Trail Cam Captures Tiny Bobcat Pouncing on Deer Five Times its Size
Fascinating footage captured by a trail camera shows a wild bobcat lying motionless on the ground as a deer approaches before pouncing at it.
The trail camera that recorded the amazing video in Flagley Beach, Florida belongs to Matt Hathaway who says the “deer appears to either have not noticed it or believed it was not a predator such as a bobcat.”
According to Fox 35, encounters such as this are more common than people realize. But adds that Hathaway has been taking videos of wildlife for years and nothing has ever come close to what was recorded on February 21.
“When we saw what happened it was pretty wild,” says Matt Hathaway. “It’s two seconds. It’s instant and fast.”
Hathaway says he didn’t think the bobcat was going to attack a deer but “sure enough, he did.”
“The small bobcat takes its chances against the larger foe in a risky and fruitless gambit,” Hathaway writes beneath his YouTube video. “We luckily have the trail cam footage to show a unique event in nature, that is both thrilling and fascinating.”
According to Danielle Lucas, the Animal Care Director of Gatorland in Orlando, instances such as this happen more often than we think.
“They [bobcats] typically go for birds, rabbits, rats, things like that but if the opportunity presents itself. It generally would be a younger deer but that one looked to be a, probably, 120-pound female deer.”
And Lucas thinks that judging from the bobcat’s reaction, the feline quickly realized it had bitten off more than it could chew.
“That [kill] would probably last him quite some time. He would probably eat what he wanted, maybe she if it was a girl, maybe she had cubs or kittens somewhere and cached the rest and maybe came back later and feasted on it for the rest of the week,” Lucas tells Fox 35.
Bobcats are famously small weighing between 15 and 35 pounds. A 120-pound deer would be some kill for the species that is also known as a red lynx.
Last month, PetaPixel reported on a trail camera in Michigan capturing extremely rare footage of a cougar taking down a deer.
Image credits: Matt Hathaway
