Need help with partial overexposure (1 Viewer)

I am using a trail camera to capture some nocturnal animals' photos. The problem is that when the animal is close to the camera I get an overexposure. The animal and anything close to the bottom hald of the picture is so overexposed all I see is a white flash of light!

Is the problem likely due to toomuch flash or is there something wrong with the trail camera's actual camera? I am considering covering the flash with a piece of paper to see if that would reduce the amount of light it is putting out. Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome. The camera would be Ok if I could simply change this exposure issue.

I would suggest some toilet paper (white soft kind) over the flash as a diffuser - it works well and is a cheap solution. However for an outside trail camera which could be out in all weathers I would look to some sort of plastic based cover (something similar to what lumiquest use) for a more durable solution.
For a trail camera if it is to be using flash all night long out could look to using flash exposure compensation (if it supports such a feature) as cameras tend to overexposed when using a flash - though at night its going to be tricky to blance that out without losing your details.

I don't know what model you are using but my experience of trail cams is that they are fairly unsophisticated beasts. When taking pictures at night there is no metering they just fire the flash at full blast. Some diffuser will help, the stick-on film used for modesty glass might work, but will limit the range of the flash.

I find that all my trail cam pics need to have the levels played with in Photoshop to see what is actually there.

It can be a slow experience getting a trail cam set up right. Set up, wait a night or two, have a look, adjust etc. etc. But try to position it so that there is no foreground vegetation that can wash out with the flash. You also need to take account of the start up time of the particular camera, some units can take 3 seconds to go from first detection to picture, by which time the animal has walked out of range.

Best of luck