Pheasant Hunting Video

[SmithShady]

Well, Santa Clause was pretty good to me this year and brought me a new camera for Christmas. I'm excited, because this one is highly portable, waterproof to 130ft, and shoots high definition video. It will be a while before the weather warms up enough to take it Scuba Diving, but it didn't take me long to come up with another use for it. You guys don't think I'm weird for strapping a camera to the end of my C Grade Fox and going Pheasant Hunting do you?

http://vimeo.com/84014877

Mike

[CJB964]

a fox is probably the finest camera mount money can buy.

thanks for the video, that and a coffee was a great way to start the week!

-CB

[abner]

Great!!! I hear the whistle, the dogs, the brush, but what happened to the sound of the gun? How do you filter out that sound? Thanks.

[fox-admin]

Very cool I have though about getting that same camera and putting it on my lab while she retrieves ducks. Thanks Craig

[ROMAC]

I got the same camera at Christmas as well. I spent the last few weeks getting my bow set up now I need to concentrate on my shotguns. I'm not much of a techie so this is a big step for me.

I'm going out this Friday on a pheasant hunt myself so who knows, maybe I'll be doing the same thing.

[TOOL MAN]

Hey Smitty!! What's with the 'wink-wink' on the report?? That ain't no Winchester '73, Jimmy Stewart!! The Britts say, "Butt, belly, beak, BANG.......not, Butt, belly, beak, BLINK.......LOL!!!

[SmithShady]

Abner, when editing the video I was surprised that the sound of the gun going off wasn't overpowering compared to the rest of the audio. I didn't do anything to the audio on this video except add the music. My guess is that the camera is filtering out extremely loud noises and normalizing the sound, which kind of makes sense based on what this camera was designed for.

Craig, they make several mounts for dogs, either on a vest or on the collar. There is a company called "Capture Your Hunt" that makes them. What you realize after getting one of these cameras, is that it would really be cool to own several. They emit their own WiFi signal and up to 50 cameras can be controlled with a single remote, which is also waterproof. So, you could mount a camera on yourself, one in your blind, and one on your dog and start them all with a single button. Pretty cool stuff.

ROMAC, if you want to mount the gun on your Fox and try it out, I used the Roll Bar mount from GoPro to put the camera on the barrels. The one problem with doing so (other than not being able to see ) is that the camera folds under the recoil, and I was fighting to keep it adjusted all day. The same company I mentioned above makes a $4 "keeper" that screws in and steadies the camera on the base. I've ordered one, but haven't tried it out yet.

Tool, that wink is trying to look under and around the camera, as well as 30 years of a bad habit that I'm afraid I'm too set in my ways to break! Even with the wink and a camera directly in the sight plane, I still hit my share of butts, bellies and beaks.

Mike

[Stan Hillis]

Mike,

That was cool. I can't figure if you never miss, or if you're like the Duck Commander crew and just "never show misses".

Were you able to look under the camera? It looked like, from the shadow you can see, that it was mounted high enough for you to possibly do so.

Thanks for posting that, SRH

[Silvers]

Mike, thanks for your efforts and for posting the video. Question: I looked at the video on an older desktop computer, and also on my laptop which is only a few years old, and in both cases the video runs in "spurts". Plays for a few seconds, stops briefly, plays again, stops, etc etc. The stops are shorter toward the end of the video but are still there. Any ideas why that might be?

Frank

[SmithShady]

Stan, I think I had three or four misses on the day, which did end up on the cutting room floor. Like any other hunt, some shots I should have made, and some I had no business taking in the first place (camera or not). There is a very small opening under the mount, probably a 1/2 of an inch. If you were sitting still and aiming a rifle, it might be enough to look under and see what you're doing, but for the most part the camera was directly in my way. The camera also changed positions on the barrels depending on which way it was pointing. Part of the day it was a few inches from the muzzle facing towards me, and later I turned it around and it sat right in front of the forend wood in order to show as much of the barrels as possible. It might be the only time that crossing birds were easier to hit, since leading them meant they weren't behind the camera! I actually hit the first bird flushed in front of me (first one on the video), and the laughing you hear in the background is because the bird fell into the cab of the ATV that was trailing us. The owner of the preserve was driving and almost took a bird to he head. As the day wore on, I got used to having it there, and the camera is so light (as well as my CE) that it wasn't a burden to carry either.

Frank, the video was shot in High Definition (1080p), which actually caused me a lot of issues in editing it. I'm working on a 2009 MacBook Pro Laptop, and while I could import and edit the video on my computer, it didn't have enough horsepower to export the video so it could be shared. I tried everything to export it in the software that came with the camera including buying and installing twice the amount of RAM that is currently in my computer. In the end I had to re-edit the video in another piece of software. If your laptop is fairly new, it sounds like what you are describing is a network issue. If you don't have a strong connection to the web, video like this can lag (especially high def) as it's being rendered on your computer. It happens to me at home with YouTube videos sometimes. I'm probably going to export a version that can be saved on a mobile device, so if you aren't able to see this one, I'll shoot you a link to the smaller version which shouldnt' need as much bandwidth to run.

Mike

[Silvers]

Mike thanks again for your efforts. I was able to see the entire video twice and enjoyed it greatly but I did that in "spurts" on both computers. No need to send me a different version but thanks anyway. Just for info the desktop is hard wired and the laptop has a wireless connection. I am on hi speed internet. The video played the same in spurts on either computer. Maybe my software isn't the most current version or something like that? I'll ask one of our sons to t/s it next time one is at the house. Frank

[Stan Hillis]

Mike,

Sounds like you know a whole lot more about computers than me. If it helps any, I played it on my Mac desktop and it played right through from start to finish without any buffering (I think that's what I heard it called, when it stops and starts back ) I use satellite internet (Wild Blue) with the fastest package they offer. Anytime I get to thinking it's too slow I just recall how it used to be on dial-up.

Good shooting, too!

SRH

[Foxnut]

Mike,
Very cool video and fun to watch the action. I looked at the Go Pro cameras but decided against it given their resistance to support hunting/guns. Very sports driven company with the exception of gun/shooting/hunting. Their are a couple others out there but I am not sure how they compare to Go Pro in quality and ease of use. Thanks for sharing. Makes we wish it was October or November again!!!! Foxnut