Don’t buy a GoPro to film your hunts until you’ve seen the mistakes I’ve made filming my pheasant hunts with a GoPro.
Disclaimer about filming hunts with a GoPro: I love filming hunts with my GoPro. I’m in no way trying to dissuade you from filming your hunts with a GoPro. There are shortcomings to filming with a GoPro, like sound quality. But overall, I HIGHLY recommend filming your hunts with a GoPro, especially if you do the type of hunting I do.
In fact, I think think that if you are a solo pheasant hunter like myself, a GoPro is the only solution to filming a pheasant hunt, chukar hunt, quail hunt, or whatever upland bird you are hunting. Especially if are hunting without a dog or with a flushing dog. There is no reasonable way you can capture your hunt on video unless you use a GoPro.
I happen to have three American Brittanys so I do pull out an iPhone to video with while they are on point. But then I put it away and capture the flush and my shot with a GoPro. Well...not always and that’s the problem
Not just for bird hunting
Although I’m harping on bird hunters, a GoPro is fantastic to film your hunts no matter what you are hunting. The best thing about a GoPro is that it is a “set it and forget it” type of camera. You turn it on and, depending on the settings, you have the next hour and a half on film which is about how long a battery lasts.
I go into the field with 4 GoPro batteries, an Ankar, and a GoPro battery charging hub.
A GoPro is an excellent backup if your primary camera fails. If you are going elk hunting you bring a backup rifle, right? I do. The GoPro is small and light so it isn’t a burden to accompany you on the backwoods elk hunt. Do you really want to lug a massive DSLR 10 miles into the mountains of Colorado?
So what is the problem with filming a hunt with a GoPro
If you want to get sick to your stomach imagine you’ve finally put in for a Colorado elk hunting tag and are traveling all the way across the country, you hike further than a marathon to get to your elk and pack it out. You decide to spend the first night back in civilization at the local Hampton Inn.
You shower quickly and pass on dinner for the moment because you can’t wait to see the footage of you sticking an elk that is 20 yards from you and then...all you see is sky and tree canopy. Oof! That hurts.
It has happened to me. Not on that level but on pheasant hunts. Here are a couple of screenshots of videos I took while pheasant hunting.
In the first one, I focused on making sure I got the whole flight of the bird in the frame when I took a shot. Unfortunately, I didn’t get much of the dogs in the video.
Here is the full hunting video. It is only a little over a minute because most the footage came from my iPhone. I was pretty proud of this video because the dogs did so well that day. Unfortunately, I only got a little of it on tape.
The next few videos went well.
Then this happened. Someone, please explain to me what exactly am I shooting at. Believe it or not, there is in fact a pheasant somewhere above the picture frame.
Here is the video of this pheasant hunt. Although the part I did produce was good, I only produced the first quarter of the hunt with Lily, because I botched the camera angle so bad.
And this problem applies to multiple types of mounts, chest mounts, head strap mounts, and ball cap mounts. And other mounts too. I’ve used the head strap mount and the ball cap mount. The chest mount I saw on YouTube the chest mount was a problem for cyclists because if you don’t tilt it upwards when standing they only got the ground when riding a bike.
The solution to this problem when filming your hunts with a GoPro
It only takes a minute, but once you’ve mounted your GoPro, however you mount it, check that it is pointed somewhere where it will capture the shot you plan to take. If necessary, stop a couple of minutes into the hunt to see if the video you’ve captured so far is to your liking.
I hope this saves you from some of the trouble I’ve gone through with my personal GoPro experience.