TRAIL CAMERAS
The first recordings of deer by a camera trap were made in the 1880s by a wildlife enthusiast named George Shiras. Shiras is the conservationist who is credited with the discovery of the subspecies of moose that roams Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding area. Some of you may have heard of the Shiras moose.
George Shiras developed an ingenious trap with trip wires and an automatic flash bulb connected to a very large camera by today’s standards.
The modern passive infrared (PIR) trail cameras were introduced in the late 1980s.
In 2003, before trail cameras were available here in New Zealand, we put together a motion-activated device called the ‘Wise Eye Video Camera System’. This system housed a Sony video camera inside a waterproof Pelican case. The system used a passive infrared controller that connected to the LANC (the Sony Local Application Control Bus) port of the video camera and upon each activation it would send a command to the camera to start recording. These units were rather big and bulky.
With this system we were the first to record hidden camera footage of Sika deer in the wild, around wallows during the rut. Video footage captured
