Trail cam stolen from a lock box ?

[pathfinder317]

I am curious to see if anyone has ever had a trail camera stolen out of a lock box.
I saw several manufacturers that now make lock boxes, just wondering if they are actually keeping the thieves from stealing a camera or not.

 

[Vamptepes]

Landowner has lockboxes on all his trail cams due to someone stealing one out of his barn and stealing his gator. So far none have come up missing and no signs of an attempt to steal.

 

[trophy hunter]

I have seen pics where the Moultrie boxes were broken into pretty easily.

 

[M4Madness]

I'd think that if a thief came upon a lock box and couldn't get into it, they'd just smash the lens of the camera out of spite.

 

[TiMMaY]

One of the first lessons I learned in boot camp was that locks are there to keep honest people honest.

 

[dusty88]

Every barriers to theft can help, but you still have to mount the lock box to something. I suppose it depends what you mount the lock box to, what tools the thief has, and how badly they want the camera. Once they know they've been photographed, I suspect they are going to go to greater lengths to steal or destroy the evidence. The ideal thing, IMO, is to have pics sent wirelessly to another location so that if anyone steals the camera you have their picture. However, I'm not willing to pay the subscription on a trail camera.

I've seen a couple of other options. There is one company that makes radios/trail cams that can work on their own wireless network. That may make sense if you also want the radios/motion detectors. You would also have to keep all of them working in order for the transmission to occur and get back to the home base. (daisy-chain kinda thing)

Spypoint also has a "good idea" but I'm not sure how well it's working in practice. Spypoint Tiny-W3 10.0MP Wireless Trail Camera System-781249 - Gander Mountain
The camera sends its signal wirelessly to another box where you keep the memory card. You can hide that box so a thief would never know about it or find it. However, the previous version has a lot of bad reviews, and there isn't much yet on the current version. It also has a very slow trigger speed compared to many game cameras so that's a big negative for me.

We purchased a Reconyx blackout camera in camo this year and just have a regular cable lock on it. The Reconyx is expensive so it's worse to lose, but the blackout camera has even no red light at night. Put outdoors, it's very hard to see and it has such a quick trigger that it picks up more people/animals passing by quickly.

 

[Leadeye]

I would be interested to know if anybody has seen an arrest, let alone a conviction come from providing pictures of a camera thief to the authorities.

 

[yote hunter]

I would be interested to know if anybody has seen an arrest, let alone a conviction come from providing pictures of a camera thief to the authorities.

I don't really think it proves anything just that you were there ? Ive never heard of any ?

 

[dusty88]

I don't really think it proves anything just that you were there ? Ive never heard of any ?

Not being an LEO or lawyer, I'm going to guess that it at least makes a trespass charge more likely and/or gives the possibility of a warrant to search for stolen goods.

The last time we had thefts from barns, etc in our area, there were reasons that made it fairly obvious who the thief was, but not good evidence to allow the sheriff to search the guy's property (until someone saw the thief riding their 4wheeler and called that in).

 

[shunsley]

My buddy had one stolen on private property this year about 50 yards from his house. Lockbox did no good.