Choose the Right Trail Camera Settings

My tenure with trail cameras has been one big learning curve. That’s a good thing. Whether hunting or scouting, we should continually quest for knowledge that will make us better.

Of course, keeping up with trail camera technology is an ever-evolving process. Today’s cams are teaming with the very best bells and whistles. More importantly, those bells and whistles have a purpose. It’s critical to play with and learn every function of your scouting camera inside and out to tailor your camera to what will help you be more successful in the woods.

That’s the goal here — a pro-tip camera guide that will prevent you from making many of the mistakes I made in my early trail cam days. Knowing what camera settings will ensure you get the results you need to compile the necessary intel and prepare for an encounter with one of your hit-list game animals.

Photo & Video Quality Selection

I’ve used Moultrie’s Edge 2 Pro camera a lot, and it captures images with a maximum resolution of 40MP, which is remarkable. A picture of this quality can be enhanced for high-quality prints at close viewing distances to poster and banner size. It’s hard to believe that’s possible from a scouting camera!

It’s important to remember that the higher the megapixel setting, the more storage that image takes up on an SD card. Processing and saving higher-resolution images require more power, affecting battery life. Testing has also proven that larger photos can, though ever so slightly, slow down trigger speed.

However, there’s nothing wrong with letting your Edge 2 Pro grab super-high-quality images. I typically take photos of my target deer and blow them up yearly. Moultrie’s free unlimited cloud storage keeps your photos and videos on your account until you delete them, so storage isn’t a big issue. However, image size is always something to keep in mind.

Trigger Speed for Game Trails

I have more images of the rear ends of big bucks than I can count. It’s so frustrating. Depending on the property you hunt, you may only get a handful of pictures of your target buck from summer through winter. You want those images to be crisp and clean, and to show the antlers and head of your target buck!

While game trails are excellent locations to knab images, how you set your camera on those trails matters. Moultrie brands its trigger speed at .30 seconds. I’ve tested the Edge 2 Pro camera for months, and though I can’t confirm this less-than-half-second number, I believe it’s faster.

For testing purposes, and I don’t recommend this, I set an Edge 2 Pro five feet off a main deer trail and faced it straight across it. This gave the camera very little room to detect a deer and a short time to get a good picture of it. While the camera didn’t get the entire deer, it still captured its front half. The Edge 2 Pro is as good as they come and will “save your bacon” even when you don’t follow the to-come monitor-a-trail settings.

I never recommend setting trail cams facing straight across a trail. That’s not how you want to do it. Instead, I try to face my cameras pointing down the trail, in line with the direction of deer travel. This gives the camera the maximum amount of time to capture photos of deer as they are approaching or departing.

I like to mount trail cameras knee to waist high to ensure I get the best images of deer utilizing a specific trail. I also angle mine ever-so-slightly downward to ensure I get the entire animal. Moultrie’s Edge Series Flex Mount 2 and Edge Series Camera Stakes make angling a breeze.

The Moultrie’s Edge 2 Pro that I’ve been using has a detection range of 100 feet. Depending on your photo or video settings (more to come on this), you may only get one image of a deer, and from 100 feet away, it may be hard to determine how big the deer is.

To maximize your camera’s field of view and set yourself up for success by placing your camera three or four feet off the ground and at a 45-degree angle down the trail. This gives Moultrie’s Species Recognition the necessary intel to scan and label the image as a buck or doe. If you move the camera 10 or 15 feet off the trail (instead of right on top of it), you give the Moultrie Edge cameras more time to recognize the subject and center in the middle of the frame.

Smart Zones, a Moultrie technology, lets you select and exclude certain areas of the camera’s field each time you move it to reduce false triggers. This is especially helpful if you live in windy areas.

If you want to leave your camera in photo mode, I recommend using Moultrie’s three-shot burst or three-shot trigger modes. These modes help ensure you get multiple images of the animal.

Nine times out of 10, though, I always set my Edge 2 Pro to Photo+Video. This way, I get a high-quality photo and a video, which the Settings app allows you to choose video lengths of 5, 10, 15, and 20 seconds. I set my video resolution to 1440p, which includes audio. You can learn more from video than you can from only looking at photos.

Lastly, I avoid direct sunlight entering the lens. Remember, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. For only a few hours a day can the camera’s line of sight be in line with the sun. Unfortunately, these are the times (morning and evening) when the game is on the move. Do your best to angle your camera’s lens north and south to avoid frustrating glare. If this isn’t possible due to a lack of a mounting tree, utilize Moultrie’s Edge Series Camera Stake.

Feeder Monitoring Matters

My good buddy owns an excellent deer property in the Sooner State. I hunt it yearly. The best way for him to conduct population surveys, manage herd health, and age his bucks is to run his cell cams over feeders.

You have some options when running Moultrie’s Edge series cameras over Moultrie feeders! You’ll likely want to utilize Moultrie’s Edge Series Camera Stake to set your camera far enough away from the feeder to capture activity at and around it.

You’ll drive yourself nuts monitoring feeders if you don’t change your camera delays. Often, does and even mature bucks will spend several minutes at a feed sight. If your photo delay is set between 0 and 30 seconds, you’ll spend hours sifting through photos. While I will grab a few videos now and again, more to see how big bucks are approaching and exiting the feeder, I rely on single photo mode and set my trigger delay to one minute.

My Edge 2 Pro camera offers 5-, 10-, and 30-minute photo delay options as well. You know your feeders best and how much time deer spend there. Early in the season, when bucks are in bachelor groups, you may get away with a 5-minute delay. During the rut, though, you may want to change that delay back to one minute as bucks aren’t visiting the feeder to feed but rather to scent check.

I also recommend putting a second Moultrie camera on the prevailing downwind side of the feeder during the rut to catch bucks that won’t approach the feeder but rather pass by downwind to scent-check it.

Time-Lapse Mode is Important

Time-lapse is an ultra-essential feature, especially for those who plant and monitor deer activity over their food plots — an important task.

Instead of capturing motion, time-lapse allows Moultrie Edge cameras to capture images or videos at predetermined intervals over a set period. Time-lapse mode doesn’t rely on motion-censored images to trigger it. Instead, time-lapse regularly captures a series of pictures or videos, regardless of whether the movement is detected.

This intel matters on food plots because hunters want to know precisely when and where deer enter a food plot. Once a deer is on the plot, hunters want to examine how it uses it. If different seed blends are planted inside the plot, a time-lapse will tell viewers what crops are essential to the deer at various times throughout the year.

Most importantly, time-lapse helps hunters pattern deer on a plot. When hunters know how a buck enters and exits a plot, they can devise a plan to move in and kill that buck on their first early-season hunt.

The Moultrie App features a Time-lapse/Scheduler option. Here, camera goers can select Standard Mode, Time-lapse mode, where capture time can be edited, and a Scheduler Mode. Scheduler Mode enables the camera to capture pictures or videos only during selected times. Yes, Moultrie thought of everything!

Video Mode vs. Battery Life

I’m a video-mode junkie. I’ve found that my Edge 2 Pro videos record sound with amazing quality! I can hear bucks fight, grunt, and turkeys gobble. It’s amazing.

However, capturing high-definition video with sound does affect battery life. It has to. The higher the resolution of the video and the longer the video runtime, the harder the camera has to work.

If you’re like me and demand video mode year-round, I can’t recommend Moultrie’s 3.4W Solar Power Pack and Edge Series Power Mag Plus more highly.

The Power Mag Plus significantly outperforms standard 16AA batteries, ensuring your camera has more power for longer. It also charges via USB-C in an hour. While on my lease doing food plot work or hanging tree stands, I take power packs and USB-C chargers and charge my cameras.

Recently, though, I opted for the 3.4W Solar Power Pack on all my cameras. This power pack generates more power than standard solar panels via a built-in power bank that stores energy for cloudy days. The panel will recharge with just one hour of sunlight, allowing you to run all the videos you want.

Moultrie has provided a kingpin cellular camera system. For extremely affordable prices, you can deploy reliable cell cameras like the Edge 2, Edge 2 Pro, and now the all-new Edge 3 and Edge 3 Pro, for year-round scouting use. These cameras paired with the Moultrie App make them a no-brainer for those serious hunters who want to closely monitor their land and wildlife.

Take advantage of all that Moultrie has to offer and start looking into their many camera accessories that revolutionize the scouting game.

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