Moultrie Mobile has come a long way from its roots. In the late 1970s, Dan Moultrie started building automatic spin-cast wildlife feeders in his apartment closet. He later went on to build his first trail camera using a rat trap, a 35MM camera, and a piece of string tied to a bear-bait barrel.
“When I walked up and saw that rat trap sprung, it was like Christmas day as a kid,” remembered Moultrie. “We drove into town with the film and went to the drug store and got the film developed in an hour. We had one picture of a black bear. It was the best thing ever.”
Today, Moultrie Mobile builds cellularly connected products and an app designed to connect people to wild places more than ever before. With cellular trail cameras, customers can now monitor remote properties anywhere in the United States and Canada with cell coverage. Most Moultrie Mobile customers use their cameras to keep daily tabs on big bucks, but many others use the camera and app system for security in places where internet and power connections don’t exist. With built-in advanced artificial intelligence (AI), customers can get real-time notifications on their phones if a person or vehicle is caught on camera. This works the same for bucks, turkeys, bears, hogs and many other species, too.
The Moultrie Mobile app is the centerpiece of the ecosystem. When a camera is triggered by motion to take a picture, the image is uploaded via a cellular connection to a cloud-based server. From there, the images and data that come with it, are fed into the Moultrie Mobile app.
“The Moultrie Mobile app is where the action happens,” said Mark Olis, senior brand relations manager for Moultrie Mobile. “After you hang your camera and walk away, everything else is done through the app. It’s where you view images and videos, but also where you change all the camera settings and plan your hunt.”
A New Connected Feeder
Moultrie Mobile’s newest cellularly connected device isn’t a camera, it’s a feeder system. Feed Hub is the first-of-its-kind product that harnesses the power and convenience of cellular technology to give you full control of your spin-cast feeders. Feed Hub will automatically connect to the strongest cell provider, too. There are no SIM cards to swap around, just turn it on and it will look for the strongest signal and connect, no matter the network that works best in your area.
Never have hunters and land managers been able to remotely monitor and communicate with their feeders. Before Feed Hub, hunters would have to physically open the feeder lid and look in to see how much feed is remaining. Then, it was only a guess as to when the feeder would run out. With many people living hours away from their feeders, an impromptu trip to the feed store and hunting property to fill feeders isn’t enjoyable and can be downright disruptive to work and family schedules. The only thing worse than that is climbing into the treestand and then realizing the feeder has been empty for the past week and deer activity has dropped way off.
“Feed Hub removes the stress of feeder management by allowing land managers to monitor feed levels and battery life, change feed times, feed on demand, and receive alerts if a feeder is clogged or not working properly,” said Olis. “All of this is controlled remotely via the Moultrie Mobile app, which can be done from the comfort of your couch, in the truck, treestand, or from a different state.”
Feed Hub consists of a cellular timer, a feed level detector and the Moultrie Mobile app. Once installed, the cellular timer connects to the cloud-based server where it relays feeder information, such as feed level, battery life, feed times, and any problems that the feeder might be having. Hunters simply use the Moultrie Mobile app to monitor this info as well as set feeder times, feed on demand, and receive alerts for feeder clogs, low battery life and feed levels.
Feed Hub will roll out in 2024 with three different configurations. The first option is a universal option that will work on all major feeder brands, not just Moultrie Feeders. This setup contains the cellular timer, feed level detector and the free Moultrie Mobile app. This is the best option if you already own a feeder. Customers will need to install the cellular timer into their existing feeder motor for it to work. Depending on the feeder brand, this can simply be as quick as unplugging the old timer and plugging in Feed Hub. For other models, it’s a quick 15-minute job to install the new cellular timer.
“I want to stress, this is a simple install,” said Olis. “I did it in 15 minutes and I am way underqualified compared to most hunters out there. We also have detailed instructions and videos in the app that walk you step-by-step through the install process, no matter the feeder brand being used.”
Lastly, the feed level detector is installed into the bottom of the feed hopper lid, so that it points down looking directly at the feed inside the hopper with the lid on. The feed level detector communicates with the cellular timer via radio frequency. Every time Feed Hub checks in, the feed level detector measures the feed level and communicates it directly to the cell timer. The universal option will sell for $99.99.
The next offering is for those who already own a Moultrie Feeder. The Feed Hub Kit comes with a Moultrie Pro Hunter II spin-cast motor with the Feed Hub cellular timer already installed. The Pro Hunter II twists directly onto the Quick-Lock adapter on a Moultrie Feeder. The only other task is to install the Feed Level Detector into the lid of the feed hopper. This kit also comes with a Quick-Lock adapter, which allows it to be installed onto other feeder hoppers, too. This all-in-one solution will sell for $149.99.
The Final Feed Hub solution is a cellularly-connected Feed Level Detector. This is ideal for gravity-style feeders and spin-cast as well. The Feed Level Detector will allow users to monitor feed levels and get alerts when the feed is low via the Moultrie Mobile app. This product is designed only for monitoring feed levels and does not allow remote control of feeder settings. The Feed Level Detector will sell for $59.99.
Moultrie Mobile App Features
One of Moultrie Mobile’s largest investments is its app. This is not a third-party app developed outside of the company. Moultrie Mobile employs dozens of app developers who are constantly raising the bar of in-app functions and features.
“The Moultrie Mobile app is a feature-rich system that allows customers to fully plan their hunt,” said Olis. “Our goal is to create one app for all your hunt planning needs. With Moultrie Mobile, you don’t have to have a separate app for weather, mapping, and buck movement predictions. All those features already live inside the app.”
Just this fall, the app team rolled out several new features asked for by customers. Moultrie Mobile subscribers can now share specific cell cams with hunt club members, family, friends, clients, or anyone they’d like. This allows their guests to log in to the free Moultrie Mobile app and see images from those cameras. It doesn’t allow guests to change any of the camera settings, though. Property lines with plat info and topo line overlays were also added to the mapping section of the app.
The biggest app update this past fall was Game Plan — the first deer-movement-prediction tool that factors in local anonymous trail camera data. By dropping a map pin on your hunting location, Game Plan will immediately start analyzing anonymous Moultrie Mobile trail camera data from your area, while also factoring in upcoming weather changes known to increase or decrease deer movement. Game Plan awards four levels of movement prediction based on the data it analyzes. Movement is predicted by Great, Good, OK, and Poor. You can view movement forecasts over 24 hours, 3 days, or 9-day intervals. You can also view the wind speed and direction, temperature, and precipitation forecast for any of the 1, 3, and 9-day intervals in Game Plan.
While Game Plan, camera sharing and the maps updates are the newest additions to the app, they are only a portion of what a customer can expect. The Moultrie Mobile app utilizes powerful AI to recognize different species of animal and even bucks from does. This is called the Smart Tags feature. A customer can quickly filter through their images by selecting buck, doe, turkey, bear, hog, bobcat, coyote, and even people and vehicles.
Activity Charting also uses the Smart Tags AI to monitor when and where the best game movement is taking place by species. For example, you can select buck in Smart Tags in the Activity Charting screen, and the app will auto-populate a bar graph showing buck activity based on time of day, temperature and moon phase. You can click on each one of these sections and see the individual camera breakdown for these movements, too. This allows you to scout your property remotely without ever disturbing animals.
Hunters have a dozen filtering options in the app based on things such as day or night photos, barometric pressure, photo or video, specific cameras, and even custom tagging. Custom tagging allows you to create a tag for specific bucks. Once created, you can apply that tag to any image of that specific buck. You can then go to Activity Charting and click on the custom tag and see a graph of that individual buck's movement based on time of day, temp, moon phase and even see which cameras he shows up on the most.
The Moultrie Mobile Way
Olis said, “There’s nothing in the market like the Moultrie Mobile ecosystem — from advanced AI, and game-camera-driven prediction analytics, to mapping out your entire hunt from one app to monitoring your feeders from miles away. Moultrie Mobile gives customers the power to stay connected to the things they care about most. You don’t even have to take my word for it. Download the free Moultrie Mobile app and click on the ‘Demo’ option to test drive the entire app. The demo account is connected to active cameras running in the field right now.
“Don’t let all this advanced technology scare you off. Moultrie Mobile has invested heavily in its customer success team, too. Customers can reach a U.S.-based human 7 days a week. That means you can call on the weekends when you are at your hunting property. Customers can get help via phone, email or online chat.”
For more information on the Moultrie Mobile Feed Hub, cameras and app, visit www.moultriemobile.com.
