Trail Camera Strategy

This week on the Missouri Woods & Water podcast we get to talk with Ben Stern, founder of Reveal by Tactacam about trail camera strategy.  Ben first gets into the history of his company and how it came to be.  Then he talks about his strategy of camera deployment throughout the year.  He changes the way he attacks camera placement based on the season and deer movement he expects.  Finally, we talk about some awesome features Revela by Tactacam has and what sets them apart from competitors.  Ben is a wealth of knowledge in this space and we thank him for his time.  Thanks for listening!

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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Missouri Woods and Water Podcast with your host, Nate and Micah. You say that so fast people can hear fast. Welcome to the Missouri Woods and Water Podcast. See, now you make it sound stupid. No, it definitely does sound stupid, but what's up, friend? Oh, just taking a little time outta my day to come out here and podcast with you.

Same. Yeah. Got on a Saturday. It's a Saturday. Yep. It's Saturday. Today's Saturday. Late in the evening. Everybody's asleep. Yep. So we're just taking our time. We are not doing this during the day on Aday. No, it's fine. Today's show we have on Ben. From Tact Cam Reveal, and it was[00:01:00] the what would you call it?

The OG from Reveal by tca. Yeah. Actually Tact cam in general, right? Yeah. He was the creator. He came up with the idea and brought some people on board and has made an awesome product. One that we use. Products, yeah, products. One that we use a lot and have really been enjoying it. And we talk, first part of it, we talk more strategy on, what to do with your cameras, where to play 'em, how to play 'em, that sort of thing.

And then towards the end we start talking about the reveal camera. Yeah. It's specifically, and a lot of the cool features that they have. The one thing we didn't talk about on strategy that I, for, I meant to ask him and then forgot what was height like. Does he has a certain height go up in the air with him a little bit and Right.

Point him down. Obviously public land compared to Yeah. Private land, people stealing 'em, that sort of stuff. I forgot about that, but Yeah. Yeah. That's all right. It is what it is. Yeah. But yeah, so we'll go ahead and we got any news or anything? Nothing. [00:02:00] Nothing too new since we've podcast last Oh, I do wanna give a shout out.

Okay. You remember we talked about in our BSS session about vacation? Yeah. Did I mention I went fishing with the boys? I don't think you did. Maybe that's fun. We might have talked about that before we even started recording. Yeah. I took the boys on a off charter, a charter fishing trip where there was like 30 people on the trip and it was like 10 miles off the coast or whatever.

We were bottom fishing. Yeah. And Kayden caught some red groupers, some red snappers, probably red. I think they were groupers. Maybe it was snappers. I think they were red snappers and smaller white fish. We caught I think nine keepers. And the, I just wanna give a shout out to the miss.

Pass a grill. Pass a grill on St. Pete Beach in Florida. 7 2 7 3 6 7 9 8 3 3. If you're looking for a cool fishing trip, it was a four hour trip. Yeah, it was like cheaper and shit. It was like, gosh, I was, oh, here it [00:03:00] is. Half day adults are 68 bucks kids. 12 and under a 34. That's pretty good. So I took the boys for 140 bucks.

Yeah, that's good. I took two sons. How many did y'all catch? Oh gosh. Probably more than 20 plus. Yeah. Yeah. I fished for all grand total of three minutes. I was helping Chase more than anything. Yeah. But it's a little hard. There's a lot of weight on those, dude on those lines. Dude. It takes a little bit further.

That's a big old. Yeah. Takes a lot for big weight on a little guy like that to reel one in. Yeah. So it was but it was lots of fun. And then we tipped him a little bit too. Sure. But I went fishing for half a day with two of my sons for under 200 bucks. Yeah. So if you're in the St.

Pete Beach or we were in Madeira Beach, which is close to there, I'd check 'em out. No, really Craig Captain, it was him and his one of his sons, yeah. Was the the helper. Very cool. Yeah. I've been on a handful of different charters. And actually my cousin, he he's a captain of a charter boat now.

Yeah. But his is small. His is like a smaller one. It's more of a personal thing. I think he can fit maybe three to four people on the boat. It was really cool about it too. This captain. He had an eye patch. [00:04:00] Eye patch. Like legit, like he was missing an eye. Did you ask him how, why he lost, he got hit.

By his brother when they were kids by a baseball bat. Ooh. On accident, I hope. Yeah, that was what we were told the story. That's what you were told. That was a story we were told. I wonder him, man, if I was him, I'd come up with a cooler story. Yeah. Like I was fighting a shark and Right. Hit my eye out.

Yeah. I was out swimming, had this big old, Marlin on the thing, and it jumps out and it stabbed me in the eye. Oh. He told us this. He was super nice. So we asked, what's the longest fish you ever tried to catch? He fought a marlin for a blue marlin for 14 hours. Oh my gosh. And we're like, awesome.

Did you get it? He's I lost. He won. Wow. The fish won. How'd you like to fight an animal? 14 hours and then lose? I don't think I would want to do that. Yeah. So you didn't trade off with anybody or anything like that? I don't know the whole story. They lost the fish. That's crazy, man. Yeah. 14 hours.

14 hour fight. That's how cr like crazy strong and strong those things are. Yeah. For 14 hours he can have [00:05:00] a hook in his damn mouth getting pulled by. 'cause those Marlins they take off. I'm pretty sure with the boats and he is just, he wins. Isn't that crazy? That's nuts. But yeah, check 'em out if you're ever down in Florida and wanting to go offshore fishing.

It was lots of fun. I'm sure they do private ones too. I don't know. But we went on one with about let's say 30 people. Yeah. And it was cool. Alright, now we can get into sponsors. Yeah. Obviously the first one we're gonna talk about since he is on our show is Reveal by Tech Cam. Yep. Reveal cams. Y'all know we're huge fans.

That's all I'm using at this point. I don't have any, actually I was just talking to Ethan about some old cameras I've got that's been sitting in my office. I think he's gonna take 'em off my hands. There you go. Reveal by tact cam, check 'em out. Obviously now's the time to get stuff out. By the time y'all hear this, it'll be early August, won't it?

Yeah, I think it drops August 1st is when this Yeah, August comes out. Check 'em out. Reveal by tact cam black. Ovis black ovis.com. Use the code M ww 10 for 10% off. We've gotta talk [00:06:00] to our contact there 'cause we've got some saddle stuff that we need to Yeah. Address purchase. Yeah. Figure out what we need to do there.

Hoping he's a saddle hunter, he can point us in the right direction. Yeah. 'cause we don't know shit. Yeah. So we're gonna be learning. And then also camo fire. Get on the camo fire app, camo fire.com. You can also, if you're at work and you gotta get on the internet. Yep. It's a nice place to get trail cam Tuesday.

Andy's not wrong, at least right now. Yeah. Might change. So check 'em out. They've got, flash sales every single day it changes. So get on there every day and check it out. Yep. OnX use the code m ww 20, 20% off. We use it all the time. It's great. It's amazing all the time. I was actually a lot of new stuff coming out.

I was gonna, yeah, I was gonna get on that before we recorded and talk about some of the new stuff, but we'll do that next week. Yep. So check out OnX maps.com. Lucky Buck. I dropped some Lucky Buck Sunday when I was out setting cameras up. Yeah, I was a little early, but I'm like, I don't wanna come all the way back out here in a week and a half, [00:07:00] so I just did it.

Yeah. When I was out there and they're definitely smoking it. It was a, the place I dropped it on Sunday is a brand new site. Which, which the property you and I are gonna get to hunt together and it's a brand new site. They know it's there. Oh, they're there. No they've found it.

It's great stuff. I've had to, I actually had to do mine quicker than I did and have in the past 'cause they're just hitting it so hard. So nice. That's a good thing. Yep. River's edge tree stands. I've got five double stands sitting out behind my shop right now that I need to get in trees.

We need to get on that dude. Yeah, I just in general a Saturday, I believe it was. Yeah, Saturday or Sunday, I can't remember. I was downstairs putting together some of my tree stands, so I got them all set up ready to go. Just gotta go deploy 'em. Use the code Missouri, 10 for 10% off, plus free shipping on any hang on or ladder.

Yep. Midwest Gun Works. Use the code Woods Water for 5% off. That's on ammo. Anything on their website, so anything they sell. Yep. Great stuff there. And did we already say goodbye to Cameron? [00:08:00] I think we did on the last episode. Okay. But Cameron, he has he has chose a different career path, I don't know.

Hurts my heart. I know. Cameron, it hurts my heart. Not that we're gonna not stop talking to Cameron. Yeah. Just for him and his family, he decided to move on there, so you know, best of the wishes to him. But get on Midwest Gun works.com, check 'em out. Yep. Alon Optics. We got into detail last week about 'em.

You got the Midas T, the Aries, and then the Kronos, which I would love to try. Yeah. Someday. W that's gonna be my next purchase as a, from a scope standpoint, is gonna be the Kronos. So check on it. Check out aon optics.com. Find a dealer near you, weber outfitters weber outfitters.com. Enter the ultimate bow hunting giveaway.

Yeah, as a, it wants this episode. It's drops coming up soon. August 12th. Yeah. I don't know when the cutoff date is. As far as the give in for interest. I would just get your shit together. Then I would assume if you do it this week, you'll still be fine. But that will be given away on August 12th at 5:00 PM Yep.

[00:09:00] So live, if you can make it down to the show, try and buy. Yeah. The old try and buy, so they're having a try and buy event August 12th. Starts at in the morning sometime. Get your ass there to Hawk Point. And we'll be there too if you wanna meet us. Probably gonna be doing some podcasting. Yeah, maybe.

I think we're gonna have a table. I think I'm gonna take my tent thing. Yeah. That way we'll have some shade canvas if we're outside or whatever, and we'll have us a table. And if it's too hot, my bitch ass, we'll go inside for a while. I wanna buy one of the, they got like these fans that go off like a Milwaukee Battery and stuff.

Yeah, it's like a Milwaukee fan. We should invested in one of those. We should. But it needs to be DeWalt 'cause I've got four big ass DeWalt batteries. Okay, sure. DeWalt has one too. Oh yeah, I know they do. Okay let's go ahead, let's do that. Purchase cw. Yeah. Check rider. Yeah. To check. Come on cw.

That's what I figured see. Real targets. Real targets. Yep. Been shooting the crap outta mine. Shooting the shit out of them. As they say. If you're not shooting your bow yet. You're wrong. You're just wrong. Yeah. I really am enjoying that Feto one because of Caden. Because he'll he'll be doing good [00:10:00] and then just boom, six foot.

Yeah. Now that would, I guess he'd miss the target six foot off, when he's, when he misses by foot, I don't have to worry about it. He hits the target. Yeah. I'm really glad I won't. He's building up all the muscles, getting that strength built up. He gets tired fast. Yeah. Gets tired fast.

So it happens. But check 'em out and make sure you check out our website for shows and partner discounts and more if we ever get around to our gear pages a little better, we will also have a cool gear page where each of us talks about the gear we use. And videos at some point talking about that gear.

So check out our website and please get on iTunes or Spotify and give us a five star review. If you don't want to give us a five star review, just don't go do it. Yeah, I'm just kidding. If you want to give us a five star review, we would appreciate it. Really helps us out. Yep. Getting to the tops of searches and crap like that.

Yeah. So makes it more easier for other people to find it. Yep. I think that's it. Let's get into our show with Ben Stern of Reveal by Tact cam about trail cam strategy. See you. This is the Missouri Woods and Water [00:11:00] Podcast.

All right. With us today, we've got Ben Stern with Reveal by Tactica. What's up man? Hey, how are you guys doing? Good. Doing good. Doing awesome. Actually, we're me and Micah, I've been talking to other bin. I've been just gonna call you guys the bins now. Yeah. Ben Thru. Yes. With reveal by Tactic cam for a few, oh.

Probably a month or so about having you guys on and you guys have been super busy, it sounds up there in Wisconsin. It has not been slow. Yeah. So it has not been slow, that's a good thing. That's a good thing for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Before we get into the topic of today's show, which is really gonna be trail cam strategy, and then a little bit obviously about reveal. Introduce yourself, tell us who you are, what you do, and tell us a little bit about Reveal by Tact cam as well. Sure. My name's Ben Stern. [00:12:00] I I guess I'm the crazy guy that had this brain idea that was gonna start a camera company. It's about 10 years ago.

And I guess it was a motivation, from my grandfather. I was, I'm a really big hunter, just love hunting and spending time in the woods. And I also went to school for photography. It was you get done with school and you're trying to make a living and do whatever and my grandpa says, why don't you take the two, two things you like so much and put 'em together and try to build a business.

So that was really where it started from. There's a lot more to it than that, but that's the fast story that everybody would probably rather hear. And we just. Started going met Jeff Peele. I don't know if anybody knows him, but he's he's another pretty big very big person in our organization.

He's more of the business mind and obviously he does a lot of things. He's our c e o, but he's been with us since what I would call day two, so I got it started, got the party going and met him and his wife really [00:13:00] early on. Like when I say early on, like within the first 10 cameras that I built before I even sold a single one.

Oh, wow. Handed him a camera and sent them out to Phil, a Turkey hunt, believe it or not, up here in Wisconsin. And there was a little bug that when you'd charge the camera it would start recording. So let's just say I got a lot of really good video from a, I'm just joking, but so they they went out to film this Turkey hunt and the SD card was full.

So that was Jeff's first experience. And obviously we started talking and hit it off and they filmed the Turkey hunt. And when I was trying to figure out how to actually grow a business, because I never went to school for business. He, they were happy to help out, and we hit it off.

We've literally never looked back. So I would call it day three, which, there might've been a day three, day four, day five, whatever. But it was really early on. I had already known Ben Thor, who we've already talked [00:14:00] about a little bit here. And we were looking for someone else to be a strategic partner, just from, from the the accounting, the business, the marketing.

And Ben is, he is a very big figure. And the community that I, I'm in. Very well known. And he is, he's super smart, like super talented. So we were fortunate enough to con him into coming on over and joining our fun, which honestly, it wasn't too, it wasn't too hard to get him to come over.

But, so it's been us three, just cranking since the very, very beginning. And, we did the P o V thing. We're still doing the p o V thing, but then about, I think it was five years ago-ish, we started talking about trail cams, right? And cellular trail cams, and just all of the little frustrations that everybody is aware of.

It's like there's always little corks and I'm sure there's people that are listening to this to be like, oh man, I got a cork for you on your camera. But we pay attention [00:15:00] and we pay attention to all our customers and all of those things are what makes the reveal the reveal cell cam, like tactic cam started from frustration and a little challenge for my grandpa, 'cause I was trying to film these hunts and that's really what has continued to evolve into today. So as we were getting that reveal cell cam line spooled up, it was making a list of all of the little things that we are frustrated with.

Oh, carrying a bunch of batteries out to the woods, or, or if it's ease of setup or let's just say expensive cell plans, right? There's a lot of things that are just frustrating. So we tried to just make that list and start knocking it out and that's really been our focus. As far as battery life, I feel like we're doing a pretty good job there.

Obviously there's always room for improvement. We're looking at a lot of solar, a lot of like lithium type packs that can really help you have a better experience.[00:16:00] Ease of use. We started doing the QR code thing right away, making it super easy for people to activate. As far as pricing we're always trying to look for new strategic partners with cellular carriers.

Every single year we're renegotiating trying to get better deals, making it easier and more affordable for people. So I guess the list goes on and on. Those are our goals. That's where we came from. And number one is our customer. So we keep listening to the customer and those are the things we try to always improve on every year.

Yeah. And we'll get into more detail on some of the things because as we talk later, I will definitely bring up the lithium battery packs. Absolutely. I think that was one of the smartest purchases we made as a group. For sure is those, and buying a few extra. Which was, I don't know whose idea was that.

We're like, we should buy like a few extra for each of us, so then you can have one ready to go when you need to go switch it out. We'll talk more about the different features and the different things the cameras can have. But [00:17:00] first I want to get into strategy, trail camera strategy.

Absolutely. We have, all three of us have ran trail cams for many of moves. Started out with just the basic camera that you go by. You go sit out in the camera and you go check it after two months or sit out in the woods. You go check it after a couple months, then we got into a few cell cameras, then we got into more of 'em.

And I I've definitely figured, like I've I do things differently than I did at first with cameras. A lot of people are like us, where I take my cams out of the woods. Yeah. Basically around February 1st they come outta the woods. Yep. Mid-January, early February. They come outta the woods. I bring 'em home, take the batteries out, clean 'em up, and then I usually get pretty antsy.

But somewhere around July 1st is when that's been my go-to. I usually July 4th, whatever, [00:18:00] I always take that holiday. Yeah. And that's usually I'll take that day and I'll go set my cameras out. A good portion of the year, you're talking July, August, September, October, November, December, January, six months of the year.

I've got cams out. There are other people that leave 'em out year round. Yeah, I've never been one of those people, but that could change I guess with, the whole cell cam thing. But so people have different strategies on how long they leave them out, but a vast majority of hunters and outdoorsmen are definitely gonna have cameras out.

Actually a hundred percent of them will have cameras out by August 1st. At the very latest. There's different strategy, in my opinion for how you're gonna set 'em up. But what are some things you like to do springtime, summertime, when you start setting cams up, what are you looking for?

And yeah. We can talk about placement, stuff like that after. So I'm one of those guys that will leave some cameras out year round. Most of those cameras probably are dealing more with [00:19:00] security type, situations where I wanna monitor potential people coming in and out of a property or or maybe it is like a bedding area or a place that I wanna see when deer are dropping.

Like dropping their antlers or something like that. But then it's not, it doesn't seem like it's too much longer after that. That all of a sudden we're getting into Turkey season, right? So then all of a sudden now I'm starting to like, already Ooh, yeah, let's go Turkey hunting. And I'm starting to get, stuff set up on field edges and or places where I know things are gonna green up really quick.

Just to start to get a sense of when, when and where the Turkey population is going and how they did through the winter. And then, then it's like right after that, it's like I'm already starting to get cameras moved around for what I would call like buck bedding areas, like places that I want to try to catch some of these bachelor groups that are growing, starting to grow.

And, it's just so fun to watch them mature, and [00:20:00] it's just, that's one of my favorite things I think is to try to get cameras set up in a spot where I don't have to go in it, I leave it there. Maybe I'm using a solar panel. But it's just getting those bucks, knowing where they're at and watching 'em grow, all the way up to the point where then I'm starting to think about like, where are they gonna go or where are the dough at, and and trying to figure out like those transition areas, which obviously it's not easy, but over time you start to learn some of their patterns and or you start to learn your property, right? And or if you're hunting public, it's still the same thing, maybe just off public there's a field, or maybe on public there's a field and you kinda start to learn food sources, bedding, transition areas where the bucks like to hang out off, away from the D.

So I just start messing around and moving cameras around, like throughout the summer, but then, like now I'm trying to get some of my fall food plots finished up. [00:21:00] So I'll be moving cameras again where, it's gonna be set up more for the food source, for the rutt, pinch points, trying to get new deer moving in and out of properties.

So I guess that's a little bit of my strategy and that takes us all the way up to what I would call, like December, which then I'm back to making sure I have stuff set up for that winter, like that winter hold and where they're gonna be in bedding areas and places where they might be shedding antlers.

Yeah. So I am the same way when it comes to like our new property that me and you got this year. Yeah, we got a new property. We didn't get it until July. Uhhuh late June, probably early July. So we didn't have the ability to go like scout during the wintertime and find those really easy to see trails that they take.

In the wintertime, folks don't do this. Shortly after the season's over, I'd start walking your properties. 'cause you will [00:22:00] see the trails are more, they're obvious, right? Yeah. And I love walking my properties right after a snow, like a day after it snows. 'cause in Missouri we're a little different than you all Wisconsins.

Our snow doesn't stick around very long, right? So when it snows, about a day after you can get a, a good idea where they're walking, it's usually started to melt and it's muddy. And, I love doing that sort of stuff. Oh yeah. So those properties I'll take that information I get in the wintertime and then when we go set cams out, I'll try to remember, hey, this was a pretty heavily used trail.

I. It looks like it might still be used right now with all the greenery around it now. So I'll put, cameras on heavily used trails, pinch points where I think they're entering and exit, exiting the property possibly. And then obviously here in Missouri, in our county, we can put mineral out.

Yep. And supplemental feed, whenever it's not seen, when you're not hunting, you can supplemental feed Yes. In our county. So obviously those are easy spots to put cameras because you got [00:23:00] deer coming to you to those you're drawing in instead of Yeah, just looking. Yeah. And then you can start doing like some inventory.

Yeah, exactly yeah. And we'll get to the inventory in a second on your guys' app because that makes me happy. Yeah, it's neat. But anyways so that's how I do it is I take what I learned in the winter and then start putting cameras in those areas that I think I'm gonna get a lot of photos in the summer.

For just like you said, inventory with the the mineral sites. And then, you know what I really am trying to do also with, it's gonna be hard to explain. If I've got a mineral site, let's say in the middle of my property, I then want to put cameras satellite off of that to try to figure out where that buck is coming into my property to go there.

Yeah. Or where he's exiting after he leaves, does he come in and then go back out the same way? Does he come in and then leave on the other side of the property? I'd love to be able to get that information. Yeah. Which will change. We know [00:24:00] that. But it, you're getting an idea. Ideally you're like, I just want him to stay on my property.

That'd be great. Yes. Most of our properties are smaller, unfortunately. Yeah. So it's not, I've been trying to figure out how to make the bucks just stay on the property like all the time. I want you to move in live there. Yeah. And I just wanna roll up and sit in the tree for a while and say hi.

That'd be terrific. I'm just kidding. You need to talk to our buddy Dustin Williams then, and him come out and work on your property. Come work on your property up in Wisconsin. Yeah. It's I'm the opposite though, honestly. I like my property. Like right now, I haven't gotten a picture of a buck in over a week and a half, give or take.

And, but I have a ton of d so I know whenever eggs gets closer to the rutt, that's when the bucks are gonna start. I. Moving through there, checking everything out. Yeah. So I don't get nervous until, October if I'm not seeing anything. But I have, I have gotten pictures of bucks earlier in the season, like when I first set the cameras out, so I know they're around.

I know the ones that I'm are at, that I'm [00:25:00] after are still alive. It's pretty good for that. But yeah I I don't mind that they don't live on me as long as they come back. We've all learned that and I'm sure Ben can attest to it. Oh, for sure. I had a one of the properties where I killed that buck off of it was a property that was notorious for being full of 'em in the summertime, full of bucks.

I'd get pictures every day to every other day of these deer. And then as soon as they would go, hard horned gone. So it was like, oh great to know. Now they would come back. He came back and died. It, it just, it was an interesting property from that standpoint. Other properties, like you won't have a picture of a deer all summer, maybe one time.

They show up and then when they go hard hoed or when things start to heat up, then they're there a lot. That's what I'm using the cameras to help us with is the property I just explained. I learned that from my trail cams. We learned that from trail cameras. When I, the year I killed this deer, I was actually after another deer at the same property [00:26:00] that was bigger, we'll say Uhhuh bigger, a lot bigger, and I was hunting him super hard right in the beginning of the season.

September 18th, I think was the first day I was in a tree stand because he was showing up every evening in daylight at that property. And then I would try to hunt him because I knew he's not gonna do this for very long. It's not right. This is not gonna happen for very long. I've gotta try to take advantage of this.

Whereas if you had, and he ended up leaving and never coming back, I've never seen him since. Whereas if you have another property where over a few years you learn that I can be patient right here and not press my luck because maybe he's only showing up right after dark on these cameras or whatever if I know end of October he's gonna start slipping up because I've watched this for a few years, you can be a little more patient.

[00:27:00] That's what I love with the trail cam strategy is figuring out how the property works more than the deer itself almost, properties have specific things that you learn from the trail camps. I don't know. That's what I like to do. And Ben, that's what you were saying too, is you get inventory and then you move around as needed.

You can move deeper. And all oh, am I back? Did we lose you? Yeah. My internet somehow switched over to somebody's cellular. That's hilarious. I don't, Hey, it wasn't our internet this time. Yeah, I, yeah, it's usually ours. A good, yeah, it's usually ours, but, I was just saying, yeah, so I was agreeing with you.

Like we've got some smaller properties, right? Like same as you. And what I do is I basically do the same thing, walk around, try to figure out where the, where things are moving, and it's that's how I got get started. But I've been fortunate, I've been hunting like the same property and or properties because we've got like a [00:28:00] family farm.

We got my uncle's property that we get to hunt. We've got, I. A neighbor that lets us hunt, so we're fortunate that we have a few, a handful of places. And we've been able to hunt 'em for four or five years now. So it's like you start out with exactly like you're talking on this new property you guys got, but now that I've figured it out, I am able to strategically, get cameras in the right spot.

Sorry, my, my son's calling me real quick. Oh, yeah. And he's at a

so we're pretty fortunate that we have a couple properties, like we've got a family farm that my grandpa, my grandpa had my uncle's got a property and then my neighbor's got a property that they don't hunt, and they let us, come in there and pretty much have free reign, which is amazing, like very fortunate.

So we've had these properties long enough now that. It's like we have a pretty good idea of the bedding areas, and where the deer are gonna be. So that's what allows me to get these [00:29:00] cameras moved and out in front of where the deer are. And we also have a lot of deer that they come from neighbors or they come from wherever.

Which it makes it really nice to have a cell cam, because like last night, for example this property across from my dad's here where, you know, where he hunts? Primarily the neighbors hold a lot of big deer and they just, but they just don't come over very often unless it's, like they're in the rutt.

Last night one came over and I got to get a really good look at him, and I'm telling you like he's gonna be a wall hanger if he decides to come over and take a look at some of the ladies that we got to offer. Yeah. And it's just a matter of my dad being in the right spot at the right time.

It's still hunting, but it also gives us a really good indication of, when certain deer start to get on their feet, why? I have no reason why that deer came in last night, other than it's been super hot. We've got a little manmade pond, yep. And we [00:30:00] filled it about a week ago, so we started to see a lot more dough activity.

And I have a feeling he just got thirsty and he just, he knew, he remembered that there was a pond there and said, Hey, I'm gonna go over and get a drink. And I got a picture of him. And that's what I think you can accomplish in the summertime is getting inventory. More than anything.

So I used to get, I used to get really excited in the summertime. I still get excited. Yeah. But I used to get oh, this deer's here, he's gonna die. As you learn the properties, like I was talking about the one property where they pretty much leave every time they go hard horned, it's nice to know they're around, but pump the brakes. Because things can change. Other properties like Micah was talking about his, where he's not getting many photos of bucks. I would almost prefer that right now because they definitely switch up when they go hard horned, we've heard about summer ranges and rutt ranges and things like that from places like the National Deers [00:31:00] Alliance and or the National Deer Association. Now I always get that messed up. It's association, I believe. Yeah. It's association. You hear those studies and we actually had a show on that one time, which was mind blowing some of the stuff you hear heard about. But, and then when season hits, I almost get the same way with my cameras as I do with hunting.

I start getting more aggressive with cameras. Summertime I might stay on field edges, travel areas, mineral, maybe push in just a little bit. As the season goes. I'll get aggressive just like I might hunting with the cam. Do you find yourself doing that as well? Oh, absolutely. And especially once it gets closer to hunting I number one, I guess I always try to, I try to stay out of the areas that I'm gonna hunt, but I want cameras in there, so it's, I always find myself during a rain or, like when I know that I'm not gonna do a lot of disturbing, sneaking [00:32:00] into a spot that I might've seen a nice buck that I, when I'm really like, oh, I gotta, I want to try to see him in person or try to hunt him or whatever.

I'll be sliding in and adding a camera or two, to a trail or just trying to get a better understanding of like where he's going, where he is coming from. If you get one picture of a buck, it's sometimes hard to tell. Where and or what he's doing. But if you can get two pictures, it starts to tell a story.

For example, I got a CRI crossing and I got this mega buck last year. Yeah. I was like, oh my gosh, am I hunting Iowa? Nope. I'm hunting on Wisconsin. But I got an Iowa buck, technically Wisconsin. I'm not sure. Didn't Wisconsin have more Boone and Crockett entries than Iowa last year?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I think they did pretty good. Good. They did. I could be wrong. I, maybe they were number two, but yeah, either way I was like, this is an Iowa dear, or Kansas, or Missouri, I don't know where it's from, but it was not from [00:33:00] Wisconsin, but it was living here. But I was trying to figure out like, where was he getting across the border?

No, I'm just kidding. I'm just like, where did this deer come from? So I did sneak in there and I added a couple more cameras on some trails, and I figured out that, He was using like this really thick super thick like area to slide, slide around from one property into ours.

And it, it was like a crick, right? He was just coming down and getting a drink there because he knew he was well protected. And then from there he was actually kicking up and sliding around, like really close to the property line on a field edge. And I assume he was just checking for those, but he would, he'd never be on cameras, yep. And it's weird, but it, I was, he never, not, never did not walk by a camera. It's not that the cameras were scaring him, it's just he was smart, and he was just like, no, [00:34:00] I don't wanna walk out there. I wanna walk in the thick stuff, or I wanna go around the outside where most of us don't ever put cameras.

Yeah. And that was just where he traveled. That's why he was a mega. Couldn't even, that's why he was a mega deer. Yeah, he was smart. Absolutely. He's old. Yep. Did I get him? No, but guess what? I got pictures of him this year and he's even bigger. He's mega. He's more mega. He's even more mega.

And I'll tell you, the more pictures I get of him, and I would've, I'll be honest, I would've shot him last year. I'm starting to get a little smarter too because I'm watching him and I'm learning from him. And obviously I gotta be super smart when I go in and try to hunt him.

But the first day that I have that, that I lose you guys. No, you're good. Just for a second. Okay. Yeah, I'm fine. Now. The first chance that I've got to get in there. Maybe it's right after a rain or, whatever it is that I can slide in there, make sure there's no scent.

'cause I guarantee you, this guy, he'll know that I'm there. I'm gonna try. I got to, right? Yeah, definitely. [00:35:00] And that was the next thing I was gonna ask you. And you answered the question when you talked about during a rain, but do you, so when we put cameras out, we pretty much have to put 'em out when we can.

Yeah, I've got four kids, he's got three. We got a few hours we gotta go. So the way I handle going into the woods is I like to be as loud as possible. Oh, I do the same. I want the deer to know that I'm coming in there and I'm not coming into there to harm him. I usually will take the a t v as far as I can get it.

If I can drive it right up to the tree, I will, I want to basically sound like the farmer, right? I wanna be there working. They don't, and then hopefully they don't perceive you as a threat and then you're out of there and he was just in there doing some stuff, or whatever other people.

Yeah. So talk about, they will only go in if there's a north wind. And they'll go in and set cameras or other people talk about when it's rainy or really windy. What have you done over the years and do you see a coordination? So I have different scenarios, right? So like the [00:36:00] scenario I was talking about with sliding in during the rain and or trying to hunt 'em that's me trying to be super stealthy and taking every measure of go walk into a store and be like, Ooh, look at all these things that are gonna help me kill bucks.

And just taking everything and putting it on me and like, all right, let's go give it a shot. Not really, but I wanna try to make sure I'm doing as many things right, as far as, I wanna make sure that maybe I hung my clothes out the night before. Maybe I hung out a week whatever makes you feel like you're gonna have the most.

Success. That's what I would tell you to do. Most of the times I've killed giant bucks with fricking shorts on. Can I say that word? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You can say whatever you want. All right. Like I've gone out in fact, I was in the office with Jeff Peele and I was bragging about this buck and how I had him pattern.

He was just like, you really got him that pattern? I said, absolutely. I said, we actually, I said, we could go there today at three o'clock and kill him. [00:37:00] He's prove it. I said, let's go. And we didn't take showers, we did nothing. I had shorts on tennis shoes, a t-shirt. He had shorts, tennis shoes, and a t-shirt.

No camo. Brought an extra stand, carried it in, and went up there. And he came right down. Just like I thought he was working from a thicket down into a cornfield, just a little pocket. And the wind was right. Everything I knew, he, I knew he'd go there. And sure enough I killed him. It was my biggest bullock at the time.

That's awesome. And it was, it's it, I don't get too carried away with everything. Even though I talk about going in with rain and all that. There's certain scenarios that I do and it's only when I know I've got a buck that's right there, or living there. And he is not traveling very far.

And I just, I don't wanna add extra stress to his life, yeah. Like this buck that I've been really watching, I'll go in and out there on a side by side a [00:38:00] t v, we'll do whatever. It doesn't matter. In fact, I had a group of guys going in and they were helping clear trail.

'cause we had a bunch of down trees. They were in there ripping around on, dirt bikes and all sorts of stuff. Within two hours after they left, I had pictures of that buck. Yeah, I was gonna say, that always makes me feel a lot better. After I go in hang cams for instance Russ and I went and h hung two cameras in an area.

We have always left alone on this property. We've never had cameras in there and we've never hunted in it. This year we decided to put some cams in there and we were super nervous about going in there. There hasn't been a human in that spot for as far as we know for long time, right? Yep. And so we're super nervous about it.

We're walking through some, some grass that's knee high, hip high for me, and, we're like, oh God, we're putting all this scent in here. We bumped a little fa I walked right on top of a fawn during that, and I'm like, oh, great. Mama's not gonna come back. This isn't going well.

Hung the cams got outta there. And that night [00:39:00] we got picture, we were getting pictures already, and so we're like, phew. Clear. They didn't care. They didn't care. Yeah, that's always a nice feeling is, after you go set the cams, you get photos. Shortly after. The other thing I love is you were saying you can start correlating and you put more cameras up to figure out he was slipping through that thicket and then up along a field edge.

What I like is now, like Micah and I haven't got this really yet at our property, but we can also move cameras at some point to figure it out, but I love seeing a photo of a buck and then hopefully a little while later another on a different camera. Yes. 'cause then as human beings, we can look at those times and go, he was traveling south.

At Yep. At 7:30 AM he was at this camera and at seven 40 he was at this camera. So he was obviously going north to south. We have a if he's going north to south, we probably have a south wind [00:40:00] outta some direction. And it was, the barometric pressure. I'm doing that at a little more this year than years before keeping, I'm keeping a log every time we get photos of this deer.

Remind me to talk about a new feature that we're gonna be coming out with this week, I think, in our app. Perfect. Sweet. Yes. And that's what I love about that is you can do that now, like Mike and I, what we're doing in this property. Is it not to go in crazy detail, but there's basically three fingers of timber on this property and they, yeah, they run from smaller to a little bit bigger to the longest finger.

From left to if you are looking at or west to east. Right now all of our cams are running north to south in the largest timber or finger. And then we have one camera at the tip of the middle finger. Eventually, so right now we're trying to figure out like north south patterns. Are they Yeah.

Are they going one way or another? And eventually if we're not really having much luck, we're gonna probably take some of those cams and move them horizontally. Yeah. Through the more [00:41:00] west to east, east to west through the quote unquote palm of the hand. At the bottom. Bottom. Or we might move 'em to the middle finger and figure out, okay, are they, are they traveling east and west or are they trying to travel north and south for the most part?

That's what I love about it is you're looking for that second photo. I don't have any property that I have just one camera on. They've all got multiple cameras just because that's, I'm trying to figure out patterns, like you were saying, of travel more than I am. Okay. He's here every night at nine 30.

That's great. I wanna know where's he coming from? Yep. Is he coming from the north, south, east, west? What's he doing? That's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah. No I pro, I, there's a lot of people like us, right? We just we're into it. Just, I'm obsessed, like laying in bed at night, looking at trail cam pics.

With your wife laying next to you or whoever it is, whatever you know what I'm saying? But the point is it's just can't get enough of it. I've gone so far, I have got [00:42:00] cameras out with solar panels that I haven't touched in three years now. They run year round.

And they're in strategic betting areas that I know that I get bucks betting in. So I don't, I just don't go in there because number one, it's hard to get into. I gotta go all the way up this big hill and all the way down, and it's I feel like I'm a rock climber every time I go in there.

It's just way in there, way in the back of a property. So I just put them cameras out and I leave 'em. But the last two years, and in fact I should look to see they should be in there coming up like every fall. The bucks will just come in there and it's like close to a field edge.

If they get a North wind, they can send anything coming in and, or they just pop over the other, pop up over the other hill and they're in another field. So it's just a great spot. And for some reason, as soon as the as soon as the, velvet comes off, they like, [00:43:00] this is like a, it's like a buck haven I would call it, and I don't know how I found it other than the fact, like what we're talking about, like you start getting a couple cameras out and you start figuring out where they're coming. And then when you get a chance to go for a walk, you're like, all right, I think he's coming from this way.

And you just start walking and next thing you're finding a bed. And it's just toss the camera up on the bed and let's just see what comes in, and they're not gonna stay there every single night. But I. They typically I mean I've had 'em in there four or five nights in a row and then they'll be gone for a couple nights, then all of a sudden they're back for two nights or one night, and it's just so cool because when one bed's in there and you're really get getting live photos of it sleeping and it's not head's nod and yeah. It's the coolest thing ever. It's so cool. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's just I know where that buck is right now. It's so fun. Yeah. It's, and it's enjoyable.

I've got a buck named nicknamed Holy Field that we've had at this property for three years and there's photos, I got photos of him bedding right next to the mineral almost [00:44:00] half the night. So I did a, yeah, I did a couple videos as well. I downloaded the videos as well and it's just cool 'cause he, like one of the videos, he's just like moving his ears dead asleep and I'm just like, that's cool. That last night, that deer. It was laying right here. And at 1230, he was there for four hours that night. He bedded there almost all night. And I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. Just taking news. Yeah. He was just done a do even came into the mineral during that time.

Yeah. And he got up and, moved around with her, but then she left and he laid back down. It was just cool. So like during the rutt moved around or, no, this was like a couple weeks ago. Yeah. No, unfortunately. No, it's gonna, he's gonna be harder to kill than I would like to explain that was just going on.

But, that's one of those properties that the rutt is our only hope usually yeah. We'll see A lot of it, it's, the rut is always so hard for me. It's so fun. It's so fun to be in the woods during the rutt, but man, you're, it's hard. It's just super hard. I don't know why anything can [00:45:00] happen, but I always have.

Really, yeah. I always have really good luck, like early season. Or like post rutt when they're getting a little wore down and they're like, I don't care if that guy's in the tree. I'm just gonna walk by. I'm tired. Yeah. Let's pivot a little bit and talk about how someone can employ or deploy reveal cameras as a result.

Obviously Micah, myself and Andy are huge fans of the. The process. I talk about pretty much every damn spot we have with you guys. I'm talking about how simple it is. And I'm really not just saying it because you guys, are partnered with us or were sponsored by you guys. It is quite literally the easiest camera I've ever messed with.

Even cameras that aren't cell cams, because I used to buy a bunch of stealth cams for 60 bucks when I would find 'em on sale. And it was just a stealth cam that a basic camera you still had to go into the camera and change the settings on the screen and you'd have to mess with it.

And do, and it would take you some time. I don't even, yeah. [00:46:00] I literally opened my camera up just to turn it on and I shut it again on these reveals. Let's talk about, some of the features, some of your models and some of the features on the camera itself that you have set up.

And then we can talk about some other things as well that updates come in. We like all that sort. Sure. Yeah. So the whole goal and or point of these cameras are to make it easy and enjoyable. So the last thing I think that any of us want to do is struggle with electronics.

It's as easy as turning the camera on and just, as long as you've activated it, which we try to make the activation process super easy too. You just create an account, just like any account that you would anywhere in the world. And then after that, you scan a QR code, right?

Scan a QR code and it's gonna go and act it. The app walks you through step-by-step. It even tells you to insert your SD card. Oh, okay. Insert an SSD card now. Make sure you put batteries in and, or, charge the lipo pack up, or it [00:47:00] walks you through step-by-step just to make it super easy and you're like, click activate.

And it's just done. It doesn't, it's nothing to do with your cell phone plan. It's nothing to do with anything that you got going on. It's just a hundred percent separate. It's all controlled, controlled through us, which is on purpose. We go and buy mount, like so much data, it's crazy. We buy data in bulk, from these carriers.

And then we basically just group it all up and we all share it. Like we all just use it. So that's how we're able to try to keep the prices low, keep everything affordable, and also just make it super, super easy for you to activate a camera. 'cause all you're doing is just activating it right through us.

Yeah. And it's just simple, right? Yeah, I we were talking about the other day and I think from, if you wanted to do it in the woods, you could, we, we usually set 'em up a little bit at home and then we go deploy 'em. But Uhhuh, I [00:48:00] would, even if you're in the woods, you pull that camera out of the package, put the batteries in it, and SSD card and sim card and put it on the tree.

I think you could do it in less than probably four minutes. Three to four minutes. Oh, for sure. Yeah. The longest process is after you hit, the longest part of the process is after you hit Verizon or at and t 'cause that's another nice feature. It's got both sim cards. You can pick, you hit Verizon, let's say the thing starts thinking, and it'll say, this can take up to a minute and it'll do its thing.

It'll turn for a second and then congrats. You're set up, done that. That literally is the longest part of the entire process. Then you just turn the freaking camera on and I walk away from it. My, my brother-in-law, Russell actually made a comment to me when we were deploying 'em the other day, are you gonna change the settings?

And I said, no, I'll go back and do all that in the app, which we'll talk about the app and how awesome that is in a few seconds, but I'll go back later and mess with that. Right now there might be other companies that have the [00:49:00] ability, but I've never personally used a cell cam where I can change every setting of the camera through the app, everything.

I can change how many megapixels I want the picture to be. I can change bursts, I can change delay, I can do all of it. If you wanna do photo or video or both, everything. And it updates it pretty damn quick. Within 24 hours it'll be changed. What about the Cams themself are, so we personally as a group have two cameras.

We have I think I have four X Pros. And then I have like eight Reveal X Gen twos. Yeah, talk a little bit about the two cams and if you have any other models that you're using right now, we can obviously talk about those as well. Sure. So those are the two main cameras that are out right now.

So basically the X PRO is a full blackout camera, so that's gonna be what I always refer to it as, zero detection, right? Like you can't physically see anything happen on the camera at night. [00:50:00] And and it also has G P S, right? So that just makes it easier for trying to find your camera.

We have a little map in the app and you click on it and your camera shows up and you just walk up to it and you're like, oh, there it is. Or if somebody steals it I was gonna ask about stolen cameras in a second. Yeah. But yeah, or if somebody steals it and they turn the camera on, it's gonna update it's location.

And we've had a lot of people. Call the old d n r or the police and say, Hey, my camera's over at this person's house. It's my neighbor's. I thought they liked me, but obviously they don't. Can you go get it? Yeah. That's probably the right way to handle it. But yeah, other people might do it differently.

People get Yep. People get their cameras back. And then the x gen two that is it's meant to be a lower price point, but honestly it is a bad little camera. Like it is awesome. It's got load detection, which is extremely hard to see visually, like with a human eye. The deer can't see it at all.[00:51:00]

But it has a longer range, so I like to use them on field edges or any place where I wanna reach out and touch something. And I'll put those out and I can buy more of 'em, because they are a cheaper price point. Stick, three, four or five out in different fields and just get a really good idea of what's traveling through, like beans or, whatever.

But yeah, they have a, they just have a really long detection. Unfortunately that one doesn't have G P s, but that was mainly to help keep that cost down. Yeah. So that was really it. And it doesn't have the the screen on it either, so you don't Yes. Yep. Which I mean, but same thing.

We're keeping the price low, it we're hitting different people, budgets. Yeah. And and I honestly really like setting up the X Gen two better than the X Pro physically setting them up. If I'm in a field, yeah. The X Pro's got the screen, which I do love the screen, but you put that up there and then, you glance at the screen and you look and you're like, okay, that looks about right.

Granted, it's. [00:52:00] Obviously super easy to set up, right? But I love the wifi feature of the X Gen two. Like it's super easy that you hit set up, you go to your app, you click a button, connect to the wifi, and now the X Gen two is just like streaming to your phone while you're walking out in front of it.

And I personally really like that. Something that I think that's, I didn't even know I could've brought to my attention yesterday. No, that is odd. I didn't even know that was a feature. Oh yeah, that's what I mean. So the gen two, it's got pro it's got a lot of pros, and the X PRO has a lot of pros, right?

So there's benefits of both. Like you got the cheaper price point of the X Gen two, but yet it does things that the pro can't. And then, and partially because it has a longer range, the wifi kind of ties into that. You can get out into a field and make sure things are dialed in.

We're the X Pro. It's, it can have the range, but it does better at close quarters. Like I'd say 50 feet. And then although [00:53:00] it can stretch out to a hundred easy so anyway, there's, that is there's, there are different cameras That is such a badass feature on the gen two, right?

Even if you did it the way I've been doing it, because what's funny is when we talked to Ben, the other Ben, thorough Uhhuh, he tells us new shit all the time and we're just like, really? We can do that. And the way I've been messing with my gen twos is I set 'em up and I'm like, yep, that's perfect.

And then I just go stand in front of the thing and I refresh my app until I get a picture and I'm like, yep, I think I look good. Walk away. Which takes five seconds because it doesn't take long for them to start sending. That is, even that is even crazier that you can just put it in setup mode, which I always wondered what that was for.

So now I know you put it in setup and then you go to your app. Open the app and it'll be streaming. Yep. Basically that the photo or the what's it's seeing Yeah. To your app. Yeah. So just because I know there's gonna be, people be like, what? I didn't know what to do that. Yeah. Turn your camera to setup and the [00:54:00] camera's in setup, you'll see a little blue light flashing.

That's the wifi, right? Okay. You go to your app, you click on the little account, like the admin guy in the lower right hand corner, Uhhuh. And there is a, there's a button and I'm just gonna open my app up real quick. Connect. Connect to Reveal wifi. Yeah. Yep. There it is. So I click on the account and connect to Reveal wifi.

I click that it's gonna search. Bam. Just like that. That's awesome. Love it. Love it. Perfect. And I've got like you go, like I said, eight gen two, so that's nice. Yeah, that's handy. Now you gotta go reset up all your cameras. Just kidding. No, they all got pretty, I was pretty, I'm pretty happy with all of them, you do have those ones, everybody's had those cameras where they set 'em up and then they start getting pictures like, damnit that's too high, right?

Too high, too low. Yeah. Oh, I moved it. It's to the left somehow or whatever. Yeah. And there's different PIs and different ways to build cameras. We build ours to, to really favor the middle. And we do that on purpose because if you get a lot of [00:55:00] wind, you get anything in the bottom of frame, it triggers, and especially on hot days.

And you're just gonna get a ton of fault pictures, which if you're in to just getting a bunch of blank photos, Then maybe try a different camera. But if you just want like buck picks, obviously you're gonna get some false triggers. But that's, our focus has been like, we wanna try to get that narrowed down, make sure we're getting the bucks, make sure we're getting the, do the animals, somebody walking by in the woods.

That's the goal. Yeah, we've spent a lot of time trying to get that dialed in and I think we've done a pretty good job of it. No, I would say there's one camera I have that does some false triggering. It's because I've got it. It's a little low, but you can also go in and adjust the sensitivity level, right?

Yep. In your app, which we'll talk about. 'cause I kinda wanna leave the app for last. Sure. Okay, we got the two main cameras. I wanted to bring up the battery packs, which for us was Uhhuh one of the smartest purchases we made because[00:56:00]

you. Yes. You're buying batteries one way or the other, right? Yeah, but the battery packs are not expensive. Number one, I wanna say they're like, what? Like 30 something bucks? Think 33, 34 something. They're, I'll double check just to make sure, but they, yeah, they're not expensive. They're around the $30 and they're lithium battery packs.

Yep. Each camera takes 12 Double As correct? Yeah. So if you're running aas, it's 12 aas Yeah. In a camera. So you buy the lithium battery packs, they're rechargeable. Obviously. What we did was we bought we bought however many we got for our cameras, and then we bought two extras, two extra a piece, and so when it's time to switch out a battery, if a battery's low or whatever, then I charge up the extra pack here. And I take it out and I swap it out and I move on. What I like is it's about the same investment upfront as you would if you just bought a shit ton of energizers, right? Yeah. So the lithium cartridge is 50 49 0.99 on our website.

Okay. It's a initial investment with [00:57:00] the cameras a little bit, which, if you bought, let's say you had 10 cameras, just as a basic, yeah, that's 120 batteries. So if you're buying 120 Energizer batteries, that's one purchase, and when they die, you gotta buy more, right? Oh, yeah. That's the thing.

Yep. I the only reason we built these lithium cartridges is because we saw our credit card bills and how, it's one of them things where you build a camera and you're like focused on all these positive things and what do you wanna do and make it better and affordable and all this, and then all of a sudden you're like, I wish I didn't have to buy batteries anymore.

And it's we need to build a lithium cartridge, something that we can recharge. Let's not buy battery. Let's just do a one purchase thing. Or even if you bought two of 'em, it doesn't take long with the price of batteries nowadays. Like it's ridiculous. Yeah. And it, they pay for themselves.

Yeah. Especially the second season. The first season you might be at a small wash. I didn't do the math. [00:58:00] You might be close to a wash, but I don't, I'm not dicking with batteries anymore. And it's anywhere from like 10 to 20 bucks depending on what type A dozen for a dozen of lithium batteries.

Double A. Yep. Yeah, double A. So let's just call's 12 and that's it. Two and a half times. Yeah. You change the batteries two and a half times and you've paid for it and you're going to, throughout a six months time span, you're gonna at least change 'em once. You're, you might be at a wash that first season, but then at what I love, this is just me, I'm not dicking with batteries anymore.

I've got these battery packs that I sit, I charge 'em and I move on. I don't have batteries all over my damn office, all in my pack trying to find the one battery that is in the bottom that I can't find, that I'm looking for remembering, trying to figure out, remembering which ones which one are dead.

Yes, exactly. So that's a big feature for me that I wanted to make sure that was touched on. And then the solar panels, which yeah, you got, I guess we're, we were talking about those earlier, but talk about those a little. Yeah so along the whole we were doing the solar [00:59:00] panel before we did the lipo pack, but we started to really focus on how to bring our, everybody's costs down on power supply.

We've focused a lot on just performance, making sure the cameras were dialed in so they, they're not consuming a lot of power. And that's the one thing you'll find about the reveal is it doesn't really consume a lot of power, but at the same point, Why would I wanna go spend more money on batteries? I wanna just buy something that I can reuse.

I feel like I'm just getting away personally, I'm doing way better. One time purchase with Lipo Pack, and then the solar panel is for those really hard to get places where you're, you just need more and you don't wanna be able to, you don't wanna have to go in there and change a lipo pack.

So the solar panel itself has a built-in battery, so it's charging itself and then using its power. It doesn't even use the power inside of the camera. So now all of a sudden the power inside the camera is purely a backup. It's [01:00:00] just, it's reserve. So you're running off that solar panel a hundred percent of the time.

If something ever happened to the solar panel, let's just say, somebody came and unplugged it or a tree branch fell and took it out, whatever the. Whatever happened to it, the camera's gonna start to run off of its battery and then you're gonna know, you're gonna know that right away. Because when it's running on a solar panel, it's always a hundred percent and it's a hundred percent all the time.

Something ever happens. Maybe, maybe you set it up wrong and it's just not getting enough sun right or angled wrong. If you angled it, completely the wrong direction, for example. You put it, stuck it north, to get the northern stars it's not gonna charge. So at that point it's gonna use all of its batteries and then it'll start to use the camera's, batteries, and and you're gonna know, and you'll have to go in.

Do something different. But yeah, it's just, yeah, mine's at a hundred. Like I said, I've got cameras out that I've had out for three years at this [01:01:00] point and I've never touched 'em. They just keep going. Yeah. What about, do you have a problem, and it might be in the app, but is, what about if the SD card fills up?

Is there a way that you can clear it or is it, you gotta go switch that out? So put it on SD loop on yep. We have SSD looping, so it'll just override the oldest pictures. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. So all of my cameras, which we'll talk about the app next, all of my cameras, the SSD loop is on just in case.

I've got one of my, that one that I was telling you about, the battery Uhhuh 'cause of all the pictures. It's also at 99% capacity on the camp, on the card. It doesn't really matter. Because you, because it's just deleting the old ones. Yep. You've saved the pictures that you've already wanted off that camera.

Yeah. Back then, anyways. Now the one positive to not having a full card is if you do want to go back. 'cause you do have the ability to request an HD photo or video. There's that add-on we'll talk about. But if you have [01:02:00] everything on the card, then you can go back and have all the hd, photos from the card later on, after you've take the camera down or whatever if you wanted to.

But for a guy like me, I don't really care about that. So it doesn't bother me that it's just deleting old stuff. Yeah. It's taking good enough pictures where No, yeah. I'm only doing that HD feature when I got a really cool picture. Oh yeah. I want this one and I want that, high definition.

Yeah. That's what I want. Yes. Yeah. And I think most of us probably would be requesting those hd oh wow, look at that. Yeah. I want that in like high res and or a video. If you got pick plus video, which I run a pretty good number of my cameras on pick plus video like this time of year.

Mainly because I am running lipo packs. So I can charge 'em up real easy. I'm not too worried about getting in and out of property, like scaring deer around 'cause I'm already in and out no matter what. I'm out here doing stuff. So I'm just burning cameras down because when I do have that buck walk by, [01:03:00] I wanna request the video right now so I can learn more about him.

Yeah. Like I wanna see, there's a lot of times where I get that front buck. There's two or three bucks behind him and I'm like, wow, that one's a stud. Yeah. And and you get to watch that, watch that live and granted, yeah, I'm gonna use more battery, but like I said, this time of year, I don't mind.

It's a good reason to get out into the woods, and or if you can't get out there, run a solar panel, use a ton of light, ton of sun right now, these cameras would run all summer, pick plus video pretty easily. As long as you, you're getting decent light. Now in the fall when it starts to get shorter days, that's where you know, you can still do it 'cause I do it.

But you just have to make sure you're really dialed in and catching the best part of the day as far as the sun, making sure it's getting that real good charge every day and you'll be fine. Yeah. And I did a video recently on.[01:04:00] I deployed my first solo solar panel of all my, I got, I only have two right now.

And that's one of my plans next year is to add to the solar panels, but it was simple. I've happened to do my solar panel on one of the posts. On one of the reveal posts, which also, I wanna give kudos to the, because I've bought a lot of mounts in my life. What I love about your guys' post are is twofold.

It's the little you just screw each post section. Yeah. You can just, it's turn Yeah. Telescoping. Yep. And then it comes with a mount that you can put the solar panel on any side, and then it also has the screw at the top for cameras. You can be a person who doesn't use reveal sail cams for whatever reason, and buy their post and use 'em with any camera.

Except for one. Which I won't talk about. But you can use any camera on that post, which is a huge benefit, from the post itself because it's the nicest post I've ever used. It [01:05:00] also has three stakes at the bottom instead of one. So it's more stable. You can Yeah. Position those stakes however you want also.

So to me it's a really nice post. Anyways, I I'm gonna pass that on to Gary. 'cause Gary is it's Jeff's brother. He's an engineer, Uhhuh, and he designed that post. And, man, let me tell you, like he, he worked like, and I'm not joking, like he spent so much time figuring that post, like that tree stake out, not tree stake, camera stake out.

Yeah. Like he put so much time into it. I'm telling you right now, I am a gear freak. Yeah. And when we first started running cameras, I bought all these different types of mount or posts, excuse me, that I could find. And I did find one that I liked. But even that one, as they get a few years old, starts having problems because of the nuts.

On the telescoping. You can have Gary call me and I'll tell him everything I like about that thing. But yeah, no, he did a excellent job. Yeah, he did a great job because it's super, super simple to set up. Yep. [01:06:00] And even on the camera itself, if you want, you can screw into the bottom or you can screw into the back of the camera depending on what, what it calls for.

Yeah. So I like that feature of that. No, it was he did a great job. And I like how every post comes with the solar mount. Even if you're not gonna use it, then don't put it on the post. You don't have to. But anyway, I did a video and I just showed how easy it is. And one of the coolest parts about the solar panels, that it's almost like you guys thought about everything.

You even included a little Velcro cleanup strap. Because once you run the cord from the output on the solar panel to the input on the bottom of the battery on the camera, you might have a little extra cord, which is a good thing. You don't wanna have not enough cord. And there's this little Velcro thing that I just tightened up all the cordage and just wrapped it around the post.

And now it's out of the way. So it's not gonna get messed with. Yeah, exactly. And it took me longer to record the video than it did to set the camera and solar panel up. Literally did. Yeah. And so [01:07:00] I'm real excited about that. But but, anyway, that, that's just how simple the solar panels have been for me.

So my next year I'm probably gonna look at, instead of adding like two extra cameras, if I was gonna, get six cameras, maybe just get three and get the solar panel. Yeah. I would like to have a solar panel pretty much running on most cameras that I can have it on. I don't I run a lot of mine in the timber, so it's a little hard.

Sure. But I do have a few that are on fields and that are gonna catch a lot of light, so I That's right. It's just nice having that option and Finally, I do want to, should I ask about stolen cameras? We covered it already. So the g p s on the X Pro is really nice 'cause if somebody turns that camera on, it's gonna g p s.

But what's cool about these cameras, Ben talked about the QR code. So each camera that you buy has a special QR code that you scan and do whatever. If someone gets a camera stolen, if that person that steals it tries to [01:08:00] use it, you'll know, will, you know that camera is Yeah. Being registered by a new person.

Yeah. So if you got your camera stolen, basically you can register it as stolen. Like you just call our customer service, we have a list of people. But if you leave it active for, like a week, two weeks, whatever, just to see people turn 'em on and they don't even realize that.

They turn it on, it starts to search, it updates location, and you can allot of time. Most people find them like, it's pretty funny because people just, that people that steal, let's just be honest. Like they're not very smart. Maybe they're not artist. Yep. But anyway, all of a sudden next, now that you got like a pin on your lo on your house, and it's hard to deny that you stole the camera.

When you're showing an officer, look it, camera updated. Here it is, it's at this location. But anyway, you, [01:09:00] the QR code is I, is specific to each camera. So if you suspend your camera, let's just say somebody, if your camera doesn't have g p s, somebody steals it, you just suspend it.

It's gonna permanently be registered to you like it's your camera. And then you can call and say, Hey, somebody stole my camera. We put a flag on it. Now all of a sudden someone goes trying to activate that camera and in order to get it activated, they have to physically call us and they call and they're like, oh, let's see if we can get this added to your account.

And they get their information and they see that it's stolen. And then they contact you and say, we have your stolen camera, we have all their information. We could, help you get it back. Yeah. Then we can give that to the proper authorities. Yeah. Which sometimes it could be the person that stole the camera sold it.

And that person is trying to register it and, you feel bad for that person 'cause they got screwed, but Yeah. Exactly. They bought a stolen item. That happens and it usually works its way out, yeah. [01:10:00] It's Hey, I bought it for so and and it's oh, let's go have a talk with them.

Yeah. You bought a stolen camera, bro. So it's cool that you know when your camera gets stolen, because we've all had that happen somewhere at some point in time. It's gone. Yeah. And it's gonna suck, but it's gonna resurface someday. Somewhere. Unless the person's just stealing it to be an asshole and they threw it in the trash, that's fine.

But the last thing I wanted to talk about was honestly the feature that the cameras are cool, they're great. The solar panels are awesome. The battery packs are awesome. The posts are cool, but the feature that I have been most impressed with and like I said at the beginning of the show, I had not had a reveal camera till we started working with you guys.

Andy was the one that was like, these things are awesome. You're gonna want to use these. The feature that I just can't get over is the app. Talk about your guys' app and then there's also gonna be an update, it sounds like coming up too. Yeah so we've, [01:11:00] we, I'm just like blown away by our app because we had this dream of what our app was gonna be like, and we have all our own developers, so everything's in-house.

We do all our firmware for the cameras, we do all our own app. So we're very passionate about how this stuff works, but yeah, the app, it's like you just open it up, you got this home feed, you got just quick, easy navigation everything's right there. It's just meant to be simple. If you wanna go look at a location, you can filter by location or you can filter by what is coming now is you can tag deer, you can tag, there's a lot of really cool things that are coming.

You look at you guys, I can see you and no one else can see you. Yeah. But everybody's mouths are like, what? Huh? So we don't stop. We're always innovating. We're always trying to figure out like, what do we want? What's, what do we want? What does our customer want? So we're taking animals [01:12:00] now, right?

So now I'm taking my bucks, I can tag those. And this is like a long progression of things that are to come. But right now, that's what we're doing. And then what you can do is you can actually run, like status reports or statistics. So for example, I'm gonna look at a property and I'm gonna filter by a location, or I'm gonna filter by bucks only, and by the location.

And I can see by running the status report that a northwest wind is where I'm getting all my pitchers, right? So now I know that when I have a northwest wind and all of a sudden all my bucks, that's when I'm getting my buck picks. That's when I wanna probably start to look when I'm gonna hunt and I can look at barometric pressure, I can look at temperature, I can look at, we basically we're tying into the weather, right?

Yeah. So with this new app update that's coming, in fact it should be out this week. If it's not out this week, it'll be out next week. [01:13:00] But either way, it's on its way. So potentially by the time you're listening to this episode Yes. 'cause this comes out, whatever. Yep. So up, go to the app store and update your app.

'cause this stuff, it's here. I'm using it right now. It's like you guys pay attention to what people are doing outside of your app because You just do, you just said all the things that I'm doing in a Notes app right now, me and Micah have a, I know me and Micah have a book that we've nicknamed Baraka, because I'm a huge fan of mortal Kombat and Yep.

I have been, every time we get a photo of him, I have been going into notes and I write down the time he was there, actually, the times he was there. So if he was there from seven 30 to seven 50 I write down the first photo, which direction he was coming out of. I write down the wind. The wind speed, barometric pressure, and if it was cloudy or not that day, like what the weather conditions basically were.

I've got all that on a notes app for that deer. Yeah. So I just ran a report [01:14:00] in this new app that you guys are downloading right now as you're listening to this. And it's summer, but right now the average temperature for the bucks that I'm getting on camera is 66 degrees. And it's a, it's, it was a northwest wind pri primarily, but as of the last two days, it's now a north or northwest wind is my focus.

And let's see, what else do I got here? I've got, I've moon phase, it's capturing it's logging all this stuff for me. I got moon phase. I've got my time of date, so I definitely need to be hunting in the morning right now. 'cause that's when they're most active as according to when I'm getting pictures of these deer.

Let's, so I got time range. And then, yeah, so you will, you, on this new app, you will tag, you can tag a Deere. And so does that mean each time that Deere walks by a camera, it's gonna log itself on there? [01:15:00] So right now we are doing our own logging. But we're working on other things that will make that even better and easier, obviously, in the future.

But honestly I love sitting here and looking through my picks, and when I get a specific deer, I know the deer right. And I'm able to tag that deer. One of my biggest problems. Now when you, with like ai when you say tag Yeah. Are you adding him to a folder that you've created for the deer, or can you tag a specific name?

I'm specifically tagging a photo. Yep. I'm just clicking on a photo and adding a tag. Gotcha. And I guess where I'm going with this is everybody's like, why don't we just use AI for this stuff? Artificial intelligence. The thing that I don't like about AI is, number one, it's not always accurate.

And I just don't quite trust it. So I wanna do this myself right now, mainly because this is a very intimate thing, like these, these are cameras that we're putting out to [01:16:00] try to like hunt and scout and do all this. So as I'm looking through these pictures, I'm just adding a quick tag to it.

So if I want to get as detailed to take every dough, go for it, and and or when I'm getting them buck picks, I'm tagging those bucks. So that way I can start to, over a course of a week or two weeks or three weeks, start to understand all that information you're writing in your journal. So now my journal is right here in. My fingertips. Yeah. And I can filter through my buck pics on a location and show my buddy and say, here's, look what I got going on. If you really wanna show your friends. I'll be honest. Now everybody just wants to hunt with me. Kidding. That's the other feature I love is you I have a bunch of folders created for different bucks and Yeah.

The way I used to do it was I would save every picture to my phone, and then I'd have to go find those photos. Now I can just go into my app, go into the folder of Baraka and Uhhuh. There's these pictures every picture we save and they're all [01:17:00] sorted by date. Yeah. Yep. And you can still, you can obviously still save things in folders.

Sure, yeah. In fact, I still do too. Like certain deer, I wanna save in folders, but the tagging thing is a new thing. And what I'm doing is I'm tagging my bucks, I'm tagging a majority of the dose because I wanna start to understand, do I have doughs moving all the time? Some of the times I'll be honest, it seems like they're moving all the time.

But the thing that's cool is I'm seeing when I run a report on my dough picks compared to my buck picks, I'm seeing dough move, like north wind all the way through south wind, which obviously those are pretty much all the winds we get. It's very rarely we get a east wind. But yet when I run my buck report or look at when my buck activity is, it's like I said, it's only, it was only northwest winds.

But now, as of the last couple days, I'm starting to see a north and northwest wind equal out. Like those two wind directions are when I'm getting. And when I say these are [01:18:00] like the bigger bucks that I'm tracking, right? Your target. Yeah. Yeah, your target gear, my target bucks. The other nice thing that I love about the app is, and this is new on the last update because it wasn't something you could do even three months ago.

You can go into your account tab and you can see Uhhuh, you can see, now you can have yearly and monthly cameras. Yep. Before you had to pick one. So I've got seven cameras on monthly and five on annually. You can see how much credit you've got on your account if you have, have a credit or whatever.

And from a consumer standpoint, this is a huge feature that I'm not saying you want people using, but whenever it's time to cancel something, you ever notice how it's a pain in the ass? Oh, a hundred percent. There's a big red box at the bottom of your account tab that says Cancel all plans. If you want to, right?

Yeah. If it's the end of the season, you're picking cameras up, hit that button. They're really making it Yeah. As easy as you, they can to [01:19:00] do what you would like on here. Like if you're done using the camera for the year, there it is. You can do everything in the app, and that's what's really nice.

Remember? Yeah. You remember the part when I was like, we took all our frustrations and we're just trying to make it easy. Yeah. I hate that when I have a camera or something that I'm using, it doesn't matter what it is, and I'm like, how do I cancel this? Yep. It's so frustrating. Spotify And the way, yeah.

The way I look at it is if maybe, oh, I don't know why you're postponing it, but maybe you wanna just postpone or suspend it for a month. If you wanna suspend it for a month, I wanna make it super easy. And if I know that it's super easy and it wasn't a hassle, most likely you're probably gonna turn it back on, yep. So that's really it. A another feature I like with the app and I, the property I hunt, I don't own, there, there's a landowner involved and there's he has a relative that enjoys hunting as well, so I can go in and I can share my cameras with them. So all they have to do is, yeah, they just have to download the [01:20:00] app and then I can get on my app and share all the pictures.

That way they can, because they, he he's not a huge hunter, but he still likes to see what's out there so he can go on there and check everything out as well. So I really appreciate that on there too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's, and I think you hit the nail on the head. I've got a brother-in-law that doesn't have any reveal cam, actually he does now.

Yeah. He bought one, but, even if he didn't, Yeah, when he didn't have the camera, it was simple. I just shared the galleries with him or the cameras that I wanted to share with him. And all he had to do was download the Reveal app and create an account. Yeah. Free to him with that email.

Yeah. Now he, which is free, now he can watch it and now he can look at all six cameras we have together in that spot, which are all Mike. And same with me and you got the cameras out there on that property that we picked up. You just shared those cameras, so I'm getting them, whenever you're getting them.

Yeah. So it's just super simple. So I don't have simple to email a bunch of pictures to Micah or Russell. It can just be, I don't know if he's holding anything out from me. I wish I could any information. So yeah, [01:21:00] it's handy. Yeah. Not to, guzzle too much about the app.

It's just, that has been one of the coolest features because the other apps that I've used in the past, you could not do things like this. One. You couldn't change settings. Some of them said you could, and then it never would change the setting. Everything. I've tested this damn thing I've went in there and said, okay, I'm gonna switch this to.

This, and by the next day I'm getting photos. It did it that way. And you gotta, and you gotta, you'll find, depending on your, how you have 'em set up, you want to tweak 'em. Like I had some that are over mineral, getting a ton of pictures. I had it on video at the same time, so it was draining that battery a lot.

I'm like I don't wanna go out there and change that battery so much. So what I did was I took the video off and then I changed my time of how long it takes. Your delay. Yeah, my delay. So I did that, in two seconds on the app, and then by the next day it's already changed and my battery's not going down as much and I don't have to go out there as often.

So it, it's, yeah. And it's so [01:22:00] easy. Just since we're on the app, there's a lot of thought into how the app communicates with the camera. So we come preset, like this is gonna be the best battery life, the optimal everything. But you can act, you can adjust communication.

So we have it set to like daily communication. All your photos are coming now, like instantly, but when you talk about oh, wait till the next day for settings to get checked, it's every 12, the camera will check in. But we have a mode called hybrid. And hybrid will check in at basically every single photo.

So if your camera's taking pictures, it's always gonna be looking to see if there's any updates, new communication coming from you. Okay. And then we have another setting that's called instant, which is it's instant communication. That one there, you could sit there and be sending you commands to the camera and it's communicating all the time.

Okay. Yeah. And that's how I when I think when they come, they initially come with instant. Correct. I think they come default to [01:23:00] daily and that's, Maybe it's story instant, instant communication as far as sending photos. Yes. Okay. Yeah. See, I switched that they all, 'cause I got tired of I don't get tired of getting pictures, but I come to find out I'm checking my phone more than I would like to, so we're like, right now, I got 'em set up to where they're sent at certain times throughout the day, what I'm doing.

Yeah. Okay. So just to clarify, there's two things we're talking about. So there's the communication from the app to the camera, and then there's the camera to the app. Okay. So default, the camera always sends every single photo as soon as it comes. And you, what you're talking about is you're slowing that down to say, Hey, I only wanted to send twice a day at these times.

And then there's the communication from the app to the camera, which you can also control how that's communicating and not to overcomplicate it. We just set it up so it gives you the best battery life. And then we made something that's really cool called hybrid that gives you really good battery life.

But [01:24:00] it's just slightly not quite as good as daily. And then we have instant, which is you're sending information to it and it will use more battery life. Yeah. So when you change a setting, it automatically just does it immediately. Instead of, yeah. Okay. The next day or whatever. Okay. Yeah.

Got it. Yeah. Which pretty cool. So hopefully that makes, yeah. It's just yeah. That you can tell your developers or whoever's working on the app that they're hitting this one out the park. Oh, a hundred percent. And I know we got deep into the nerd side of communication there, but I'm sure there's a lot of people that like that type of stuff, like us Yeah.

There's people out there that appreciate that. Yeah. Us being, some of them uhhuh and, and you can. You can get super in depth into it if you want, but the whole point of the camera is we try to make it super easy. Yeah. And you don't ever need to and you just use it and it is, your home feed 'cause I think this is a new feature in the last couple months too, when I've got a lot, I'll just say a lot of cameras out.

Okay. I think we all do. That's a lot of, hi, my name is Ben. There's a, I'm an a, I'm a camera [01:25:00] holic. Yeah, that's a lot of pictures to sift through and you've already mentioned it, but that's one of my favorite features is the filter. I can go and I can just say, okay, I wanna see just pictures at this property right now.

And I can filter and I can apply it, and then it goes back to the home screen and all I have are photos from that property for the next day. Also, another feature I absolutely love is whenever you're looking at new photos, There's a little green guy right at the bottom of the picture that says new.

Yeah. That is a photo I have not seen before. Because that is from the last download. Just small stuff like that is just, has huge for a guy like me. The timestamp at the bottom of the photo being nice and big and bold. July 25th, 6:59 AM this is my ex Pro four at this location.

It's just obvious. And then if it was a new photo, it would say new right next to it. So some really cool features. That's some of the basics from cameras to some of the [01:26:00] accessories that reveal has. And then their biggest thing is the app, which sounds like I'm gonna enjoy in a few more days.

Even more. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's it's, I think it's gonna be a big hit like I am, I. Obviously I'm one of the owners and a big part of, the group that comes up with these crazy ideas of when we're listening to customers and or just developing new features of things that I think, we want and we wanna see.

And it, this one here, I had big big dreams for, and let me tell you, it, our developers knocked it out of the park and I can already say, I know there's even more coming, but I don't wanna take the take the, the big, oh my gosh. 'cause just what we have coming out here this week, it it's really awesome and there's even more cooler things that are gonna keep getting added to it, so That's sweet.

Very awesome. Anything else, Ben, did we cover most of what we thought we were gonna talk about today? No, this was great. I really appreciate you guys having me on and really looking forward [01:27:00] to working more with you guys. So it's been awesome. And We're gonna keep growing just like you guys.

Awesome. Awesome. Ben Stern with Reveal by Tact. Cam, thanks for coming on today, man. Yeah, thank you guys. All right, see ya. Bye.

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