More Game cam Elk

Enjoying what's left of the mineral block.

The babysitter cow, her calf & a couple of others by the North dam.

The grass is pretty high & will be mowed & baled fairy soon. (If the rain stays away.)

At least one of these elk does not like to be photographed. She started out unplugging the battery wire from the camera. Then she decided to just bite it off when somebody must have told her that unplugging it would just engage the backup batteries in the camera and that leaving it plugged in and cutting the wire would shut it down and make me have to reprogram it when I set it up again.
There is nothing special about this location, other than it is by a short opening in a line of trees that they like to walk through into a more sheltered smaller field.
I thought I had them fooled this time. I screwed strips of bark over the battery accessory wire leading up to the camera lag bolted to the Oak tree. It didn't work. The bark was pulled off, the wire was chewed to pieces and I never found the ends meaning more money for Radio shack and time soldering those little tiny contacts on the plug. At least she unplugged it, so there were more pictures. I'll screw something heavier over the wire this time, and maybe place a salt block out there to give them something else to focus their attention on like on one of the other cameras. They also like to breath on the lens to fog it up for the next ten or fifteen shots until it clears up.

The culprit in the act!

My sister and her son were visiting from Canada and we all took a Jeep ride around the place. She had never seen the elk and we managed to drive right into the herd when we got to the top field. We seem to have everything they need here and they show up year round on the cameras or through personal sightings just about every week. Which probably means at least some of them are always here.

Now I will warm up a soldering iron and make up a new battery wire. I just keep the AA's in the cameras to hold the memory settings and use a 6v sealed battery for power as they still have at least six volts in them when I pull them for re-charge every year. (or when I have to make up a new wire). The AA's drain in a few weeks after several thousand photos. I have the cameras set for three shots and a delay of one second until the next shot if it senses movement. This makes for a lot of pictures, and my biggest problem is choosing which to keep and tossing the rest. I hate to delete them.

Lots of game on the cameras!

Here are a few out of about 2000 similar shots from three cameras over the last eleven days.

Click to enlarge.

Cute! isn't she?

Checking out the camera.

His tail went up when he saw the coyote!

But he thinks he can handle him.

The coyote left & the buck went back to the mineral block.

The antlers are growing pretty fast!

Theirs too!

Having fun.

A few more game cam pics

We took Daisy for a walk and changed the cards on a couple of the cameras. 

 The whole herd was there, but this guy above, decided to lick and or blow and fog up the camera for the rest of the photos.

 A couple of geese in the overflow and some widgeon (I think) and mallards.

 Looking for voles.

I must say that although this camera tends to start shooting non-stop when it gets below 30*s, it does pick up movement from pretty far away in good weather. The other newer cameras don't seem to have this problem.  The animals in general have been showing up more often in the day lately, but most of the shots are still during the night. The elk always show up, day or night.

Bears & Yellowjacket nests & Trespassers & elk

Every now and then I'll see a yellowjacket nest that a bear has started to uncover. They dig it out enough to disturb the wasps, then return the a time or two to dig out some of the grubs to eat. He or she have been back a few times to this one.

A couple of times I have set up a game camera to catch it when it returns.

There was an undisturbed nest close to the uncovered nest, so I remembered to bring the camera this time.

These were some pictures the camera took in the past.

Sometime it takes photos of other things:

This time it was a trespasser hunting

He walked right by the camera without seeing it because he was looking at this deer. Note the time stamp.

This guy showed up later

As did these fellows