out. I'm going with ring.com. I'll have to buy a couple of cameras and get local internet.

Internet $45 per month. Only one company services the area but is report to be pretty good.

Then ring.com $200 for each camera. I'll buy 2. Then $30 per year per camera. Pretty amazing company.

the hogs on my lease come in eat up all the corn and are gone in a matter of minutes..so unless you are close..that particular scenerio would not work for me..but agree these cameras have much more to offer..i am looking to buy something like double naught spy has..been following his posts on covert for several years now..very intrigued

That sounds pretty expensive for annual and monthly fee. I didn't look at the quality of picture or video it puts out but seems high to me. Most of the cell cameras can record video. and still send you the picture. and a lot cheaper a month. Whatever the cost to protect your assets is what its about though.

I'm not as worried about the $ as I am sleeping nights. I live 70 miles away and have hauled a lot of stuff out of my mobile home. Took my big tool box and tools out of the office type construction trailer and put box and tools in my shipping container. It has a PITA shield over the lock. It's going to take 30 days to get internet that I've never wanted there. My Wife wouldn't go for leaving the doors unlocked so I figure that, during the 30 days, there is a good chance that the windows or doors will be damaged so they can get in. I spent $85 on a new chain and lock. That gives me 2 pretty good locks on the front gate.

I figure during that 30 days I'll still be making a lot of trips and losing sleep. I'm pissed.