Winter 2008

May 6, 2020 Southern Shore ATV Rip - Camera Prank (27 Photos)

27. Last fall we prepared for our moose hunting season very well completing a lot of scouting and even setting out a couple game cameras. Having shared car pooling duties all season I was dropping off Mark & Matthew French one evening when one of them left my tai gate down which ended up with me losing a pair of Dunlop Rubber Boots.

26. At the end of moose hunting Mark and I took ours down but Stroh & Matthew forgot to take theirs. I was after the boys all winter to make a trip down for the day and retrieve the cameras but to no avail.

25. Fast forward to today. Amid covid-19 social distancing restrictions and spare time due to shortage of work, I loaded up Project Foreman and headed 2 hours down the shore to retrieve the forgotten cameras and have a nice day spring ATV riding in my favourite moose hunting country.

24. Of course I could let the boys know I was heading down, but it was mid week and quickly became a prelude to a great minor retaliation prank for having to buy new boots!

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22. First up was retrieving Stroh's camera. Now to be fair Stroh did me no wrong so I saved him a two hour drive all the way down to retrieve his camera. It was still in great shape and batteries appeared to still be working!

21. With Stroh's camera secure it was on to Matthew's a short ATV ride away.

20. Needless to say I was astonished to find that the camera was still working and taking pictures as it took these pics of me riding in to retrieve it! This camera with 4 ordinary AA batteries has been in place and working since September 2019!

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16. So my initial retaliation idea was to eventually get together with the boys and head down to Ferryland to "retrieve" the cameras. My plan was for me and Stroh to let Mark & Matthew walk all the way in the trail and spend awhile looking for the cameras to no avail and later that day reveal that I already had them.

15. What actually ended up happening was even better!

14. Exactly one month later to the day we get a group chat text from Matthew who is in Ferryland and found his camera gone. He figured it was stolen for sure. He made a special trip down and walked all the way in to utter disappointment. He also didn't let anyone else know he was going down and also didn't try to retrieve Stroh's camera! LoL

13. Of course I didn't fill him in right away and the poor bugger made a stolen camera post on the NL Game Camera Facebook post and all. I started dropping some subtle hints as well as some of the pics from earlier in this article and he got the hint.

12. In the end it wasn't a huge retaliation prank, but likewise loosing my boots also wasn't a huge deal.

11. I spent the rest of my day on the Southern Shore having an awesome ride before heading back to town.

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3. The big question is, what was on the cameras? Unfortunately Stroh's camera although still powered up and working stopped taking/saving pictures in November. The camera says the memory card is full although the card is actually 80% free so we will have to work on that.

2. Matthew's camera despite the cold and harshness of winter continued taking pictures all winter. Almost 4000 (not a typo) in total! I figure wind moving the tree it was attached to played havoc with the motion sensor settings but it did capture some moose and an epic time-lapse from the winter! The only issue is that the cold reset the time/date stamp a few times however the camera otherwise worked flawlessly.

1. For pics of moose found on the camera click here: Fall 2019-Spring 2020 Moose Pics, and scroll down for my YouTube video time-lapse of Fall to Winter Storms to Spring!

Cheers, MIKE