Game cameras and......ants.

The raid will wear off in a week or so, you'll need to keep spraying. The Ortho chemical that they carry back down to their holes works, also you might consider ant traps which essentially lure ants in and then poison them. I can tell when I had my property in Texas the ants infested the entire acreage. I had computers in my barn infested with them at times.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Ortho-3-lbs-Fire-Ant-Killer-Mound-Treatment-020550605/302681373

Truly marvelous creatures!

I hate the little beasts, but I have to hand it to them, they are certainly remarkable.

The little sugar/oil/fat ants (pissants) are, nearly impossible to keep out of anything. And are stalwart enough to excavate holes under the pavment in the driveway.

I find that Ortho HomeDefense is pretty good at repelling them from the recycle cans. But does not work for as long as the directions indicate, against the ants. Works awesome on everything else!

This year has been good to ants. I find little colonies under cedar siding left stacked in the yard to pick up Monday.

The birds liked it too.

Yeah I had them get into one of my cameras too this year. But once I cleaned them out they have not returned. I always seem to get the big old spider that want to make a nest over the lense or motion sensor.

You might want to spray some scent killer on it too.

I worked with a couple of youngsters on a ball field lighting job. Not having any wire lube the pups went to the store and bought apple scented dishwashing liquid and proceeded to pull the wires and make up the splices. Now this was on a 480V system and was controlled with a big Contactor that turned all of the lights on at one time.

Three weeks later we were notified that the lights wouldn't work. Upon opening the contactor box we were greeted by more ants than I have ever seen in one place. They were so thick that they blocked the contacts open. We had to clean all of the ants out of the contactor and seal all of the conduit openings. The ants were attracted to the apple scented soap. Just proves what I have always said. Pups can tear up a bowling ball with a rubber hammer.

Not in a camera, but got fire ants inside of a land line telephone on a range at Ft Bragg. I think if you get that Ortho ant kill powder (the one that smells like death) and put it on ny mounds near your camera and around the base of the tree with the camera it will solve your problem.

If it continues. . . the smallest visible chip of a mothball will drive them off. A whole mothball might melt your camera.

Ranchers use the permithrin infused ear tags to keep fire ants out of their well pump motors. Maybe you could rubber band a couple of ear tags onto your game cameras.

You might look to this thread for some practical info:
https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...r-giant-ants-with.853995/page-3#post-11187249

I've had them get in one camera over the years. Same thing, they got in there and laid a bunch of eggs and basically lived all winter. I sprayed the camera with some of that year-round home defense inspect spray and they've never been back. I run 10 cameras and I've only had that problem once with one camera.

Ants are attracted to electricity. I first noticed that ants would follow the electric cables to my travel trailer and go all the way to the converter if there was an opening. A thousand ants inside a travel trailer makes an unhappy wife. I started spraying Raid roach & ant spray on the cables and that stopped the problem. They make it without synthetic scent and that is what I use inside my permanent deer stands. I also like Spectracide BugStop which is even more scentless than Raid and that is what I use to keep insects out of my deer stands and off of my deer mounts. I do some taxidermy work and on deer mounts I spray a little on the brisket, inside the ears and around the panel. That Spectacide BugStop is really good stuff. It works on small insects like spiders and library beetles.

Out changing SD cards in a couple trail cams on a friends land this afternoon. One of them's been on the same tree almost 3 years now. Open the door and it's loaded with ants. The real tiny variety. First time in 5 years of playing with multiple trail cams that I've had that problem. Then I recalled this thread. I was wondering how they got all the way in there to where the card and batteries are. It's a Wildgame Innovations trail cam and I've had good luck with them over the years. That cam is also due for fresh batteries so next time I'm out there for the batteries it's gonna get a good clean out and some insecticide. Now I'm wondering what attracted them there in the first place.

Around here they get in the air conditioner contactors. My theory is they are attracted to the ozone that results from the contact points opening and closing. Some are killed, and this causes more to come and be killed and they pile up until the contactor will not work anymore. We usually change the contactor and recommend ant poison around the a/c unit. We have been less successful just cleaning the contactor.

In my part of Florida they are pretty common for getting into the points on well pumps. Most years when the rainy season would start at some point soon after my water would go out. Pull the cover off the points and sure enough it would be full of dead fire ants. Clean them out, a little bug spray, and it would be good for another year. Just fire ants. Never found any other type doing this.