05/25/2026
Story time!
I’ve posted photos from our Reveal Tactacam trail cameras before. There’s a solar panel on the camera, to keep the battery charged, and an antenna. The camera texts my phone the photos, as they come in.
We use these cameras to monitor cattle, water troughs, deer feeders and gates. Our herd is scattered across three counties, with three kids in sports and $5 diesel, we rely heavily on the cameras, to see what’s going on.
I check the photos daily. Just this year we have captured images of, neighbor’s bulls or cows on our place, dogs, Meth-head trespassers, escaped exotic deer, busted water lines, dead water pumps, power outages, and we see new calves as they are born.
This weeks edition, showed a cow, that has a calf about 2 weeks old.
There were 20+ photos of this cow, walking back and forth in front of the camera, I have situated on a cross-fence gate. If the cattle walk that fence line, they have to go thru this gate and I get a picture of them. So, throughout the day, I see this cow, walking back and forth, as the day progressed her udder got increasingly bigger. No photos of the little calf. I had to get out to Stonewall, TX to see what happened to her baby.
Westy had baseball practice Saturday AM, so I got the trailer and Can Am loaded up, and waited for him to get back home.
Westy, Whitt & I, headed out on our adventure to find this missing calf.
Once we unloaded the Can Am side by side, we grabbed a few things out of my truck. We had no idea what we would need, no idea if the calf was alive, dead, swept away in the creek, killed by a big boar, snake bit, or had its head stuck somewhere!
A rifle, pistol, wire cutters, wire, ropes, and one of my handiest tool ever, battery operated Milwaukee SawZall!
This is the ranch out by Stonewall, that burned up March 2025. Most of you saw those pics/video of the burnt ranch, and the cattle we were able to rescue from there.
Off we went to find this calf. The fences are great on this place, so I was pretty sure the calf had not gotten thru the fence, except for the two water gaps, on the creek. We checked those first. All good. Then we drove the perimeter fence, looking for either a dead calf, buzzards, or a calf stuck somewhere. The calf is black with a white face. Every burnt stump on the property looks like a black calf!
We found all of the other cattle, then started zigzagging back and forth across the pasture to find the calf.
We also kept tabs on where that momma cow was, and what she was doing. After about 2 hours of searching, we saw the cow, head back to where she was, when we got there. We drove right to her, and there, inside a burned out hollow cedar stump, was a white calf face looking at us! She was on her knees, and the hide on her little neck was rubbed off! She had been there for two days! We had driven 40 yards from the calf, TWICE!
We jumped out of the CamAm, I grabbed the SawZall, went to cutting that stump.
There was no way she was getting her head, back thru that hole!
I cut the stump, and the calf wobbled to her mother. Then immediately started nursing that engorged udder, with her little tail wagging!
What a great sight to see!
Mission accomplished!
Once again, those $100 cameras, saved the day!
Tactacam
