Approaching my best treestand recently, I was eagerly looking forward to checking the image counter on my trail camera. It'd been a rough week, bowhunting whitetails in the heart of ongoing rifle seasons (plural) with minimal sightings. I needed a bit of encouragement. A high image count would bolster waning spirits.

It hit me like a slap in the face. The fence post my camera once occupied was conspicuously bare. I scanned others down the fence-line, and then surrounding trees trying to recall if I'd moved it, searched the ground in case a bear had ripped the camera away. I was quickly forced to accept reality.

Some turdknocker had stolen a scouting camera I'd owned for only a month. I became so instantly enraged I considered abandoning the hunt, but at least my stand was left intact. The crook was too lazy to climb a tree and tote it out, having obviously hiked in a considerable distance from an adjacent property, adding trespassing to the list of offenses.

I've lost four trail cameras, including this one, to date. I've had several treestands (plus climbing sticks) dissappear as well. This spring some scumbag actually stole one of my bear-bait barrels, hoping to discourage further effort and take over the area I suppose. Such acts always affect me the same; eliciting rage. I find myself most of all wishing I could catch the culprits red-handed.

In today's world, you leave things sitting unguarded and they're bound to disappear. But I've always expected better from fellow sportsmen. I own some steel trail-cam lockers designed to protect cameras from curious bears. I suppose I'll now have to start padlocking them to protect from human molesters. What sad times we live in.

My Kansas friend now glues silk leaves to cameras to help camouflage them from thieves after losing several. I actually siliconed tree bark to my safety boxes after my bear bait was violated this spring. And, of course, tree-stand locking cables are now standard offerings in major treestand catalogs, though when a friend lost his key recently a single blow from a hatchet went through the cable like bailing-twine.

Cellular units transmitting images wirelessly might seem a viable solution, but the high cost of such designs weighed against the possibility of captured images actually helping to apprehend a thief would make it a high-stakes gamble. Another company offers a system gathering images in a remote box hidden up to 250 feet away, but again, if you fail to make a positive ID via captured images you're still out a camera. I guess other than hiding cameras more carefully, there's really no way around the occasional theft.

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Editor's note: This was originally published in 2013.