Every now and again, I'll go and check a trail camera, and it didn't take any pictures due to an SD card formatting issue. This one sometimes still gets me, and sometimes leaves me clueless. That way your camera won't be facing directly into a rising or setting sun.
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The best thing you can do in this situation is to face your trail camera North if that's an option. In some situations, my blank pictures are also caused by either a rising or setting sun. If permitted, clearing the the ground to the bare dirt with either a weedwacker or saw or anything really can help. This is usually my issue when placing a trail camera in some type of CRP or similar setting. If it's wind based, one thing I've found to help is clear out a big area in front of the trail camera. The Solution: Depending on what causes the blank images, there are a couple different solutions. It seems that this issue is much tougher to combat here in North Dakota than other places I've run trail cameras in the past.
![how to format sd card for stealth cam how to format sd card for stealth cam](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/12/66/7c/12667c143e3d96e179d7c0ffdfde37a1.jpg)
All of the images eat up battery life, SD card space, and is downright annoying. Blank Imagesīlank images really get my blood boiling when checking through a card, and for good reason. A great article to reference when it comes to batteries is The Science of Trail Camera Batteries. Though they cost more up front, lithium batteries will help preserve the life span of your trail cameras. I'd recommend either using higher end trail cameras, or minimally using lithium batteries. So depending on how many cameras you run, your budget, etc. The Solution: What I've found is that an issue like this normally occurs when either using cheap trail cameras or cheap batteries. To say I was bummed would be an understatement. Perplexed, I took the camera home with me, and it simply needed new batteries. I opened the camera, turned it on and.nothing. Seems safe to leave it without checking it for a month right? Wrong! After letting this camera soak for the majority of August, I returned just before season rolled in to see what had been using this corner of the bean field. How many times have you had a camera die for seemingly no reason? For instance, I had a trail camera this summer take a few thousand pictures and the battery life was still above 90%. Maybe I've just got awfully bad luck, but I'll go ahead and assume (maybe to just make myself feel better) that I'm not alone when it comes to this issue. Was that buck still moving in daylight? When was the last time he was there? Is this a spot I should hunt again soon? While thinking of this, I started to think about how much I become frustrated because of trail cameras, and how I try to avoid these frustrations. Amid frustration, many questions flowed through my head.
![how to format sd card for stealth cam how to format sd card for stealth cam](https://media.mwstatic.com/product-images/src/primary/962/962494.jpg)
Worst of all? One of the mature bucks that had been using the area all summer went from only moving during the middle of the night to showing up in daylight multiple days during those eight days. A combination of thousands of deer pictures to go along with a lot of blanks as well contributed to this. An 8GB SD card filled up in the matter of eight days.
![how to format sd card for stealth cam how to format sd card for stealth cam](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/db/d8/19/dbd81978335675da177a6dee16c84ade.jpg)
When I walked up to the camera and turned it on, it read "memory full." This immediately lead to a groan as I feared the worst. With all of the attention that I've placed on Kobe, I haven't hunted many of my other properties, so I didn't know what bucks had and hadn't shifted into their fall ranges. It hadn't been checked since early September, and I figured it'd be nice to know if any good buck had been frequenting the area. Last night as I got out of the treestand, I thought it'd be a good idea to swap SD cards from my nearby trail camera.