You know what’s the best thing about a trail camera? It’s the “Christmas Morning” effect. You go out in the woods and retrieve the camera after a week or so; Then you see that it has taken a bunch of images. Hooking it up to the TV you get that anticipation that you used to feel on Christmas morning (or for us Norwegians, Christmas Eve after the dishes from dinner were washed!). What have you captured? Gather friends and family around because it is  a fun experience to share. It’s kind of like the feeling us “old timers” remember in the days of slides…Anticipation, excitement. Did I get the shot?

For Father’s Day Bridget bought me a Bushnell BoneCollector Trail Camera. It shoots video and 8mp stills, and uses a 32-LED flash for night shots that doesn’t spook game like a regular flash. Last week I set it up along a well used trail on my land just south of the cabin. My woods is a mix of huge White and Red Pines, Red Maple, Quaking Aspen, Black Ash and at least one of every other northern Minnesota species. Today I went and got it. 54 new images had been taken! As we started flipping through the images the excitement was building. We knew it would be mainly White-tailed Deer and it was…We did get one half grown fawn, still sporting white spots, quite a few daytime shots of an adult doe and some night time shots of deer too. Only three shots left…More deer? The group let out a whoop as we flipped to the next image…A Black Bear in the daytime! Not a great image but a great prize.

The neatest part was that the image was taken only two hours before I retrieved the camera…And my cousin’s wife was sitting on the deck of the cabin reading at the time…Only 50 yards away! She didn’t hear a thing and she had wanted to see a bear on this trip too.

I got to go…Have to set up that trail camera in a new spot!