remote as Africa. I couldn’t imagine life there.
Little did I know that in a few years’ time, Idaho would be the place where all my dreams would come true.
Long before the thought of living with wolves ever entered my mind, and even before I met Jamie, I honed my skills as a wildlife filmmaker. My first films were undersea adventures. I focused on the colorful fish that live among the reefs off the shores of my native Florida.
As beautiful and fascinating as I found the ocean, I was drawn to the forested mountains of the West. My teenage experiences as a wrangler fed my desire to film some of the animals that live there—like beavers.
These creatures are usually either underwater or in their lodges, making them tough to spot in the wild. So instead, for my movie, I built a beaver lodge inside a log cabin. I was able to film—from the other side of a large window—the comings and goings of a beaver family and show the world these quirky animals’ daily activities. I even filmed the birth of beaver kits.
The subject of my next film was a larger and decisively more dangerous animal. It was also much more elusive, almost to the point of being ghostly.
The cougar grasped the neck of the deer in her powerful jaws as she dragged the limp body through the dry pine needles and sparse clumps of grass. When she released her grip, the lifeless animal hit the ground with a thud.
The deer had been struck and killed by a vehicle—a certain tragedy for the deer and most likely a harrowing experience for the driver. For the cougar, it was a week’s worth of meals. But the food wasn’t only for her.
Three male cougar kittens watched with interest from the shadows of a nearby rocky perch. Their spotted youthful coats made them difficult for the naked eye to see. But my telephoto lens clearly caught their expressions, which seemed to say: “Here’s something new.”
Until this point, the six-week-old kittens’ nutrition had come exclusively from their mother’s milk. It was now time to wean them away from nursing. As carnivores, they needed to experience the taste of meat. This would be their first.
The mother looked up toward her kittens and sounded the call for dinner. Meow! Meow! Remarkably similar to the mewing of a household cat, the call of the cougar was nonetheless sharper, shorter, and more determined. To my ears it sounded like she was saying “Now! Now!” and was not about to take no for an answer.
The kittens dutifully heeded the call. Placing one furry oversized paw in front of the other, they gingerly stepped down from their perch toward this new lesson in survival.
Meanwhile, the mother prepared the meal the way mother cougars do. She cleaned a portion of the deer’s belly by removing the fur and tough skin with her raspy tongue and teeth to expose the fresh meat for her kittens. Then she took a few bites and walked away.
This was the part of the lesson the kittens had to learn for themselves—how to actually eat prey.
They approached the deer steadily but cautiously. One batted it with his paw, perhaps testing if it was really dead. Another tugged at one of the deer’s large pointy ears. He kept gnawing on the tough leathery appetizer, ignoring for the moment the entrée his mother had prepared on the other side.
The kittens not only had to get used to solid food but also had to learn how to chew and swallow it without eating the fur. Now and then, a kitten gagged, opening his mouth wide and releasing a harsh Ack! from his little throat.
I couldn’t help but smile behind the camera. It was thrilling to capture this brief snippet of cougar life. It was one of many rare glimpses into the hidden world of this magnificent animal. I was documenting behavior that few if any humans had ever witnessed. Every moment was new and surprising…and priceless.
How was I able to get such intimate footage of an animal that was seldom seen in the wild, let alone filmed? Not by chasing after it, that’s for sure.
I had better methods in mind. And the lessons I learned from making my cougar film would prove to be invaluable, especially when I began studying wolves several years later.
The idea to focus on cougars came from Jamie. I was in Washington for meetings while finishing the beaver film. As usual, Jamie and I met for lunch while I was in town. I wanted my next project to be about a big cat—perhaps cheetahs in Africa.
Jamie suggested cougars instead. These animals go by many names—mountain lion, puma, catamount. The idea intrigued me. I had never seen one in the wild, but I knew they were out there, roaming the same forests and mountainsides that I called home. I later discovered that Jamie had steered me toward cougars partly to keep me in the country. I was glad she did.
While planning the cougar project, I knew that I would have to bring the cougar to me. That meant filming in an enclosure—a large fenced-off area on the edge of wilderness. I didn’t want to fool anyone. I would make it clear in the documentary that I was using an enclosure, and in fact, make the enclosure part of the story. I’d let the viewer “in on the secret” by revealing how I was making the film.
I envisioned creating a semiwild situation in which a mother cougar and her kittens would be accustomed to my presence and allow me to film them without changing their behavior. While the cougars could not pursue large prey or roam without boundaries, they would be free to hunt small animals, communicate, show affection, and interact as a family.
With such a secretive animal, these behaviors would have been impossible to film in the wild. But in a large enclosure, I could film and record up close the sights and sounds that no one had ever seen or heard. Such an intimate look at this illusive animal would make people value it and want to protect it. That was my goal.
It was a tall order.
First on the to-do list was finding a site to build the enclosure. Working with a biologist, we found the perfect place—five acres (2 ha) of government land in the White Cloud Mountains of central Idaho.
The U.S. Forest Service granted my crew the land for a two-year study. The site was suitably rugged and included huge boulders, groves of aspen and pine trees, open grassy land, a stream, and a pond. We set wooden posts in the ground and connected them with chain-link fencing. Three tents just outside the fence would be our home for two years.
We also had a plan for the cougar’s food—roadkill. We arranged for local authorities to notify us when a large animal had been struck on the road by a vehicle. Then we’d head out, scoop up the carcass, and bring it to the enclosure for the cougar to find and feast on.
It was a good setup and a good plan. Now all we needed was a cougar.
After a long search, we located a 110-pound (50-kg) female. She had been raised in captivity, yet she maintained her wild nature. Perhaps she was a bit too wild or simply too much to handle, because the owner was going to have her put to sleep!
Upon hearing such disturbing news, the zoo in Boise, Idaho, bought the cougar. But the zoo had little space for her, and officials there were delighted to let us provide her with a home.
