Roots, Game, and Trail

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Trail Camera Footage of a Bobcat Eating a Doe Carcass in East Texas

This spring, I was scouting for animal sign in one of the National Forests in East Texas. I carried my trail-camera in my backpack and my goal was to find a heavily used game trail to position my camera on. As I bushwhacked along a small creek, I came upon a dead whitetail doe. After examining the carcass, two things stood out in my mind. The first was that the doe was carrying a fawn, which probably made her susceptible to predation. The second was that the haunches and head of the doe were covered with brush. Years ago, In Montana, I saw something similar when I came across a deer that had been killed by a mountain lion. Lions usually cache their kills and covered them with debris. I knew this carcass wasn’t the result of a lion kill, but perhaps its smaller cousin, the bobcat. I found a nearby tree and position the trail-camera to document the predator, should it return to the site. The video above is condensed footage of what the trail-cam captured over a period of about 3 nights and 4 days.