By Sportsman’s News Pro-Staff
Getting an opportunity to test the extra compact Bushnell Trophy XLT trail camera got me a bit excited. I’m a bit of a gear junkie and I’ve been running trail cameras for a long period of time in my trophy hunting quest and I’m very familiar with what makes for a good camera.
I kicked off my research on line to see what the forums of active hunters had experienced with this little dynamo. I found that there were some major issues for me to be worried about in my testing. It appeared that the 2009 product had some problems when they hit the street. So, I wanted to make sure I addressed all the problems from the past as well as a thorough review of the product.
The pictures with this camera are so crisp. Cropping and blowing them up like this to judge an animal is very possible.
Out of the box, it is a western hunters dream. The unit itself is only 5.5” long by 3.75” wide and fully equipped with 8-AA batteries, SD card, tree strap and weighing in at 15.2 ounces. Less than a pound means that I can throw several of these into my pack and get them into the backcountry where those trophies live without breaking my back and spirit. Bushnell claims that you can get one full year out of a set of batteries. Although we only had a month to test the camera, I did speak with several hunters who had purchased these cameras last year and used one set of batteries for the entire season in Kansas. They were hung in June and stayed in the field until January with temperatures well below zero on many occasions. They were also in a high density deer area where 20-40 pictures a day were not uncommon. The camera works off of 4-AA batteries, but has the capabilities of holding eight, which is what is recommended for the best and longest life.
One of the really great things about this camera is that it will allow you to use up to a 16GB SD card. That, combined with a great battery life means that you can hang your camera and leave it for months without going back to check. For the thieves that always seem to like to take cameras that don’t belong to them, these are master lock python cable compatible. So, you can get some of these cameras and put them in a wallow or bedding area that you might want to hunt next year and then check them at the end of season. The quality of pictures can be set from 3MP, 5MP or 8MP, but the larger the photos, the less that you will get on your card. We used the lowest settings for most of our tests and it was more than enough to determine trophy quality, although the higher settings took excellent quality photos.
If you are someone who would like to use video, this also has a widescreen video setting as well as quality adjustments. We did test the video section and even at the highest quality, the film was a little grainy, but was sufficient to field judge an animal with accuracy. It has a built in color monitor that is two inches wide and eliminates the need to carry a camera or viewer to view your photos. The camera does both daylight and night photos by the use of 32-infrared LED night vision flash. Bushnell claims that this has a 45’ range, but during our testing, we found that judging trophy quality at that distance was nearly impossible. Inside of 30 feet where the animal would be standing still or moving slowly, the picture quality was excellent and judging trophy quality wasn’t a problem. The trigger speed is claimed to be less than one second.
All testing done in daylight and with the infrared technology proved that this was an accurate statement and a big improvement from the last year’s model. Most old complaints were from slow trigger speed and it appears that those problems have been solved. Each picture has the ability to have a time, date, moon phase and temperature stamp which is a great asset if you won’t be checking the camera on a regular basis. The six foot long tree strap included with the camera is capable of going around just about any size tree or object that you would want to secure it to.
Overall, I feel that this is one of the best cameras on the market today. Bushnell has overcome many of the production problems from the past year and this 2010 model is a great product. I will make sure that I have several more of these great units in my arsenal for my scouting purposes. At just around $250.00 per unit or $200.00 for the regular Trophy Cam with an additional $30.00 for a 16GB SD card and $5.00 for 8-AA batteries, I can stick this little guy on the mountain to scout for me six months out of the year and have great data for a future hunt at the end of the season. Bushnell is the first company to match quality battery life with the huge memory capacity at an affordable price. This camera was voted as the 2010 hunting product of the year at the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence Awards in July of 2010 and was also selected as the “Best of the Test” in a Field and Stream field test published in the August 2010 Field and Stream. Great job guys. Learn more by clicking here.
