A trail camera line is a lot of fun

Eastern coyote

This buck has dropped one antler. The other is soon to follow

For years now I have had a blast photographing animals with my trail cameras, and Nolalu, Ont.,  is a wonderful place for this pastime.
I have never seen another place with such a variety and abundance of Boreal Forest animals. Right here on our own acreage we have seen moose, deer, black bear, timber wolves, coyotes, red foxes, grey foxes, lynx, fisher, marten, long-tailed weasel, skunks, red squirrels, flying squirrels, porcupine, eastern chipmunk, star-nosed mole, meadow vole, jumping mouse, white-footed mouse, red-backed vole, shrew, little brown bat, woodchuck and snowshoe hare. There is no water on our property or I'm sure we would also have beaver, muskrat, mink and otter. We have also seen some non-Boreal animals. The grey fox would be considered by most to be a more southern species but I included it in the list above because I suspect it was originally a Boreal animal that got displaced by the red fox. We saw two of these small canines for the first time last year. Three animals that are absolutely not Boreal that we have seen are grey squirrel, raccoon and thirteen-lined ground squirrel. I saw the ground squirrel the very first year we moved to Nolalu, in 1985, and have never seen another.
Capturing these critters on camera takes luck but also knowledge of their habits. There is a lot of satisfaction in setting a camera for a particular species and then successfully getting its photo. You learn a lot from the cameras too. For instance the time stamp on the photos above showed me that this deer simply didn't fear the coyote. Some of the photos showed the animals were just two minutes apart. They had to know the other was there.
If you didn't have a trail camera you might not ever know that some of these animals existed.
I would think a trail camera would make a dandy Christmas present for most sportsmen but also for children with an interest in the outdoors.

Cork and I running our camera line today