Stealth Cam’s G42NG Redo: Incredible Value, Unsurpassed for Serious Sportsmen
Bob McNally 04.13.17
I wrote previously about how amazing the remote camera is for hunting, chiefly for deer. But now that turkey season in my home state is winding down, I can attest that it is equally good in the spring woods, perhaps better.
This is the first turkey season I’ve used a modern remote camera, and the things I’ve learned this season will require me to NEVER hunt gobblers again without having cameras out checking hot spots for toms.
Several remarkable things were caught on camera this year in the spring woods, with perhaps the most amazing event getting photos of two large, mature toms strutting on a woods lane where I’ve hunted for years and taken many gobblers. It’s on a hunt club, and I purposely don’t tap the spot the first week or two of the season because there’s too much pressure from other club members.
I left my Stealth Cam operational on the lane the week prior to the season, and the first couple weeks of the season before checking on it. What I learned was incredible.
Both toms I have photos of strutting are clearly shooters, and one gobbler has a very distinctive beard, about 10 or 11 inches long and VERY wavy. By looking at the time code on the photos, I learned that a day or two after getting good photos of the wavy beard bird, a pair of hunters located the tom, which must have been gobbling heavily. The photos I have show the pair roosting a bird one late afternoon, with the next photos showing them at the spot the next morning before dawn, lugging in decoys for a hunt.
The next photos an hour or so later show a truck pulling up, and one of the hunters tosses into the vehicle a tom that clearly shows the same very distinctive wavy beard.
They busted the bird I have photos of strutting at the spot.
But I kept the camera at the spot, and learned there were more toms strutting the lane. I led my youngest son, Matt, to the spot, and he crushed a 3-year old with 10 inch beard there one morning, following it with a 4-year old gobbler the next dawn having an 11.5-inch beard. The Stealth Cam showed both birds were in the neighborhood, and Matt tagged them both.
At another strut zone area I couldn’t figure why I heard no gobbling and virtually no birds whatsoever, until I set up the Stealth Cam. In three days the camera did not get a single turkey photo, but did show a massive black bear at the site, a bruin I estimated at least 300 pounds.
The camera pinpointed several other big gobblers at other locations, and got photos of bobcats, coyotes, deer, raccoons, and other critters, too.
Remote cameras have been around a long time, but their improvements today are mind boggling, and the Stealth Cam is the best I’ve tried. The unit uses a bank of 8 AA batteries, and I’ve used the same ones all turkey season without having to replace them. Retailing at under $200 the Stealth Cam G42NG is a big bargain.
It also shoots 10-second bursts of video, which I’ve not yet tried, but will soon, with another report to follow on that.
