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Look how far trail cams have come....

I used to have one of those real cheap gizmos that was a clock. You attached it to a tree, tied a string to part of it, and stretched that string across a deer trail. When a critter, person or wind pulled on the string, the clock stopped. Later when you checked it, the clock would tell you what time the string was pulled. That was tech in the late 80s. We’ve come a long way.

Dale06, we just had a string. No clock. You must have had the fancy version.

I had that exact cam. Sucked to get a 36 roll of 35mm film developed and all I had was 36 pics of a branch moving in front of the sensor. I remember when the first digital cam came out a few years later and it was like finding utopia.

This is a painful thread!!! Grab a roll of film from the camera, run an hour to the store to have it developed and have nothing of interest and then run all the way back to hunt. And those little trail timer things with the string cost me a buck years ago. He got to the string and must have thought it was a fence because he turned and walked away and through the brush never presenting me a clear shot. If the stupid thing hadn't been there it would have been a slam dunk broadside shot at 12 yards!! Funny how times have changed from that to these cell cameras texting you a picture immediately when a deer is in front of your stand!! Maybe the days of past were better for deer hunting......

Guys often talk about how they're like a kid at Christmas when they pull the SD card from their digital camera. It's nothing to have hundreds of day and nightime photos each time you pull your cards.

I well remember those days of using 35mm cameras, and going back to the drugstore, excited to pick up what I hoped would be 36 pictures of deer, only to find that most of them were pics of weeds blowing around, squirrels, the back half of a deer, some blurry who-knows-what, or a total blackout. It was rare that all 36 exposures could even be printed. I can recall being handed envelopes with only 10 or 12 prints total. Those few pics of deer I did get kept me going back for more, though.

Unreal disappointment when the film was full but you got the “I’m sorry sir, all the images were blank”

Mine had a flash and I got some great surprised looks from the deer.

Mine had a flash and I got some great surprised looks from the deer.

I was dating my wife at the time, and had one of the first generation film type trail cams set up over a community scrape on the edge of a bean field. I was gone on a hunt somewhere, and she wanted to know if she could go and pull the film on the camera while I was gone. I told her that was fine. When I called her one night to see if we had gotten anything good on film, she was madder than hops. When she got the film developed, she had 24 pics of the combine going back and forth in front of the camera, combining beans!

I blew one of the pics up to an 8 x 10, framed it, and wrote “Teresa’s big Nontypical” on it and gave it to her for Christmas.........Evidently it was way more funny to me.....

@t-toy -

I am SO glad I had finished that beverage before I got to your post....

Talk about aging one’s self. Sad thing is, I’ll bet there are a few on here that don’t know what 35mm is, lol

I had a Camtrakker around 1997 or so and it was top of the line at the time. I think it was around $300-$400, but had to have one because I always wondered what size deer were hitting scrapes in the area. It was actually a great camera system and tough as nails and i'm certain it would still work to this day. Several bears bit into the camera casing and it protected the 35mm camera with no problem.

Had two Stealthcams. Had a deal with the local developer that I only paid for images that were actually something. So many blackouts that a lot of times I was lucky to have 5 images in a roll of film. If I remember correctly they were charging me $0.25 per actual developed picture, and we would argue over whether you could actually see anything besides black in some of them:) Good times.

Sorry if you use them to inventory deer ok, but to scout, pattern and hunt than they have no place. I remember guys making their own in the early 80's, I think we should go back to those early models. Shawn

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