I took the bobcat with a cottontail rabbit photos at Dr. Beto Gutierrez’s Santa Clara Ranch the morning of August 14th 2009.  Dr. Beto was kind enough to invite me back for my second visit to his ranch only this time Larry Ditto was joining us for what was soon to become a morning of photographing wildlife I will never forget. 

It was still dawn as we arrived at the blind, but there was enough light for us to notice that some much needed rain had fallen overnight.  While Dr. Beto was thankful for the rain, he voiced his concern over the fact that we may not see much wildlife at the water hole we were setting up at as a result of it.  Thankfully, he was soon to be proven absolutely wrong about that.

Dr. Beto, Larry and I set up our camera equipment in the blind and before long, the wildlife started to appear.  We spent the first 45 minutes to an hour photographing birds, such as green jays, cardinals, roadrunners and quail, as well as a few mammals including a pair of cottontail rabbits.  Some of the wildlife was drinking water in the man-made waterhole directly in front of the blind while others, including the cottontails, were eating corn from the deer feeder to my left. 

As we kept taking pictures, I turned to my right to whisper something to Dr. Beto, when all of a sudden I heard a squeal to my left.  I quickly turned to see what the squeal was when much to my surprise, I saw a bobcat standing there with one of the cottontails’ throat grasped tightly in it’s mouth. It must’ve been an instant kill because even though I turned to see what the squeal was immediately after I heard it, I did not see the cottontail squirming or moving at all.  It was limp and completely lifeless.

It took a second or two for my brain to register what I was looking at but as soon as I realized that not only was there a bobcat standing there out in the open only yards away from me but it was holding a rabbit in it’s mouth as well, I reached down and quickly picked up my back-up camera and began taking pictures.  I had my main camera with my big lens set up on a tripod pointing towards the water hole but I had my back-up camera with a zoom lens ready for any quick “grab shots” which may present themselves to my left.  Thankfully, unlike my big lens which is manual focus, my zoom lens is autofocus.  Otherwise, in my haste to “get the shot”, I may have ended up taking a bunch of blurry pictures of something spotted standing there with something furry in it’s mouth.

The bobcat stood there, with the rabbit in it’s mouth and curiously enough with it’s right hind leg lifted up in the air, long enough for me to take several pictures.  Then it lowered it’s leg, turned around and walked towards the same high grass and brush it must’ve been hiding in for a while, waiting for the right moment to pounce on the cottontail.  I kept taking pictures until it completely disappeared into the brush.

Speaking of the bobcat hiding in the brush, I’ve included a photo of the two cottontails below because I came to realize later that one of the cottontails is looking into the brush in the same direction the bobcat came from.  That means that it is very likely that it either heard or sensed something hiding in the tall grass not long before it (or it’s mate) became the bobcat’s breakfast.  Was it the bobcat it sensed?  The fact that, according to the EXIF data on both images, I took the photo of the cottontails just nine minutes before I took the first photo of the bobcat leads me to believe that it was.

While Dr. Beto and Larry were not able to get any shots of the bobcat because of where they were sitting, they were able to see what I was photographing.  Once the bobcat was out of sight and I was done taking pictures, I turned to look at them.  I don’t remember if I was able to utter any words, but I’m sure that I had my mouth wide open at what I had just witnesssed and photographed.  As we all sat there just looking at each other, the same thought must’ve hit us all at the same time.  This thought being, “The bobcat might come out of the brush directly in front of us”.   I know that we all thought this at the same time because without saying a word we each sat up straight and pointed our lenses to the opening in the brush were if it was going to come out it would come out of.  Soon we realized however that we would have no such luck.  The bobcat either stopped to eat the cottontail right there or it carried it off deeper into the brush. Most likely the latter.

While I am thrilled to have gotten these incredible images, and I will forever be grateful to Dr. Beto for giving me the oppotunity to take them, I wish that he and Larry would’ve had a chance to photograph this once in a lifetime event as well. This was one of those opportunities that wildlife photographers dream about but seldom get to see, much less photograph.  I was very fortunate to be in the right spot at the right time and I am so glad that I had my back-up camera ready and pointing in the right direction when that bobcat caught us all (especially the cottontail) by surprise.                                       


One of these rabbits was the bobcat's breakfast: