I’ll be honest with you: I have a love/hate relationship with trail cameras. And if you’ve run them for any significant amount of time, I bet you have similar feelings.
“Hate” is a strong word, but it accurately describes my true feelings when a trail cam suddenly stops working, or I can’t figure out how to set up one correctly to shoot deer pics.
FYI: I began using trail cameras back in the day when they relied on 35mm film (late 1990s and early 2000s). After checking an old-school trail cam a few days or a week later, I had to wait while a worker at a 1-hour photo shop developed the film (either 24 or 36 print images). I can remember paying quite a bit of money for 36 print images of cows that walked around my camera for 10 minutes. False triggers (blowing weeds, etc.), while still annoying with today’s high-tech digital trail cams, caused me to curse like a sailor back in the film days. All of that money wasted. But occasionally I captured an outstanding print image of a mature buck, and it was worth all the trouble.
The reason for this walk down memory lane is I want you to understand this isn’t my first rodeo with trail cameras. Through the years, and primarily because of my long career as an outdoor writer and editor, I’ve been fortunate to test several trail cams from many of the major players in the industry. That said, I don’t claim to be an expert.
I’m not someone who rushes out to purchase the latest smartphone or other high-tech device; if anything, I’m a reluctant participant when it comes to high-tech anything. I strongly believe in the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). For that reason, I dragged my feet when the trail cam industry went cellular. I had several standard (non-cellular) trail cams that were simple to use and dependable. Why would I want to try something different?
Click here to read an article I wrote in 2021 called, “Field Testing Cellular Trail Cams: Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks.” As you’ll learn in that story, I was convinced by my contacts at Moultrie Mobile and SpyPoint to give their cell cams a try. And I’m glad I did because there’s simply no denying the advantages of modern cellular trail cams.
Setting Up the SpyPoint Flex
During the 2022 South Dakota archery deer season, my buddy Scott and I ran a SpyPoint Flex cellular trail cam in one of our best spots for capturing deer images. The camera points north, which is best in the upper Midwest for avoiding lens glare with the rising or setting sun. It’s on a tree I’ve been using for trail cams for nearly 20 years; it overlooks a traditional scrape location on the drop-off above a forested river-bottom.
To spruce up the spot for 2022, Scott and I tied in a vine above the scrape to serve as a licking branch, and deer of all sizes and genders loved it. (Click here to learn more about the mock vine scrape technique.) Distance from camera to vine was about 12 feet.
In this part of South Dakota, dependable cellular service is limited almost exclusively to Verizon. One of the selling points for the SpyPoint Flex is it connects to any cellular network in the area thanks to “dual-sim configuration and an optimized antenna.” I won’t pretend to tell you that I truly understand what “dual-sim configuration” means. (Google “what is a sim card?” if you want to get lost in the weeds for a half hour.) According to SpyPoint, it means the Flex will automatically choose the best cellular provider in the area where you place the camera. It also means you don’t have to look at the box when buying the camera to ensure you purchase the correct Verizon vs. AT&T model. There’s only one Flex model, and it will work anywhere that a hunter can use a cell phone.
The Flex runs on eight AA batteries (we used Duracell Coppertops). It uses a microSD card, which can be formatted with the push of a button on the cam. Photos and videos (if you choose the video option) are transmitted to the SpyPoint app, which you install on your phone.
Top Takeaways
The purpose of this article isn’t to provide a step-by-step tutorial on setting up and running the SpyPoint Flex. Should you purchase one, you can easily find that info online. Instead, I’ll touch on some top takeaways.
The SpyPoint app worked well, as advertised. I didn’t use many of the app’s additional features (weather, mapping, etc.). I programmed the camera to transmit pics to my phone four times per day, and when a particular image (big buck!) caught my eye, I’d share it with Scott via text or email. The app was very easy to maneuver through (i.e. intuitive); making camera setup changes through the app was straightforward. I’m still amazed that a hunter can adjust trail cam settings remotely with their phone, and have images sent to them. Crazy-cool technology.
False triggers with the Flex were rare. Yes, Scott and I made sure to clear away any vegetation that could possibly trigger the camera; blowing grass has been a culprit in the past with other trail cams. Trigger time is fast; it was also rare to get a photo of only a deer’s rump. Most pics showed an entire deer.
The trail cam is efficient with batteries. Scott and I placed the camera during the first couple days of October, and ran it for 2 months plus a week. The weather in South Dakota during my field test period was generally average. Many days the temperature was in the single digits, which is indicated clearly on each photo’s time/date stamp. When we pulled the cam in early December, it was still going strong, with battery life of 35 percent still remaining. I’m very confident the camera would have taken images until the end of the year if we’d left it in place. FYI: Scott and I pulled all of our trail cams because we both killed our bucks (South Dakota bag limit is one deer per hunter), and this area is remote, making it tough to retrieve cams after deep snow arrives.
The photo plans are reasonably priced. And you can sign up month by month; you don’t have to purchase an annual plan. I chose the 1,000 images per month plan, which cost $10 per month. (The same plan is $7 per month if you sign up annually. Click here to see the various plan options.) My Flex transmitted approximately 600 images per month to my phone during October and November. Note: SpyPoint also offers a free plan for those hunters who think they’ll capture less than 100 images per month.
Stopping the photo plan was easy. Call me paranoid, but I’m always leery about signing up for any reoccurring payment plan. It seems like companies make it easy to sign up for such plans, but stopping them requires an act of God. Not the case with SpyPoint. After Scott and I pulled the Flex in early December (and I had already paid for December just a week or so earlier), I went to the SpyPoint website to end my subscription and did an online chat with one of the company’s representatives. I explained to the rep that I wanted to stop my subscription before it renewed again on December 27, 2022, and she took care of it while we chatted. All I provided to the rep was my phone number and she was able to look up my account. She even gave me a refund of $7.31 because of the remaining days on my plan. IMO, this is outstanding customer service.
The SpyPoint Flex is an outstanding value. True story: As I was writing this article, I received the following text from Scott: “Dave, the Flex camera is only $109.99 on the SpyPoint website!! I thought it would be over $250 bucks!!” MSRP is $169.99, but Scott is correct: the company is running them on sale for only $109.99. Fact: I’ve used trail cams priced for twice or three times this amount that didn’t work half as well. Granted, my field test lasted only a little over 2 months, but I never experienced even the slightest hiccup in the Flex’s performance.
Consider this: The cam was in the field in temps from 75 degrees to 2 degrees, and it endured rain, sleek and fog. At one point in mid-November, we had an all-day rain with temps of 35 to 40 degrees, then a cold front blew in with temps of single digits and north winds of 35 mph. The locks on my pickup topper froze, I couldn’t open the door to topper (froze shut), and the power locks on my Ford F150 doors wouldn’t function properly. I had to park in a friend’s heated garage to melt the ice and get my pickup working properly again. But the SpyPoint Flex never missed a beat during those weather extremes. Impressive.
Final Thoughts
I look forward to running the SpyPoint Flex again in 2023. Scott and I already discussed placing it in the field during early August to capture velvet-racked buck pics, then running it through archery deer season. And Scott already told me that he’s buying one of his own so we can cover more of the South Dakota property.
Below are 10 images from South Dakota that illustrate the Flex’s performance for Scott and me during our 2022 deer season. In each caption, I provide more feedback from our 2022 Flex field test.
For more information on the SpyPoint Flex, visit www.spypoint.com.
