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Story & Photos : Samarn Khunkhamdee
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For photographers, large animal remains are the best kind of "supplementary equipment"... confused? Large animal remains attract all kinds of predators and also other wildlife that feed on meat and animal remains, presenting photographers with the perfect opportunity to capture these lovely creatures on film. I set my trusty 20 mm. wide framed, automatic, infrared camera, triggered by movement - which in this case will most likely be animals closing in on the deer remains - at 1 meter from my "supplementary equipment". Knowing I would only be using my automatic camera for just the first night, I hoped for whatever it could capture. Despite the abundance of wildlife existing in Hua Khakhaeng, it took some people up to 2 - 3 weeks to capture anything on film.
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But on my third day at Hua Khakhaeng, I actually spotted a dark brown, short-eared, long-nailed bear, referred to in Thai as the "bear-dog" which is the smaller one of only two kinds of bears existing in Thailand. This I attributed to pure luck, knowing full well that there was very little possibility of spotting bears at all, much less in a tropical forest during broad daylight. These bears were night predators and simply lived too deep in the forest for people to leisurely wander into them. It struck me then how amazing it was to be able to hunt bears at all - for their body parts to be used in Chinese medicine - and how confounding still that the already small population of bears was fast decreasing because of this practice. |
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Upon returning home, I developed the film from my automatic infrared camera... and was delighted to discover that one of the six frames did also, as I had briefly, capture a giant, cuddly bear... Luck was really with me after all, for the forest had opened up to its short time visitor in a way I will always be thankful for. |
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