Camera traps - something to worry?

[bogbud]

Last time i went to my bog (in the dark, as always) i noticed some short flashes of light from a direction it should not come from (no road, no house, not even a trail). It was followed by a distinct sound of something that was moving swiftly through the forest. It must have been some deer or a boar as it was much more agile and much less loud than a human could be.
Flash and sound were a fair distance away from me, so there was no imminent danger ans after a short while i resumed sinking but i wonder if this was some camera trap used for wildlife-photography??

I know that this area is visited by hunters or rangers sometimes, so maybe it was part of their equipment.
Anyone from you has some experience with this kind of camera? Wikipedia says there are models with a flash (easy to detect obviously) but also some with an infrared-flash. I'm a bit worried about the latter one, any way for a human to detect this kind of model (does it make a sound?). What about the range?

[Thearbiter2]

Probably a Trail Camera. My dad uses one to track deer in the woods and to see if any Coyotes are coming near the hen houses. Some come with night vision built in so the flash never goes off and scares the deer away so you might be on a memory card without knowing it. The only way to see it is to know what your looking for because they are camouflaged to.

[BogDog]

At one time you had to rig your expensive Nikon to an infrared trigger device to trip the flash and shutter, then leave it out in the woods. Nowadays, dedicated wildlife cams are getting down to the budget-cam range: http://www.basspro.com/shop/en/game-cam ... pageSize:&

[Mynock]

Definitely a trail cam in action. Maybe wear a ski mask into/out of your location? If you're not doing anything illegal and they can't see your face, then problem solved.

[Fred588]

The description of flashing lights here is pretty vague. Could it be fireflys?

Aside from that, the chances of having been photographed is roughly zero. Keep in mind that the intensity of light illuminating one's face or any other object diminishes with the square of the distance from the light. Therefore, if the flashes were not bright enough to blind you for a few seconds there was nowhere near enough light to photograph anything. And even if there was, the chance you were looking right at the camera when the flash occurred is extremely poor.

Anyway, don't be paranoid about being photographed by a landowner.... the light was really way up in the sky and coming from a ship from Tinhat 7.

[Duncan Edwards]

If the flash lead me to believe I was a subject then I'd be the proud owner of a camera I just found. If you don't want to go that far then just open it and remove the memory card. If you see a little antenna on the thing then it's uploading them to the web as it takes them. It also will have gps on it so maybe you just cover the lens with a glob of mud. I've played with these things and they're getting pretty fancy.

[bogbud]

Thanks for the advice. It was quite far away, couple dozen meters and not directly in front of me. It's also a forest, so the chance of being on the picture is zero.
Still time to play some hiker and search it during daylight.

[Mynock]

Or buy a Bigfoot costume and prank the crap out of them.

[Villein]

Or buy a Bigfoot costume and prank the crap out of them.

Speaking of which I got a good laugh out of Pottersville recently.
The film has a very similar premise.

[bogbud]

Hehe, nice idea but I would rather stay below the radar...