Placing Bear Camera Traps
by Dan HartmanAug. 26, 2022
I placed camera traps in the squirrel middens a couple weeks ago. I'm going with less cameras this year as it takes a long hike just to get to the area because of road construction and road closures.What usually took 1 hour to check my ten or so cameras, now takes 3 hours to check only five cameras.
I can only check the cameras on Sundays when the construction is halted. Then Cindy drops me off and I walk up a closed road to my traps. That takes about an hour. Then climbing up and down the steep slope to the cameras takes another hour.
I then hike out to a pull-off outside the work area, which takes another hour. The hike out which is beautitul, is murder on my feet and knees.
On my way out on my initial excursion I came across several large middens downslope. One had turned into a bear lair with over twenty fresh bear scats. So I placed one overlooking this area.
Last week my friend, Larry and I hiked in to gather the trap I had placed on the bear lair.
We started from the pull off outside of the work area so had a grueling steep trek up the mountainside. When we got to the area where I'd placed the camera, I couldn't find it! I'd placed it coming down the mountain, now we were searching for it climbing up. We drifted back and forth finding middens but not the right one. Presently, I noticed familiar areas and was stunned we had reached a midden where I'd placed two cameras earlier.
They looked good, meaning nothing had turned them crooked. The batteries showed 100% so they hadn't fired much, so we left them alone.
My other cameras were only a little farther along the slope so we checked them also with the same results.
We did change the placement of one camera and strangely enough found two more camera I had placed a year ago.
(One camera was broke and the other shot only low quality stills.)
On our way out, we once again searched for the bear lair but couldn't come across it. It's frustrating because it's such a steep thick area and really wore us out. Then we had the long steep hike back to the pulloff whre our car awaited us.
Photos
CAMERA TRAP AREA
FOREST ROAD
FIRST TRAP
BEAR LAIR
CAMERA TRAP
CAMERA TRAP VIEW
LARRY
LARRY CHECKING CAMERA
PLACING CAMERA HIGH IN TREE
View From Hike IN
VIEW OF HIKE IN