The smell of cat urine was strong. It was obvious that the bobcats were still in the area. Nearby, there was a patch of ground that had been pawed up and marked with droppings as well. It was dusk and with a dim flashlight, I made all the final connections and double checks just as I had on so many occasions that I'd lost count: Set the main flash to 1/16 power 3 feet from here, set the fill flash to 28mm zoom 3 feet from there, infrared beam trigger ON, set camera to f/11 at 1/200 sync speed, auto-drive at 3 fps, lens on manual focus and, oh yes, put a dead squirrel in the middle of it all!

This is how it had gone almost every night for about 6 months in the spring of 2002. It paid off with some nice shots of 3 different bobcats that found the bait and tripped the trigger (see Photographing Bobcats at Night). But by mid-summer, I started to reach "bobcat burnout". Besides, the weather was so warm that not only was I eaten up by mosquitoes every evening, but the squirrel road kill bait just didn't keep as well as it had in the cooler months.

Fast-forward to the fall when my next door neighbor Ray sends me an e-mail announcing that he had seen a full grown bobcat out in broad daylight at 11:00 in the morning that day. Well, this piqued my interest in getting some more shots of these local felines. It had been almost a year since the first photo encounter and I wondered if the same bobcat that we'd gotten so many pictures of in the spring would still be in the neighborhood. We were also entering mating season, so would some male suitors come by for a photo shoot?

So, here I was setting up the camera at night again and it didn't take long to have the answers. Just an hour after dark I went back out to make sure the lens was set to manual focus and found that the bobcat had already come and gone. It only took her about 1 second (3 frames at 3 fps) to break the beam and make off with the bait! What an old pro she had become. While photographing bobcats at night has been rewarding, what I'd really like is to actually see a bobcat and even have a chance to photograph one in daylight. While they are known to roam freely at night, they also do occasionally come out during the day (mostly in the morning and evening) as my neighbor Ray can attest. But, how could I get close enough to get decent photos? Could I use a blind and my trusty road kill bait? Would a bobcat fall for that? Of course, there's only one way to answer these questions and that's to give it a try.

I had planned to spend some mornings and evenings set up in a blind with my trusty squirrel road kill bait in sight, but a full-time job and busy weekends didn't allow any time. After Vladi, another neighbor, saw a bobcat on his driveway in the early evening, I finally decided to spend a Sunday morning cruising the neighborhood. I didn't see anything before breakfast, but as I left the garage after breakfast to my surprise I spotted her going along the fence line of our property. She proceeded to climb up in a tree and I moved in as close I as I could without immediately being spotted. I had already decided to use Fuji Provia 100F pushed to ISO 320 to give me plenty of speed and fine grain. This turned out to be a good decision considering the overcast sky. Using a Canon 500mm f4.5L lens I was able to get 15-20 shots before she came down and went off into the woods.

Quietly moving into the woods, I was able to find her lying not far from the trail. After a few shots, she spotted me and we spent the next 20 minutes or so looking at each other, her face sometimes partially obscured by a tree. Eventually her eyes began to get heavy (typical cat) and she laid her head down. After a few minutes, she slowly turned away and was gone. Needless to say, this was an exciting event in the life of a nature photographer and after I shared the experience with many of my neighbors, several of them reported that they had also seen a bobcat in the daytime in recent weeks. As it was late November, it may be that mating season was in full swing and that's the reason they were out at odd times of the day for bobcats.

Now we're all hoping for kittens in the spring!

And that's where the story was supposed to end. The article and slides were mailed off, but wouldn't you know it the very next day, another neighbor Jim, sent an e-mail with 12 digital point and shoot images of a mother bobcat and 3 cute cubs right on his back porch! This explained why we were seeing the bobcat out in broad daylight. It wasn't spring, but she'd already had her cubs and was hunting during the day to feed them.

So, we held up the presses to see if we could include some shots of those babies. I searched high and low for them for a few weeks, but no luck. It would take almost a month for me to get my chance when on New Years Day 2003, one of the cubs came meowing like a house cat up on the back deck. Since I'd been keeping the camera and 500mm lens set up on a tripod in the living room for just such an occasion, I was able to open a bedroom window and get 6 quick shots before it moved out of sight.

A year after our first bobcat encounter it looks like we still have a healthy population in the neighborhood. I would never have guessed that they'd stay around this long, much less have offspring. Hopefully we'll have many more opportunities to see and photograph them in the future.

About the Equipment and Technique

Canon EOS 3 with Canon 500mm f4.5L lens
Provia 100F pushed to ISO 320 (+1 2/3 stops)
Exposure approximately: 1/200-1/250s, f/5.6-f/6.3
Manual mode, One shot Auto focus
Spot metered the bobcat at 0 to -1/3
Gitzo 340 Tripod with Kirk BH-1 ball head

Canon EOS A2 with Canon 300mm f4L IS lens
Manual mode, Manual focus, IS Off
Auto drive set to 3 fps
Kodak Elite Chrome Extra (EBX 100)
Exposure settings: 1/200s, f/11
Main flash 3 ft from subject at 0 exposure comp
Fill flash on slave 3 ft from subject at -1 stop
Radio Shack Infrared beam trigger wired to electronic release
Gitzo 340 Tripod with Kirk BH-1 ball head

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Jack Smith has been involved with photography as a hobby since his high school yearbook days and in recent years has been focusing on wildlife and Nature. His technical training is in Photographic Science and Instrumentation from Rochester Institute of Technology. Photography has always been a alternative to the more technical side of life working at Texas Instruments in the Digital Light Processing group (the people that bring you DLP TM Digital Cinema, DLPTM HDTV's, and those great DLPTM conference room projectors). Jack and his wife Kim take every opportunity to vacation in locales that offer both great hiking and great photographic opportunities such as Alaska's Denali NP, Glacier NP, Yellowstone NP, and Banff Canada. This gives Jack a chance to practice photography and Kim a chance to hike (and carry Jack's extra gear). Over the past year, Jack and Kim have had the special opportunity to see and photograph a bobcat family living right in their neighborhood.