Hunting Forum

Anyone been able to use your iPhone or smartphone as a picture viewer for your game camera?

No. Don't have an iPhone or a smartphone. And I don't take my dumbphone in the field with me, it stays in the truck.

I'm with you except I do take my dumbphone with me just in case of an emergency. It's set to vibrate and the volume turned WAY down. The only one who ever calls my dumbphone is my wife and close friends, and that's not real often 'cause the only time it's on is if I'm not home and the wife's not with me. In hunting season, they all know that during daylight hours, it'd BETTER be something REALLY important to make it vibrate!

First, don't just take yourphone with you, keep it where you can get to it. For example, if you fall from a treestand and are wearing and full body harness (instead of incurring serious injury, paralysis, or death from going all the way t to the ground), the phone is of no use up in your backpack. You need to be able to get it out while you are hanging there. If you learn a bit about suspension trauma, you will call for assistance sooner!

The key is data transfer. If you have a game camera, I would start by sending the manufacturer an e-mail. If not, send one to the game cameras you are considering purchasing. Ask them (a) do their cameras download to phone and (b) if there is a phone application that would work to download from their cameras.

Doing it with the phone is definitely more convenient than carrying a laptop in. And the results are immediate, instead of removing/exchanging the chip and reading it later. The phone is smaller and serves both functions.

Yes I carry my phone. It's a dumb phone. It is often on vibrate, sometimes off, but always there if I ever have an emergency.

Good idea.

I think some cameras now are bluetooth enabled so they should be able to be paired with a bt device for data transfer too.

SUQ (Stupid User Question): why not just have two data cards and; walk up, switch cards, leave. Probably faster than data transferring, deleting, etc thereby spending the least possible amount of time in the area.

I only carry my cell phone when dog hunting, since I'm way down in the swamp.......and it's doctor's orders! Steve, I do just what you questioned. I carry blank sd cards and swamp them out when I check my cameras. I even have the little plastic cases labeled with the corresponding camera #, so I never slip up and put one with pics on it into a different camera by mistake. Then when I get them to the house, I know exactly which camera's pictures I'm downloading.

I actually have a card viewer, that's smaller than a pack of playing cards, that I'll take with me if I want to check the photos. I can view the SD card right there at the camera, delete unwanted photos, save any wanted photos to the card viewer and down load them later to my computer after I get home. I've also used to use a small pocket digital camera to do the same thing.

As for my phone, I figure if anybody wants to get ahold of me while I'm hunting they can wait untiil the next time I wander by my truck.

My brother-in-law had a Covert camera that used a SIM card just like a cell phone, and it would send a picture text to up to 5 phones, as well as send emails. However, it quit after a hail storm when it filled with water. Still takes daytime pictures, but the flash doesn't work anymore, and it doesn't sent pics.

I carry my phone in case of emergancies. My uncle and his son find that turned on silent, they text each other instead of using their talk-a-bouts since it's a lot quieter.

While he wasn't hunting, a buddy of mine was logging and had a tree come down and shatter most of his leg and had to crawl 100 yards to his truck to call for help. So lesson learned - make sure that phone (or radio) is with me!