We couldn't believe our eyes as we left the driveway early on December 22, 2001 and watched a large Bobcat chase down a squirrel right in front of us! He caught it just before it reached the safety of a tree in the neighbor's yard. When he looked up at us, we rolled to a stop and turned off the motor and lights. As we sat there in shock, he got up with the squirrel dangling from his mouth and walked back across the road and disappeared into our small patch of woods.

That was the start of a multi-month project to photograph Bobcats in our backyard in Parker, Texas - about 20 miles north of Dallas. I wanted to get started right away, but as luck would have it, we were leaving for Christmas holiday that afternoon, so I'd have to wait until after the New Year. I hoped the Bobcat would still be there when we returned. Little did I know that he (and she) would be there for some time.

The stealth of Bobcats is legendary and I figured that trying to catch one hunting at daybreak or sundown would be very difficult, not to mention that it would require lots of time sitting in a blind in the dark and cold. Because Bobcats are very active at night, I decided to set up a camera and flash with a remote switch and to just use bait to attract them. Some people said that a Bobcat would never come to such a setup, but there was really nothing to lose in trying. In order to implement the remote setup, a modification to the electronic cable release (remote switch 60-T3) of my Canon A2 had to be made. The cable was cut in half, the 3 wires inside were soldered to the terminals of a 3-conductor 1/8th inch stereo plug. This allowed me to remove the hand switch and replace it with a physical or electronic switch to close the circuit between the two wires that trigger the camera. With a little trial and error it's very easy to figure out which two wires you have to touch together to trigger the camera. When I need to use the remote switch normally, I just plug the hand switch back into the cable and it's good to go.

The other required element is some kind of physical or electronic switch that the Bobcat can trigger when approaching or taking the bait. To start with, I used what I call "tin foil switches". These are very simple to make and consist of two pieces of heavy tin foil (like from a disposable baking pan) that are connected to the two trigger wires of the remote switch. The trick with this kind of switch is to place it in such a way that taking the bait causes the two pieces of foil to touch together.

Normally I'd attach two thin foil strips to a log in such a way that when the bait was moved or lifted, the strips would touch together and trigger the camera. The second kind of switch I used was an extension of the tin foil switch that I call "stick switches". With this kind of switch, the tin foil can more easily be hidden out of view. The idea is the same as with the tin foil switch, but in this case, one end of a stick has tin foil attached to it and the stick is nailed loosely to a log. Another piece of tin foil is attached to a stationary object (maybe the same log) in close proximity to the end of the stick. The bait is then placed in such a way that when it is taken, the stick would be moved slightly and the switch triggered. The third and most successful type of switch used was an infrared beam. I got one at Radio Shack for $50 (Pulsed Infrared Invisible Beam Intrusion Sensor Cat. No. 49-551A) and it works great! It runs on a 12v rechargeable battery and when the beam is interrupted, it closes the circuit for 3 seconds or as long as the animal stays in the beam. I'm sure there are much more sophisticated IR beam photo traps available, but for a simple setup, this one works great. Having a minimum "on-time" of 3 seconds means you get a lot more shots per incident than with the single contact tin foil switches. On the Canon A2, the slow auto drive setting fires about 3 fps, so if the beam is broken for a fraction of a second, the camera will fire off 8-9 shots even if the subject leaves the beam.

To get a good photo of the Bobcat, it would obviously require getting him to a particular spot facing a certain way at the time he tripped the switch. Early on, I tried some easily available baits such as sardines, raw chicken, beef soup bones, etc. These baits attracted numerous varmints (opossum, rats, a grey fox, skunks), but not Bobcats. The second sighting of the Bobcat came early one morning while looking out a window in the direction of the camera set up when I noticed a blue jay and a crow making a commotion in the back yard. Then sure enough, the Bobcat came walking by with a squirrel in his mouth. We watched him nonchalantly wander off with his breakfast. Since he had walked right past the raw chicken bait I had set out, it became clear that he liked squirrels. Luckily, there is no shortage of squirrel road kill in our area, so I began scooping them up, along with the occasional rabbit, and using them for bait. Needless to say, my family had a good time with this at my expense! Just to make the bait more irresistible, I ordered some trappers lure scent from Minnesota Trapline Products over the Internet. Tim Caven at Minnesota Trapline Products recommended Fox Hollow Lure GH-II because it is very "loud". Let me tell you, a little dab of this stuff will make your eyes water, but apparently Bobcats love the smell!

It took a couple weeks of putting out the bait, rigging the switches, setting up the camera and flashes and changing flash batteries in the middle of the night before I got the first photo of a Bobcat. In fact, the first location I selected was totally unsuccessful!

But instead of giving up I decided to move the setup to another spot and within a few nights I got the first shot of a Bobcat taking the squirrel. Just a few nights after the first successful photo, we had "a two squirrel night" where the first squirrel was taken before 9:30 at night. I had gone out to put new batteries in the 540EZ flash and put out more bait, this time a rabbit. By morning, the second "bait" was gone. What surprised me was that the Bobcat in the second series of photos was a big male (the one we had seen during the mornings) and the other one was a smaller female! We didn't even know we had 2 Bobcats in the neighborhood! Also, this is the only time we were able to photograph the male - all the other shots we have were of the female. Studying Bobcat behavior I learned that females have much smaller ranges and stay in one general area whereas males have larger ranges and do not necessarily have one home den. I suspect the male was frequenting this area mainly because the resident female was here and it was early January - mating season!! The male is larger and much more spotted than the female.

Initially, I used TTL flash with a Canon 540EZ on the camera hot shoe along with an old Sunpak 544 off to one side at -1.0 stop for fill light. This set up had two problems - The first problem is that it can cause red-eye (or green eye in the case of Bobcats) if they look directly into the lens. The other problem is that the main flash was on the camera and the camera was 5-7 feet away. This distance required a lot of flash power to light up the scene, so the flash would not recycle very fast and any multiple exposure situations might not get the full flash depending on how rapidly they occurred.

I switched over to using the flashes in manual mode, off camera and just calculated the required flash power depending on the distance and F-Stop used. With the main flash separated from the camera, it could be placed very close to the subject reducing the power required thus allowing for fast flash recycling. I would typically use 1/16 power on both flashes and set them about 3 feet from the subject. One flash was connected to the camera by a 15 ft PC cord. A small slave unit was used to trigger the other fill flash. The result was very nice dark eyes and if both flashes worked properly, good fill light. Once the proper flash setup was determined, it just became a matter of trying different arrangements and compositions to get good shots of the Bobcat. They are not very predictable and sometimes would come into the bait from behind the camera, trigger the beam outside the field view, or take the bait without triggering the camera at all. But, occasionally they would come in just as planned and look right into the camera. Two lenses were used for all the shots - A Canon 28-70mm F/2.8L was used for full-body shots and for wide angle shots. One interesting setup was to place the camera as low as possible to the ground with the lens set on 28mm with the the bait just in front of or just under the lens. In this setup, the Bobcat has to come within about a foot of the camera and it produces a somewhat distorted but very interesting view of the face. I also used a Canon 300mm F/4L IS lens for close up shots with reduced background clutter. This required the camera to be about 15 feet from the subject, but the flash units were placed only about 3 feet away to keep the power level in the 1/16th power range for fast recycling.

Bobcats do climb trees and I have the photos to prove it! One morning after a squirrel was taken, I started removing batteries and getting some of the equipment ready to take in. I had noticed some fresh scratching in the dirt in a couple of places, but couldn't tell for sure if it was from the Bobcat or from a skunk. My luck would be that a skunk had been attracted to the scent (which smells like skunk - duh), and had taken the squirrel. I didn't pay much more attention to the scratchings, but did notice that it was getting quite windy. I Had to circle back and forth around the setup a few times to disconnect this, and turn off that, etc. Bending over one flash unit to remove the batteries, it really started to seem windy and even some of the trees sounded like they were hitting in the wind. I was just getting up from that flash unit when I heard that noise in the trees again. Then, out of the corner of my eye no more than 5 feet from where I was kneeled over, that Bobcat came down out of a tree and took off running! I saw her just as she came out of the tree and hit the ground.

The noise I had heard was apparently her making her way down out of the tree. What's amazing is that I never saw her until she was running away with her tail blowing (well, just bobbing) in the wind. If she had wanted to jump on my back, she certainly had opportunities to do so since I was under that tree several times!! In fact, I was only 5 feet from it when she came down. I had previously inspected the bark on that tree and noticed it had some damaged areas, but I wrote it up to woodpeckers. No telling how many times she has been in that tree! I've heard that they have favorite trees, so maybe she would show up in this one again. Of course, I was kicking myself for not seeing her up there when I walked up. I had camera, tripod, flash, and film, - everything needed to take the photo of her up there!

I wonder what possessed her to climb up in that tree? Was she thinking... "Hmmm, seems to be a lot of dead squirrels right at this spot. I think I'll climb up in this tree and wait for the next one to pop out of the ground and die". Based on this exciting experience, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could actually get a picture of her going up that same tree after a squirrel. The first night was not successful and the next night it rained so I didn't have the camera gear set up - naturally THAT was the night the squirrel was taken! I set it up again and again with no action during the night, so I added some of that trappers scent and sure enough, the next night she took the bait! The multiple flashes captured her climbing the tree and taking the squirrel.

I threw away a lot more film than I kept. Many nights the bait would not be taken and the setup of the equipment was wasted. In the end, however, it was really neat to have an opportunity to photograph these animals knowing that someday they will move on.

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