Moultrie makes some great products for deer hunters, including reasonably priced trail cameras. I use Moultrie feeders and trail cameras on my hunting adventures. Today, I’ll review two of the Moultrie trail cameras that I own and have used; the M-880 and the D-555i.
Moultrie M880 Trail Camera (2014 Model)
The Moultrie D555i, above was the first trail camera I purchased. It has a cool preview screen, wide angle shot, and decent camouflage for Florida and Texas (where I was hunting when I bought it). The first couple of times I tried it out in the backyard, it worked great. Good pictures of actual animals. That was the last time it ever worked, even remotely well.
I took the camera out to Texas with me along with the M880. The M880 provided us with great deer scouting pictures and video. the D555i took over 13,000 pictures and filled the memory card on the very first occasion on which I used the camera in Texas. After that, I didn’t use it again on that trip.
After Texas, I quickly had a deer hunting trip to North Carolina. No need for trail cameras, as we know this property, very well! As soon as I returned home from North Carolina, I called Moultrie about the D555i. Their customer service on this occasion was excellent! They immediately provided me with a shipping label to send my D555i in for repair. I was pleasantly surprised when Moultrie returned a brand new D555i to me, rather than a repaired version of my original camera.
I immediately placed the D555i out at my hunt club with high hopes. Those hopes were quickly dashed when I retrieved the first memory card of pics from the D555i only to find thousands of pictures of nothing on the SD card.
The D555i takes picture after picture until the memory card is full. After reading some reviews of the trail camera, it would seem that there’s an issue with the camera sensor. It takes pictures all day during daylight hours. It seems to work OK overnight, mainly taking pictures of wildlife.
After the latest issue and shortly before my 1 year warranty on the camera was up, I called Moultrie customer service, again. They had me reset the camera and suggest that it was my Macbook Pro that was causing the issue; asking that I format the SD card on a PC. In spite of my doubts of these solutions, I did them all and put the camera back out. No joy. Same problem. Now, past my warranty, I’ve pretty much given up on Moultrie and this camera.
The M880 on the other hand has been a dependable workhorse trail camera all the while. Great pictures, video, and only pictures of wildlife. I wish I had bought two of these cameras.
Both cameras cost about the same. I paid about $115 for each of them on Amazon. Now, the D555i is listed at $139 and the M880 is listed at $129. I would not pay $1 for the D555i, but I’d be happy to trade mine for another M880.
