Bobcat and Wolf Photos

Yesterday afternoon I had a bobcat encounter that lasted around 5 minutes.

I scared the cat off the road driving back home, it jump the ditch and slowly walked into the woods about 75 feet in from the edge of the road.

After looking back at me, it then turned and walked a line parallel with the road heading toward our cabin. I just kept pace with its slow walk for maybe 300 feet and during this time the cat would give me the occasional glance to be sure I wasn't a threat.

Talk about blending in, this animals coloring is perfect! With all the down Maple trees on the forest floor and the light snow cover, I would lose sight for a time, only to find it again by detecting movement,. This was my 2nd best animal sighting ever, surpassed only by the Lynx we saw last winter.

After this encounter I pulled two of the game cameras from around the cabin and placed them out on the road just east of the private land. This area of the road has a lot of wolf and cat tracks with pee spots everywhere.

This morning as I left for town around 6:15, both cameras flashed so I knew they were still working. I kept driving even though the road was covered in wolf shit and I knew there had to be new photos.  I  decided instead to pull them after the meetings.

I got to town about 6:45 and  had my usual breakfast at S.O.B.but found myself still too early for the meeting so I took a drive up the Gunflint Trail. I parked in the Pincushion parking lot overlooking Grand Marais and saw this  wolf walk by!

Clicking might make movie bigger

Pincushion is a cross country ski area that is also lit for night skiing,

A suggestion if you are skiing around there, don't fall behind your group and no matter how bad your leg cramps gets try not to look wounded!

Just kidding, we rarely find skier carcasses in the woods, 

although this might explain all the clothing, boots, ski's and poles we uncover.

Returning to the cabin around 2:00 I stopped and pulled the cards from the game cameras and headed to the Observatory's warm room to look over the photos

(Thanks Berry for ordering the card reader in our computer.)

Well say hello to our local Bobcat

You will want to click on this photo and see it large, 

This photo was time stamped 11:58 am, probably on his way to lunch.

Earlier that morning around 2:00 am the wolf pack moved by as well.

Not sure how many  wolves were in the pack,  but according to the time stamp they were around 5 minutes.  I have the camera set to shoot 3 photos per event with a delay of 1 minute between events so I had a total of 15 photos.

Some shots just show glowing eyes in the background and I'm sure the flash startled them, so tonight I reset one of the camera to shoot more across the road rather than down it.

I've  never really shared Jim's excitement over the game cameras.

The man has 3 of them, a sack of batteries and a solar battery pack along with two A.C. chargers.

He'd place them all over in the summer and I would check them when he was gone but  I  never saw the big attraction.

 Hell, he even had a camera on his dock to find out what was crapping all over it and I have to say I didn't care as long as it was crapping on his dock and not mine.

 Well that attitude changed last fall when we started getting some great deer, moose and wolf photos from a salt lick camera. However when it got cold I pulled them because battery life is so short in the winter.

Now I'm running a battery charging rotation, bought more memory cards so I can just change them out and am enjoying the heck out of this. As a matter of fact it might be tough for Jim to get them back