Bow Camera Mount

by: Tom Sorenson

Brian Piltz, owner of Insane Archery, sent me a gadget that allows a camera to be set up on any bow figuring it would be useful for us as we film our hunts. If he only knew how useful! Last year there were several times we came back from hunts thinking, “if only we could have a camera that could catch exactly what the hunter sees!”

Thanks to Brian, we are through wishing wishes.  On my recent elk hunt, I mounted the camera mount on my bow and off to the woods I went. Because I was running low on space left for recording, I didn’t get my actual shot, but did get this footage of the bull and another bull bugling.

Here is my assessment of Brian’s bow camera mount:

Ease of Use: I don’t shoot with a stabalizer, so used a screw to attach the camera mount in that slot. Easy as pie.

Functionality: I mounted a little point and shoot digital camera on the unit and found that the only functionality problems came from the camera, not the mount. The mount gives you quick access to your camera controls, plus swings to several different locking positions enabling you to always find a slot where it is out of your way and not hampering your shot.

Edit: What I found with shooting with the camera slotted to the side is it effected my shot slightly. This is easily remedied by sighting your bow in with your mount and camera attached. However, when I shot with the mount pointing straight out just like a stabalizer, it didn’t effect my shot at all, and I could shoot with camera attached or not and it wouldn’t matter.

Is it Pracitcal: Absolutely. For a tree stand hunter, this will knock your socks off – it is the ticket to capture your hunts. Period. My only gripe was that for us, being back country hunters where we’re doing a lot of hiking, it would occasionally hang up on brush and because of where I mounted it, it rubbed on the outside of my hand. The rubbing would have been easily remedied by attaching it elsewhere (such as to the bow cut outs) but it was not enough of a hassle for me to bother with moving it from where I otherwise wanted it. I love the fact that it didn’t add much weight at all to my set up – a big thing when covering a lot of miles during a hunt.

Edit: To be fair, no bow camera mount will give you perfect look at the shot.  There will be camera jump at the time of the shot – but that is to be expected. The only camera mount that won’t have that is something that attaches to you, the hunter. The problem with those is that it is nearly impossible to get the camera lined up with what you’re shooting at – trust me on that one! I’d much prefer the bow camera mount over any helmet cam. For those of you wondering about how it holds up on the shot, Brian sent me the following video he took:

Will My Buddies Make Fun of Me: It’s doubtful. Especially when they see that you were able to catch footage of that big ol’ bruiser they thought you were lying about.

My 2009 bull - notice the black camera mount (minus the camera - it was being used to take this photo).

TOTAL SCORE:

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