Man leaves camera running in cave for over a decade and is mind-blown by what he found years later

You'd be surprised how much can happen in front of your eyes if you just sit and wait, and one wildlife photographer got the shock of their life after reviewing footage from a camera that had been filming in a cave for over 10 years.

Even the best photographers find it impossible see or capture everything while on a shoot, and that's why having what's referred to as 'camera traps' can help you get footage of events that you would otherwise completely miss out on.

These typically are set up in hidden locations and run for hours, days, if not months at a time, allowing photography experts and wildlife enthusiasts to see animals in their natural habitat without any disruption.

One photographer's decision to place their camera unit in a cave turned out to be incredibly fruitful over time, and was a classic case of the tale that good things come to those that wait.

49-year-old Casey Anderson typically tracks and snaps animals in the American West, and made the excellent decision to set up a rolling camera in a notable bear den in the hopes of catching the dangerous animals in an intimate environment that would be too dangerous for any human to enter.

Remarkably he had left the camera there for 10 whole years, and was greeted with some mind-blowing footage when it was eventually recovered a decade later.

It would have been rather disappointing if he'd got it back after all that time only for no bears to have returned to the cave, but he soon discovered that it managed to film far more than he expected, recording not just grizzly bears but also a mountain lion and coyotes in the process.

It does turn out that the camera itself wasn't recording for a large portion of its cave stay, as Anderson revealed that a "bear knocked it over, so it was inactive for most of that time."

Additionally, he noted in the comments underneath his post on Instagram about the find that he "was shocked" that his batteries managed to last that long, and who knows what ventured into the cave after the camera had been knocked over and died that wasn't seen by anyone.

"Sometimes the wildest stories aren't about the hunt, they're about the waiting," Anderson remarked on his Instagram. "It's patience, it's faith, it's something we rarely recognize in ourselves anymore.

"Maybe the wild still remembers what we've forgotten: how to trust in the unseen."

It goes to show that you never quite know what you'll see or find when humans aren't looking, and that often all it takes is for a single camera ready and waiting to capture the mind-blowing footage.