His brother in law wrote the best comment: "A remarkable photo, documenting that bobcats move so well in the dark because they're equipped with two bright headlights."
This might also be the place to link to this remarkable story about hunting lynx with the Old Believers
in Siberia, in this case in Tuva, which the writer describes as "a western where the white man lost". Well, except for the old Believers, who have been there so long, and kept themselves "wild" so long, that they almost play "Indians" to the more connected Tuvans. Some have evaded not only the comissars of the Soviet Union but the soldiers of the Czar; they started emigrating during the rein of Peter the Great, who they still blame for "tobacco, potatoes, and heresy".
Despite their odd beliefs they seem to live a healthy life, unusual in the backwaters of a troubled Russia, trapping, hunting, and gathering in a splendid harsh country I would love to see (I have actually been very close-- Bayan Olgii is just to the south). The only thing irritating is the author who, having spent a week hunting with them, albeit worrying about the presence of guns and noises in the night, gets weepy when his hosts finally kill a lynx and present it to him. "I wanted to drop it. It had been alive." Well, yeah-- what did you think they were going to do?
10 comments:
http://mlitvaitis.unh.edu/Research/BobcatWeb/gallery.htm
Some great trail cam pix of bobcats here.
WH
mucho cuidado, trail cams will capture any movement, including moving naked hikers!
I've been extremely pleased with this model:
http://www.trailcampro.com/bushnelltrophycamhd.aspx
Good quality pictures, also has a video mode. It has plenty of settings but is pretty user friendly. It also has insane battery life. Mine's been hung since October-ish and I haven't changed the batteries yet.
I agree with Jim Kelly. I've got the Bushnell trophy cam also, and the batteries last a very long time, plus the thing has kept working at 30 below zero. Awesome.
The newest models are the most expensive, so just search for Bushnell Trophy Cam to find a prior year's model at a much cheaper price - I've seen them as low as $100 at Cabela's online.
A great Film not emotionally befuddled by fears of the wilderness, arms and dead game is "Happy People" by Werner Herzog and Dimitri Vasyukov showing the life of a russian sable-trapper´s year in the Taiga:please watch!!!http://www.amazon.com/Happy-People-A-Year-Taiga/dp/B00AXYZZ6C
Do you know what kind of dogs the Old Believers use to hunt their lynx?
Guy-- almost certainly Laikas, the ancient husky- like dog of the Russian forest from Finland to Vladivostok and south to Mongolia and Kazakhstan. It is the North Asian version of the oldest type of the three ancientkinds of dog; the laika /husky probably the oldest, then the "oriental " sighthound, John Burchard's salukoid; then the great flock protection beast that lies beneath such modern selections as the Anatolian and the Tibetan Mastiff, and probably looks more like Cat's Aziats than any other type alive today...
Vladimir Beregovoy breeds them in Virginia and has a life's experience with them in the Urals, Kazakhstan, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, and Virginia.
All in (maybe) next book, or one after next...
Happy People is on Netflix also. Watched it a couple weeks ago and thought of it immediately when I read this post.
Trail Cameras--how fantastic they are, and how I HATE them in "my" territory! I LOVE seeing all the fantastic shots of otherwise mysterious lives of wild animals that you would rarely or never see(like the cougars' return eastward in the U. S.--it is a phenomenon being very well documented by "hunter's cameras", as they are often referred to now)--but WHAT A PAIN IN THE ARSE for incorrigible peasant trespassers like myself!!!! I can usually spot them and avoid them, but it is much harder not getting candid photos of my unique dogs taken! So far I(nor my dogs) have been "identified" in my far ranging woods roamings, but it has been tricky at times! Hypocritically, though, I had one briefly I set up behind my house by a wildlife feeder I keep out--I got shots of deer, rabbits, raccoons, and possums all feeding peaceably together--a visiting South African friend, upon seeing some of the photos, jokingly remarked how like a Bambi cartoon they looked! It was one of the old-fashioned cameras that used actual film, and malfunctioned eventually and I never replaced it. No doubt the computer chip/disc whatever they are, are much better and more dependable now--with(dammit!) UNLIMITED picture taking ability! Whatever you do, be sure and don't put it up where it is easily seen by humans, as people steal these things like nobody's business! A local deer lease put up a BILLBOARD warning the general public not to trespass because they had trail cameras monitoring those woods. Of course all the locals trespassed forthwith to swipe all those cameras so advertised! The billboard came down, with no further such pronouncements!!!!....L.B.
....and just in case anyone misconstrued my previous comment, and may think I stole any of those cameras, let me emphasize that absolutely no, I did not! First of all, that area mentioned is rather peripheral to "my" usual ranging area(although I DID see that giant billboard and knowing typical local human behavior, thought to myself, "How stoooopid!"), so this deer lease's cameras posed no problems for me. Second, I have no computer, therefore no way to even utilize these digital, computerized, chippy things that are in use now, so swiping one would do me no good--I couldn't use it! Third, within what I consider "my" territory, the goal is to remain more unknown and unsuspected than Bigfoot(and as unprovable), so I don't ever bother ANYTHING belonging to anyone, as that just lets people know somebody's around! I do get really aggravated when other "interlopers" do such things(stealing cameras, automatic feeders, even the portable deer stands and blinds!), because that puts ME at risk in my roamings! So my presence in the woods is as phantom-like as I can possibly achieve--I do not even leave any tracks, if at all possible! A human footprint is especially suspicious and bizarre in my area, where virtually all human woods travel is by ATV!.....L.B.
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