In the world of non-cellular trail cameras, our resident trail cam expert, Scott Haugen, believes the DS4K Ultimate is the king.
by Scott Haugen
In the world of non-cellular trail cameras, our resident trail cam expert, Scott Haugen, believes the DS4K Ultimate is the king.
I currently have over 175 trail cameras set in three states, spanning more than 800 miles. Stealth Cam DS4K Ultimate trail cameras make up nearly half of the arsenal. I started running DS4Ks in 2019, then upgraded to the DS4K Ultimate trail cams when they hit the market in 2021.
I’ve run the DS4K Ultimate trail cameras extensively throughout the American West and in Alaska and have taken them to Africa. They’ve endured months of rainfall in coastal rainforests, been buried under several feet of snow for months on end and held up in 120-degree temperatures. That’s just the start.
DS4K Performance
I’m not going to regurgitate details you can look up on the Stealth Cam website. I am going to share why I like the DS4K Ultimate trail cams, why I keep using them, and why I’m working to replace the few remaining other brands of non-cell trail cameras I have with the DS4K Ultimate.
The battery life of the DS4K Ultimate is the most impressive of any trail camera I’ve used. I set all cameras on high-definition video mode. On short trails with limited visibility, they’re set for 30-second run times. On long trails with better visibility, I’ll set them to record for up to 3 minutes. If elk herds or big predators are in the area, I want to be sure to capture all the details possible, including sounds that may occur off-screen. Long videos achieve this; still photos do not.
To hold all the footage, I run 64GB SD cards in each camera and 128GB in high-animal-use areas or during certain times of the year. I have over 50 extra SD cards for when checking multiple trail cameras in remote areas, as I don’t want to run short. For instance, I have over 30 DS4K Ultimate trail cameras set in a seven-square-mile stretch in the mountains. When I pull these cards, I replace them with others because there are too many clips to download onto my phone and study in the field. I do all my downloading and logging of video footage on a laptop, back home. This task alone takes many hours, but that’s the objective: to capture unique footage containing valuable information.
I used to live in Southeast Alaska. One winter day, we got over three feet of snow. It buried three DS4K trail cameras that I couldn’t get to for five months. At times, they were covered in eight feet of snow. When I recovered them in the spring, they were all still working, held battery life, and captured footage of bears and wolves before the snow fell. I’ve had DS4K Ultimate cameras work for weeks in freezing temperatures and icy rain. They are bulletproof.
The software in the DS4K Ultimate trail camera is second to none, and I’ve used many different brands over the decades. A few years ago, I picked up 50 non-cell cameras from another company. There were two different models. Eleven months later, 38 of the cameras failed within a week due to a software glitch. Soon after, the others quit working.
I can’t count how many times the DS4K Ultimate trail cameras kept capturing footage with less than 5 percent battery life. I’ve had other brands fail to record video when battery life drops below 50 percent, and in low light or darkness, they’re even worse.
I’ve only had a handful of DS4K Ultimate trail cameras quit on me, and that’s because they were physically damaged. Two were destroyed by bears, four by elk, and two were lost in a flood.
The DS4K Education
Before becoming a full-time outdoor writer 26 years ago, I was a high school science teacher. My formal education in the sciences—specifically biology and animal behavior—has played a big part in my success, both as a writer and TV host of hunting shows. In some of the high school biology classes I taught, students used trail cameras to capture a range of animals and study their behavior. Talk about fun field trips. The kids loved it.
Hunting is about education, not entertainment. Trail cameras provide insight like nothing I know. Not even scouting can accomplish what trail camera videos unveil. Trail cameras run 24/7/365. I’ve had several DS4K Ultimate trail cams set in the same spot going on five years. What these trail cameras have taught me goes far beyond what I could ever learn by being afield, in person, because you can only be in one place at a time.
One of the biggest misconceptions about trail cameras is that they’re used to kill more game. They’re not. Not all the time. This is especially true with cellular trail cameras, but not with non-cellular ones. Unless you’re checking non-cell cameras daily, you’re not going to know which animals passed by and when. Non-cell cameras unveil a much bigger picture.
I appreciate the fact that I must go afield to check non-cellular trail cameras. Being outdoors is how we observe, learn, and process what we see. It forces us to closely study nature and draw our own conclusions. The more we’re out there, the greater our knowledge becomes.
This spring, I killed two big predators because of what DS4K Ultimate trail cameras taught me. One was on a recent bear hunt in the Coast Range. I’ve been running trail cameras here for three years, and that’s precisely how long it’s taken me to learn where and when big bears move in the massive forest. By patterning their movements, I was able to fill my tag. It took five days of hunting, daylight to dark, but had I not studied countless hours of trail camera video footage over the past three years, I doubt I would have shot the old bear I did.
The other predator was a cougar. I’ve been running trail cameras on a mountainside in the Cascade Range for five years. I’ve called in eight cougars and killed three of them. The last one gave me fits. I was catching it on several cellular trail cameras but failed to call it in despite multiple attempts over a five-week timeframe. That’s when I decided to set some DS4K Ultimate trail cameras in thickly forested ravines, where cell coverage was absent.
I caught the cat moving three days in a row, in a habitat I assumed was too dense with brush for it to frequent. I was wrong, and the DS4K proved it. That cougar came 12 yards from my e-caller, and I shot it with a shotgun. Had DS4K Ultimate trail cameras not allowed me to connect the dots of where the cougar was traveling and spending time, I might still be chasing that cat.
To Read About Haugen’s Thrilling 12-Yard Cougar Shot, CLICK HERE!
Don’t Go Away!
Three years ago, the buzz in the outdoor industry was that all non-cellular trail cameras would soon be replaced by cellular ones. I still think this is not logical thinking. The simple fact that cell coverage is lacking in so many places, not to mention the many glitches that need to be rectified across the board, has me scratching my head from time to time. Also, cellular trail cameras aren’t legal in every state.
Today, I feel the need for non-cell cameras is even greater than it was at their initial introduction to consumers. Many of the primary concerns with cellular trail cameras still exist today. And the unethical means some brands use to rope users into monthly payment plans they can’t escape is an embarrassment to a hunter’s integrity. We know what we need and what we want. I have many friends who’ve scrapped using cellular trail cameras altogether and have gone back to using only non-cellular models.
If you want to know the trigger speed, PIR features, IR range, and other technical details of Stealth Cam DS4K Ultimate trail cameras, look them up online. If you want to know the value of these cameras and what I’ve learned from them over the years, now you have it. Study a three-minute video clip of a big buck, herd of elk, flock of turkeys, or pack of coyotes, each captured in 4K with incredible sound quality, and you’ll begin to realize what these cameras can teach you. Now, study hundreds of trail camera video clips a month–thousands a year–and your knowledge of wildlife and animal behavior will be taken to a level you may have never imagined.
