A week ago Thursday night [April 2, 2006], while I was stalking into this area (same spot, incidentally, I'd been calling over for several months without success) with the new trail cam I'd just finished building, I caught a glance of what could have been to be the hindquarters of a lion darting into the chapparel. Wasn't entirely sure my eyes weren't playing tricks on me; that is, not until a few minutes later when two cats began vocalizing to one another, from what seemed no more than 100 or 150 yards away through the brush. These vocalizations continued for 20 minutes or more as I was setting up all the gear, approaching closer and closer until I heard them skirt past at about 50 yards, chirping to one another. My biggest concern that night was that I had so much stuff to pack in I'd left the long lens back at the truck, and if one would've walked up on me for a clear view to within 50 feet or so while I was setting up, I'd have been SOL with only the wide angle. It took a lot of restraint NOT to try to call to them or call them in, just to get a look.

Being that I was under this sort of pressure and time constraint, I'd only set up one IR trigger. Not too surprisingly, I got a whole roll of a packrat running back and forth in front of the trigger's reflector, Thursday night.

Friday night, I got nothing at all. Third night, Sat-Sun, was the first night after reconfiguring the set with a dual beam array, wired in series have to be broken simultaneously in order to trigger the camera. This time, no rodents, no false triggers. Wow.

So, long story short (much too late for that!) it turned out that I got 24 frames of this gal sometime early Sunday morning, a measured 7 feet from the lens, using a 35mm SLR film camera with a motordrive, that newly-minted weatherproof housing, a dual beam IR triggering array, a wide-angle 24mm lens, 2 electronic flashes, and Fujichrome Astia 100F transparency film.

The lion's right front paw is interrupting two crossed IR light beams, to take her own picture, remotely. She's standing over the recent scrape that I'd freshened up the evening prior with some female-in-heat urine. Hidden under the sandstone ledge to the right is a FoxPro FX3 used to play a continuous loop of my recorded voice impersonation of a lion in heat mixed with a courting lion sound, with pauses, overnight.

Even with all the advance preparation, I was extremely lucky to get several excellent poses, catchlights in both eyes, tack sharp whiskers, head turned just so, etc.