The only rare, endangered ocelot on record in Arizona has shown up not once, but twice, for a hobby photographer after he placed trail cameras to capture bears in their natural habitat.
A landscaper by trade and wildlife photographer in his free time, Jason Miller of Vail, Arizona, got interested in trail cameras five years ago. A former hunter, his dream is to capture a jaguar on film in southern Arizona.
“I try to get whatever animals I can on camera for my YouTube channel,” Mr. Miller, 54, told The Epoch Times. “I have a way of finding animals. ... I’ve got the same ocelot twice. It ended up showing up in a bear spot where I was getting videos of bears rubbing trees.”
Mr. Miller captured footage of the same ocelot on June 7, 2021, and again on July 4, 2023, using motion-activated trail cameras in the Huachuca Mountains of southeastern Arizona, close to the border with Mexico.
After recently capturing the ocelot on video, Mr. Miller was elated.
He said: “I was over the moon about it. It was incredible, absolutely incredible. It’s wonderful to get wildlife on camera but to get something that rare, it’s unbelievable.”
“The first time, I set up cameras in a creek area where there’s pools of water, and bears used to go and swim and drink,” he said. “I found their hair, their fur, on trees along with claw markings, so that’s what led me to set up the cameras on that tree. ... It was pretty much the same thing for the second video, except I found some trees that the bears rub against and scent mark ... I initially set out to get their footage, and the ocelot just showed up.”
Mr. Miller believes the ocelot crossed the border from Mexico and has stayed for “at least the last few years” in southern Arizona. The species is a medium-sized spotted wildcat native to the southwestern United States, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Margarita.
The Arizona ocelot has been fondly nicknamed “Lil' Jefe” and is currently alone. Conservationists have offered an explanation as to why.
Lil' Jefe was first sighted in Arizona some 10 years ago, and Mr. Miller’s footage proves the rare, lonely wildcat is still alive.
The hobby photographer said that swapping his hunting rifle for a camera is his way of “giving back” to wildlife; instead of pulling the trigger and killing. He can click the camera shutter and capture wildlife on film time and time again.
“I’m showing what is out there, I’m showing the abundance of wildlife down here in southern Arizona,” he told The Epoch Times. “Every time I go to check a camera, it’s like Christmas; you don’t know what footage of a wild animal you’re going to get.”
