Photographer set up his camera hoping to capture bears. 10 years later the nightmare footage confirms something else was using the den

Wildlife photographer Casey Anderson finally retrieved a camera he’d left running inside a known grizzly bear den for over a decade, and the resulting footage confirmed the space was being used by a surprising variety of animals, including an “obsessive” mountain lion. Don’t worry, this isn’t about a bear attack, although those are more likely than you know.

Anderson, who is 49 and based in the US, specializes in tracking wildlife across the American West. He originally placed the camera inside the cave, hoping to capture the den being reused by the grizzly bears that traditionally inhabit the space. When he returned to the den after all those years, he found that his patience had paid off with spectacular results, capturing a whole lot more than just the bears he was expecting.

This kind of technique, often called a “camera trap,” is a seriously useful tool for wildlife photographers, according to what Casey told Newsweek. It allows us to observe animals behaving in a much more natural way since there aren’t any humans around to disturb them. However, as this case proves, it requires a tremendous amount of patience. There’s no guarantee the camera will even be intact when you return, let alone that it will have captured anything worthwhile.

Sometimes, things just work out

Fortunately for Casey, he struck gold. Not only had the bears returned, but the footage also showed mountain lions, coyotes, and a surprisingly wide range of smaller animals using the den. The most compelling visitor was definitely one particular mountain lion. Casey noted that this specific feline kept returning again and again, almost obsessively, to the cave entrance. If you ask me, capturing that kind of repeated behavior over such a long period is a top-tier feature of this footage.

You’d think leaving any piece of tech in a damp, dark cave for 10 years would guarantee failure. I mean, it’s astonishing the camera lasted that long at all! When Casey posted about retrieving the camera on his Instagram page, people immediately wanted to know the technical secret behind this endurance miracle. The biggest question was about the battery life. One person wrote, “Please tell me what batteries lasted 10 years!”

Casey admitted that he was just as surprised, saying simply, “I was shocked.” He later revealed the technical secret wasn’t actually perfect battery life, but a classic wildlife twist. When replying to another comment about the camera’s longevity, he confessed that a bear had actually knocked the camera over, making it inactive for most of the decade. Even though it was dormant for a long time, the camera still managed to capture some truly remarkable footage during the periods when it was active.

This kind of discovery is exactly what drives Casey’s work. He says he’s spent his life locating wild places and setting up these cameras to quietly observe what unfolds when nobody is around.