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"Trophy Tracker,
the 24/7 Scouting Tool"
"Watch wild game visit a
feeder at your
ranch from the comfort of your home or office."
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By Tyge Floyd,
Editor
Email
Tyge here. |
I admit
it, I'm a gadget freak. Ask any of my longtime hunting buddies and
they will tell you I've tried it all. Some worked. Most didn't. It
doesn't matter much to me, though, whether the new acquisition
worked or not. Finding out if they improved my
chances of connecting on the game I was hunting is half the fun,
right? New toys and the latest in hunting gear have always been a
weakness of mine, and I'm not one bit ashamed to admit it.
This
past summer, a gentleman contacted me about a new product he wanted
to show me. Being some what familiar with electronics and a
documented sucker for the latest and greatest in hunting tools I
was, at the least, a bit intrigued by his pitch. The product, he
explained, is called
Trophy
Tracker. It's
a new version of the growing field of wildlife surveillance systems
that monitor game movement in a certain location. The system works
when an animal triggers the motion activated sensors which in turn
powers up a video camera. The
Trophy
Tracker then
transmits the approximately 30 second video clip to a satellite
which posts the clips on a web page. You can then view the video
clips from any computer in the World with an Internet connection.
Now, at
this point, you may be thinking, "Why would I need that?" Say
you're in your office on the fifth floor of the Bank Building in
downtown Houston at 2:00pm. You're having a bad day. Stocks are
down, your teenage daughter is dating some loser you disapprove of
and two of your staff members have called in sick. You fire up the
PC, browse to the Trophy Tracker web site, login with your own
username and password to check the feeder on your ranch in Webb
County. Three new video clips are waiting there for you to
view. BAM! The first clip reveals that the big mainframe 10 with the 3" drop tine
you've been hunting all year is munching on
your corn. The video recorded the time as 9:24am.You've been waiting
for him to visit this location for weeks. If you leave right now you
can be there in time to be sitting in your stand tomorrow morning.
On your way out of the office you give everyone the rest of the day
off. Okay, that may be a little much, but you get the point.
When I first spoke with Matt Johnson of
Trophy
Tracker, I
knew he was holding a winning hand in the poker game that is the
Outdoor Industry. Technology pushes the limits every day in our
lives. Some fight it, others embrace it. I agreed to help this new
company test the waters, so to speak, and I'm glad I did. With the
help of his two partners, Josh Baird and Cory Kaiser, the guys at
Trophy
Tracker and
myself approached one of our sponsors with an idea of installing
this system on his ranch. Billy Don Van Cleave's hunting operation,
Wild
Horse Prairie Ranches,
is located near Burnet, Texas. Having spent some time there in
pursuit of whitetails and turkeys, I knew this ranch would be a
great place to début the Trophy Tracker to the hunting world. The
ranch consists of 10,000 acres of beautiful Texas Hill Country. On
it you will find whitetail deer, several different species of
exotics, hogs and turkey, all in numbers that will shock you. It's the
setting we were looking for, a ranch that holds lots of game which would give us plenty
of opportunities for putting this system through it's paces.
 This
past weekend we met at the ranch to install the system, which
consists of a base unit full of batteries and electronics, a solar
panel and the video camera with infrared lights and motion
sensors. Our choice as to which of the over 30 feeders on the ranch
this system would call home for the next year was made quickly. The
location is in a fairly open part of the ranch, which will aid in
keeping the batteries charged. After a few short hours of installing
the system we were assaulted by a thunderstorm which had us
scurrying back to the lodge. A midnight trip back across the ranch
allowed us to acquire the necessary satellite link up to test our
camera angles and infrared lighting for night time viewing. (The
system is available in day time color video or day/night time video
in black/white).
I have
to admit I was quickly impressed with how it all works. I may know
my way around web site design and Internet marketing, but throw IP
addresses, gateways, transistors and locating satellite signals into
the mix and I'm nothing but a babbling idiot. Once we had everything
dialed in and working, it was time to hit the sack. We had been up
most of the night tweaking and adjusting the camera, lights and
signal until it was just right and would check the web page created
to catalog the videos after some much needed rest.
I will also admit that I thought our chances of capturing video
footage that morning after spending so much time and leaving a lot
of scent at the site were slim. Surely it would take a day or two
before the game felt safe enough to approach this feeder again.
Wrong! Not 45 minutes after we left the site, we had our first
visitors, a group of feral hogs. That evening a doe and fawn fed there. The next morning we
had our first bucks hit the feeder. Since then turkeys and hogs have
been regular customers. I could go on and on, but you get the
picture. Though the
Trophy
Tracker may
at first seem obtrusive, but it seems the game animals adapt quickly
to it's presence. I can't wait to login every chance I get to see
what's happened since the last time I checked the web site. It's a
really powerful scouting tool that watches the location 24 hours a day, 7
days a week.
The guys at
Trophy
Tracker and
myself will be returning for a hunt at
Wild
Horse Prairie Ranches October 9-12. My goal is to harvest a trophy class
whitetail buck that has been captured on video with the
Trophy Tracker system. I've
already got a couple of likely candidates that I hope continue to
visit. I've placed two
Woodsey Too
treestands in trees overlooking the feeder. One for a southern wind,
one for a northern wind. We will be posting updates that will
include sample video clips captured by the system throughout the
year. You can return to this article on a regular basis to view the
latest clips. If you're like me, you'll be anxious to see what's
visiting the feeder on a daily basis. It's sure to be one of our web
site's most visited pages.
Who can
benefit from having this type of scouting system in place? Anyone.
What does this system do that my 35mm or digital trail camera can't?
It can keep you abreast of game movement on a daily basis, something
that is almost impossible with today's popular trail cameras unless
you are on the property. Maybe the best aspect of the
Trophy
Tracker is
that you don't even have to leave home to scout a hunting location.
I feel there are those who will want to have one and those who wish
they could afford one. This is not the kind of gadget you can run
down to Wal-Mart to purchase. Each system is developed to fit the
needs and budget of the consumer. It's high tech and the cost of
producing it are reflected in the ticket price. Interested? Then
give the guys at
Trophy
Tracker a
visit today at
www.trophytracker.com. Now...where did I put that new cow elk
call I ordered from Whack-O-Wapiti the other day?
UPDATE:
October 7, 2004
It’s been just over a month since I met the guys from Wraith LLC.
(the makers of Trophy Tracker) out at the Wild Horse Prairie Ranch
near Burnett, Texas and I’ve got one thing to say: “I DON’T
BELIEVE IT.”
If you recall from the first chapter of this article, I said that
this ranch would be a great place to introduce the Trophy Tracker
system because there was such an abundance of wildlife that getting
some good footage of high quality game should be a sure thing. I
said that because I had seen quite a few deer, hogs etc… while
driving around with Billy Don (founder of Wild Horse Prairie
Ranches) but I had no idea what an understatement that would be.
Right off the bat, the Trophy Tracker model T2 (infrared night
vision enabled) started capturing videos of feral hogs, turkey,
does, yearlings and bucks and firing them over its satellite uplink
to the Trophy Tracker web site,
www.trophytracker.com.
The new installation kept all involved glued to our computers. What
we saw, and are still seeing, is blowing our socks off. The reason
I said I couldn’t believe it was that I had no idea just how much
wildlife was coming to that site. About a week after installation,
I noticed that all of the sudden there weren’t any more videos
coming into Billy Don’s account on the website. I called up the
guys at Wraith and asked them what was going on. They had noticed
too and were headed out to the installation site to see what was
up.
What was up was nothing anyone had anticipated. So much game was
hitting that feeder that the T2 system was working like a nose guard
in overtime in August. “I have never seen a feeder get pounded like
that” said Matt Johnson of Wraith LLC. “The system was firing off
clip after clip so often that it simply overheated. During a year
of field testing in different locations, never had we seen so much
activity. It was a good opportunity for us” he went on “because we
want our systems to withstand anything…. heat, cold, rain, insane
amounts of game….anything. And this test told us that we needed to
revamp our cooling system.” After putting in a cooling system that
could even give you chills while looking the latest Victoria’s
Secret catalogue, the T2 was back up and running and hasn’t looked
back. Every day it transmits around 10 to 15 different videos of
hogs, turkey with the record being 22 clips in one day. Just imaging
that, I’m not talking about seeing 22 turkeys come to a feeder. I’m
talking about seeing TWENTY TWO videos at different times of deer,
hogs and turkey beating the dirt around this feeder into something
more like asphalt.
This weekend I will be hunting with the guys from Trophy Tracker at
Wild Horse Prairie Ranches. After our hunt I will be posting another
chapter in this exciting series. Please return soon to see how our
hunt went and newly added video clips captured by the Trophy Tracker
system.
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