A few pictures taken in Wyoming of a mule deer and a small black bear traveling on a great ridge trail set. The bear was only photographed once but this deer in velvet was photographed multiple times (events). Time of a visit and frequency are important in gathering more information about this animals behavior, home range, etc, but this is a fragment of the information that the photographs from remote cameras can provide. Animal health, activity patterns, predator prey relationships, and powerful educational tools among others are a few of the reasons why remote cameras are growing in popularity with hunters, biologists, and those who love the outdoors. This is the same ridge trail where I photographed a wolf. This camera was only up for 10 days but exemplifies the diversity of wildlife over a ten day period on one trail.

       I'd like to post a link to a blog with some good info and great wildlife photographs. Zach Dautrich has given me a true interest in birds and is the reason why I often pull the car off the road and grab the binoculars. He is extremely knowledgeable and regularly updates his blog. Click HERE to view his recent posts and read about some of his inspiring work.

The West is bigger...

         Things are just bigger out west, or at least it seemed that way in Wyoming. It's a different type of landscape from New England, one that's often open enough to easily watch wildlife from the road. In the early hours of the morning, dozens of mule deer in bachelor groups devoured everything in their path. I couldn't guess the score of antlers, but it was clear that we saw some huge bucks, maybe even record breakers.
           Holding true to crepuscular activity (animals that are active primarily during twilight), we often saw these deer on the side of the road between 4-6am. The high beams would inevitably flash across the field and in the distance the glint of eyes from a lifting head covered in a dark velvet crown. This photo was a decent buck that we often saw on the drive to work. There were a few much larger bucks that I would have loved to chase around. Photographed the first week in July, this guy had a long way to go.

        This black bear stopped, climbed, and then smelled the tree where there was recent bear activity. I was hoping the bear would climb just a another foot higher before pausing but I was happy with this picture considering the variables.

     This bear tree was found by a friend and suggested as a good camera spot. I had missed the tree on my last walk, but I couldn't agree more for this great location. These heavily marked bear trees always remind me of the large conifers that grow to close to the road and inevitably get hit year after year by giant snowplows. Although this large pine was hundreds of meters from the nearest road, fresh sap from a recent bear visit ran slowly down the dying trunk. If the tree could choose, I think it would have picked the snowplow over the bears.

    The beauty with building your own cameras is that you know and understand the functionality of the entire system. You are aware of it's capabilities, risks, and rewards. Once comfortable with a thorough understanding of how a system works, you can experiment with different setups and use your understanding to not only photograph wildlife in new ways, but discover interesting and effective methods for studying ecology. Often one idea or method leads to another and so on. Some believe that remote camera photography is simply running out and strapping a camera to the nearest tree, and for some it is. It usually takes at least a couple hours (sometime days) of walking to find an ideal camera location. When you really dive into the process there is so much more then simply putting a camera out. My use of remote cameras for photography/ecology is a pursuit in which continued progression by use of technology and methods is the ultimate goal.

       In this set, I hung a camera from wire to try to photograph bears visiting the tree. I placed a large rock on top of the camera to stop it from swaying and being triggered by motion. It took about 30 minutes to get to camera wired up correctly and another 10 to get the rock on top of the camera and balanced correctly. I probably could have picked an easier tree considering the first branches were 10ft off the ground. Results from this camera located in Wyoming will be posted shortly in a follow up post.

Bear cruising the beach

          I found an old piece of drift wood and jammed it a couple feet down into a clay riverbed about 10ft from shore. I wired the camera up to the piece of driftwood, and after 5 minutes of tinkering to get the perfect camera angle, I left the camera to do it's work. Hopefully some of these photographs demonstrate not only ways to document a species, but new methods, angles, and ideas for observing and photographing wildlife.
           There were plenty of tracks along the bank to suggest heavy animal traffic, but unfortunately I could only leave the camera out at this location for 5 days. I was hoping for a passing wolf pack, as the tracks showed they had been at this site a week prior, but I was happy with this picture of a big bear wandering by.
           Leaving a remote camera outside always poses a serious risk for the owner. Cases can leak, people can steal them, and animals can destroy them or carry them off among other things. It an especially large risk to leave a camera dangling above the water, were a passing beaver or a curious moose could easily swat it down, but always the believer in "All or nothing" I decided to take the risk in the attempt to get the shot I want. This picture was taken in Wyoming.

Wolf on the cat scat

         This collared wolf paused by the camera, located on a high traffic ridge trail, at 2:00 am to smell a cougar scat left only a week earlier. I didn't expect this this canine to take any interest in feline scat-but wildlife always has a few surprises. Look at the size of the hind legs and paws on this guy! This picture was snapped by my remote camera in western Wyoming.