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00:13What if we could follow animals in the wildest country
00:16without actually being there to observe them?
00:20On one special ranch in Montana,
00:22we've been working on that approach for 10 years.
00:31We use remote cameras, hundreds of them,
00:34all across the rugged backcountry.
00:38And shot by shot, we've been able to witness
00:40how an entire wild community interacts.
00:48One life in particular has been truly special.
00:53The young female mountain lion has surprised us over and over.
00:56No!
00:59Her life is full of danger,
01:03but also astonishing triumph.
01:09Her name is Willow,
01:11and this is her story.
01:13That's her story.
01:14A Dad.
01:16I'm S1.
01:47I started tracking as a boy with my dad and my brother walking through the winter woods.
02:13What really struck me was that there is a story in the snow.
02:20That lit me up.
02:22I love the idea that I can piece together a story from what's left behind by the movement
02:37of animals on the forest floor when I'm away.
03:07This is MPG Ranch.
03:11Over 15,000 acres of privately owned land in western Montana.
03:19We don't actually ranch anything here.
03:22We're more like a research institute.
03:23And we study everything from soil and plants to the animals and how they all interact.
03:38I'm Joshua Lisbon.
03:40And for over a decade now, I've led a very unique mountain lion study here.
03:44It's unique because we don't handle cats.
03:47We don't collar cats.
03:48We don't want to disturb them in any way.
03:56When we find mountain lion tracks, we go in the opposite direction.
04:02We backtrack to find out where the cat came from.
04:05That's how we discover their dens and find their kills.
04:11And we also track ourselves, dropping waypoints when we see cat tracks so we can map how mountain
04:18lions are using the land.
04:21We collect genetic samples as we go and keep tracker logs of everything we find.
04:26We're not going to be able to do.
04:27We're not going to be able to do.
04:28We're not going to be able to do.
04:29We're not going to be able to do.
04:30We're not going to be able to do.
04:31But our study is also unique because of all of our motion-activated cameras.
04:45We've installed an extensive network across the entire ranch.
04:48Our goal is to see and not be seen.
05:18And the cameras have become our window into a mountain lion's very private world.
05:40My name is Maggie Hershauer, and I've been with the Mountain Lion Project for three seasons now.
05:45When we walk through the woods, we create these concentric rings around us that kind of call out our presence.
05:56Being able to put cameras in the woods and go back and watch everything that happened in a specific spot is kind of a little miracle.
06:03It's not the same as being there, but it lets you witness things that you could never otherwise see.
06:15It's not the same as being there, but that's just a little event.
06:16While you are stuck to your facility, we must be mound all the periphery of every estimate.
06:19So suggest the planet to live in a surprise?
06:20Well, it's a better direction.
06:21It's a better direction.
06:26pekt that
06:34Who's got so old is that Argentina haveMin?
06:39Whatever it is, we meet with them today's event tonight we referogue to see that.
06:41Tracking notes, November 28th.
06:49I installed a camera today on a log that I've seen a fox come out of several times now.
06:54It's a cool spot and I'm anxious to see what other animals I might find in the area.
07:11These cameras give us a glimpse into the lives of animals, the way that they interact with
07:21each other, with different species, but also the way that they interact with the landscape
07:28and through time.
07:33When we first started putting cameras out, we had no idea that one of the first cats
07:49to walk in front of those cameras would allow us, over many years, to document all of the
07:55moments to piece together her entire extraordinary life.
08:03In January of 2013, a family of lions took down a mule deer buck on the front side of the property.
08:12And this family group, to the best of our knowledge, is where the story for F2, or Willow, begins.
08:23We have a mother and two young kittens on this kill.
08:33And we start really collecting solid DNA on this family group the following year.
08:48One of the ways that mountain lions communicate with each other is through these chirping sounds.
08:53I've only ever heard this between females and their offspring, but they sound like birds.
09:00The kitten, F2, came to be known as Willow because as she grew up, she grew really tall, really
09:21thin.
09:22And that's how I'm able to pick her out when she shows up on camera.
09:28And so, thinking of her as being Willow-y, I started calling her Willow.
09:33The ranch borders both private and public land where hunting is legal.
09:49The mountain lions wander off our property onto these adjacent lands all the time.
09:54And in the winter of 2014, Willow loses her mother and her sibling to hunters.
10:07It's a little bit less because it's a very dramatic that is not, but it is a real dream.
10:19It's a very dramatic change for her as it is, and it's a very dramatic change for her
10:22But Willow survives.
10:31We believe that she was still traveling with her mother when she was orphaned.
10:43She then moves off the front side of the ranch into the more rugged and steep and secluded
10:50areas on the property her first winter on her own.
11:17Tyler Carlin's been on the crew for a number of years.
11:21He's amazing.
11:23He puts in the longest days and hikes the longest miles and seems to find the coolest stuff.
11:28So he's been really indispensable to the study for years.
11:32I went to Woodchuck 1 today to change cards and batteries in one camera and put up three
11:44more on other den sites.
11:46I went to change supplies in the camera in the first den, which is located in the south
11:51part of Davis Creek.
11:54Just before I got to the den, I saw pretty fresh bobcat tracks.
12:00When I got to the den there were tracks of a bobcat entering the den, then leaving it,
12:04leaving me to believe the den was empty.
12:11As I was about to start messing with the camera, I heard a noise in the den and a cougar came
12:15charging out.
12:16It's a bunch of .
12:18Apparently there's another way into the den.
12:26Checking the tracks later, the cougar came in from the top of the den.
12:30I adjusted the camera angle for this additional entrance.
12:33Ironically, no large mammals have approached the den from the front since I put the camera
12:38up in December until last night at 6 when the bobcat came, and then there was a cougar
12:43sleeping in it today.
12:49Tracking notes.
12:50December 13th.
12:52We put cameras on a fox den that we've known to be active.
12:57Prices will often start to come by the den in midwinter, usually around December, and
13:02check it out and mark it, and eventually they just seem to post up there and wait for a mate.
13:14They can easily sleep for more than 12 hours at a time while they're waiting.
13:27Once they've found each other, they'll spend more time at the den, taking turns sleeping,
13:34as they excavate, and prepare the den for a litter of pups in the spring.
13:46Squirrels often continue to live in their nearby nests, even when the foxes are in residence,
13:55and they seem to coexist.
13:57Maybe the foxes even benefit from their vigilance and alarms about other predators.
14:03The squirrel that lives near this den, like all squirrels, has favorite routes through
14:06the forest mapped out.
14:08This one always runs up the log that lies to the side of the den.
14:34In the summer of 2015, Willow breeds with a male, and she has her first kitten in the
14:44fall.
14:45And her first offspring is F9, who we call Sula.
14:51The first footage we get of Sula is as a young kitten with her mother on a kill site in January
14:56of 2016.
15:00She looks to be probably about three months old at this point, so we believe she was born
15:04sometime in the October-November range.
15:12We were able to get cameras on a number of kills that had Willow and Sula together at these
15:17sites.
15:20Taking notes, January 10th went back into the bottom of Davis to try to figure out if the
15:26cougars had a kill in there.
15:29I found the kill about 100 yards downstream of the area where I had seen all the tracks
15:32last night.
15:34The dead deer is actually down in the creek, but it was killed on the second road to the
15:38north and then dragged there.
15:41At the kill site, there were multiple beds and excessive evidence of play by the young,
15:46demonstrated by tracks running up leaning trees and jumping off, and broken limbs all
15:51over.
15:54I set up two cameras at the site.
16:20And here you go.
16:33Later in 2016, Willow and Sula are still roaming around together.
17:03And then, in the fall of 2016, Willow has her second litter.
17:10And their number designations are F-16 through F-19, and so we just collectively called them the teens.
17:20Average dispersal age is 15 months.
17:24To have two litters back-to-back, one fall following the other, is not normally how it goes,
17:30because suddenly that mother is now in a position where she has newly dependent kittens and a still dependent juvenile.
17:40And so now you have a mixed family group of different ages.
17:44Only two of the teens actually survived that winter, F-17 and F-19.
17:53So Sula is probably about a year old when the new kittens are born.
18:04We started getting this footage out of Davis Creek of this mixed family group together.
18:10We have this really distinctive large ponderosa, and this family group goes past it.
18:16And we can see clearly that Sula is following Willow and the teens, and they're all traveling together.
18:24At this point, we really weren't sure what the future was going to hold for Sula.
18:42She was obviously very dependent on her mother.
18:46She continued to follow her around even into the next tracking season.
18:50We worried she wouldn't be able to make it on her own and become a successful hunter.
19:16Mountain lions are stalk and ambush predators.
19:18They're never very far from their prey.
19:48Mountain lions are incredibly secretive.
20:09They move through the landscape generally at a walk.
20:14And they move really quietly through the forests.
20:17And they can freeze at any point.
20:25And then they'll get really, really close to their prey and then close that distance with a burst of speed.
20:33I'd say elk are one of the more spectacular animals out there.
20:52They're highly social and so fast and strong.
20:55And their bugles in the fall are one of the most haunting sounds you'll ever hear.
20:59It's always been amazing to me that mountain lions not only are capable of killing elk, but that they do so regularly.
21:22There's a fair bit of risk to a lion in going after prey that big and powerful, and you'd think that they would just stick to smaller deer.
21:30But adult lions in their prime seem to have no problem killing elk, even bull elk, and that's a lot of meat, especially if you're feeding dependent young.
21:41We have hundreds of cameras on the landscape that have been collecting imagery for 10 years.
21:53We've caught mountain lions hunting four times.
21:56We've caught mountain lions.
21:57We've caught mountain lions.
21:58We've caught mountain lions.
21:59We've caught mountain lions.
22:00We've caught mountain lions.
22:01We've caught mountain lions.
22:02We've caught mountain lions.
22:03We've caught mountain lions.
22:04We've caught mountain lions.
22:05We've caught mountain lions.
22:06We've caught mountain lions.
22:07We've caught mountain lions.
22:08We've caught mountain lions.
22:09We've caught mountain lions.
22:10We've caught mountain lions.
22:11We've caught mountain lions.
22:12We've caught mountain lions.
22:13We've caught mountain lions.
22:14We've caught mountain lions.
22:15We've caught mountain lions.
22:16We've caught mountain lions.
22:17We've caught mountain lions.
22:18We've caught mountain lions.
22:19We've caught mountain lions.
22:20We've caught mountain lions.
22:21We've caught mountain lions.
22:22We've caught mountain lions.
22:53Mountain lions end up providing food resources for a lot of things because mountain lions
23:05will be subordinate to a pack of wolves or bears, so they'll run off a kill and leave
23:12that and feed everybody else.
23:23But in terms of fox or coyote or badgers or any smaller creatures coming in, a mountain
23:33lion is going to be dominant and a mountain lion is going to defend that kill.
23:41We see fox coming in and they're really skittish, they're on high alert, they'll feed a little
23:47bit and they'll look around, they'll feed a little bit and they'll look around and it's
23:49because they're under threat.
23:52They know that they're trying to sneak a meal, you're putting yourself in a risky situation.
24:03We have instances of mountain lions running
24:08bobcats off of kills.
24:29We have instances of mountain lions running bobcats off of kills.
24:40We have documented them killing coyotes on multiple occasions to the point where sometimes
24:46I feel like they're out to get them.
24:50And we just last winter documented a mountain lion killing a badger.
24:56And what we think happened was the badger came in to try to get a meal and was surprised
24:59by the mountain lion.
25:03Ultimately, all of these animals are inhabiting the same landscape and they encounter each other
25:11frequently.
25:13In the fall of 2018, Willow has another litter of kittens.
25:35She uses an area that we call the mistletoe den.
25:39It's a bed site really.
25:41They don't spend a lot of time there.
25:43They pass through.
25:44It provides some shelter.
25:50We maintain a camera there year round.
25:53And so we see an incredible amount of animals making use of this spot.
26:13We pick this spot out because we get some of the youngest mountain lion footage that we've had
26:31of kittens.
26:35She's the only mountain lion we know of who uses this spot.
26:38And she must have a natal den somewhere nearby.
26:44We get this imagery of Willow with two kittens.
26:50We assume she only has two kittens in this litter.
26:54However, it turns out that she may have a lot more.
27:04So not long after that on a Saturday morning, I get this call from Tyler.
27:08He is just beside himself excited.
27:09He's like, oh my God, oh my God, you have got to see what I just got off this camera.
27:23It's February.
27:24It's six degrees.
27:25It's the middle of the night.
27:26There's three feet of snow on the ground.
27:29And an elk walks into frame with a mountain lion hanging off of its neck.
27:34With Willow hanging off of its neck.
27:53We have a female mountain lion.
27:56Say she's 100 pounds.
27:58Taking down a spiked bull elk, we'll say he's 400 pounds.
28:01And she's wrestling him down by strangling him slowly while this elk is trying to stomp her
28:10and kick her and throw her.
28:17If she gets injured, she can potentially not hunt for a while.
28:23If she can't recover, she's done for and her kittens are done for.
28:29This is incredibly risky and they do it all the time.
28:34And we happen to catch it on video.
28:47And Willow manages to drop this elk directly in front of her den.
28:57As the daylight footage starts to appear, all these little kitten heads are popping up.
29:03And they've got rounded out bellies and bloody faces.
29:11And we realize that Willow has six kittens.
29:19And this is unheard of.
29:33The family group feeds on that elk for a week, maybe a little bit more.
29:40What we begin to see is they're moving between different den sites in the area.
29:46We have these three dens that are really close to each other.
29:49They're less than half a mile apart.
29:53When we see Willow at one point leave the kill site, she goes off on her own to scout one of these other dens.
30:09And then returns a couple days after with all of her kittens in tow.
30:16The average litter size for a mountain lion is one to four, with an average survival rate of one to two individuals.
30:24The fact that we have a mother raising six, whether there is some form of adoption that takes place or she just has six kittens, is unbelievable.
30:40We begin to realize that Willow is moving her young to this other den site, and then back, and then to another den site, and then back.
30:49And the kittens will sometimes move independently back to the kill site, and then will return to another den.
30:59At different points, we see kittens get left behind for a little while, get picked back up by mom.
31:05What we're realizing is that the kittens are not as tethered to their mother as you would expect.
31:13They're surprisingly independent, but this has consequences.
31:21Twice we find kittens get left behind.
31:24One time for a very short period of time, the mother returns, picks that kitten back up, and they move on.
31:29But later in the winter, we have this footage of a kitten that's left at a den site for an extended period of time.
31:46And goes out and cries for its mother and goes back into the den and comes out and cries for its mother and does this repeatedly.
32:16And then again, I'm sorry for it and gives them a bit more attention.
32:21The hen's from the Hippie and the Mopole, and she's coming back into the story, her family has a lot of guts to break up.
32:23And she just망g übrig, she's coming back to the story.
32:24That's the way that try to get her back into the story.
32:26Then, I will find a little bit more of the mortals.
32:29And she knows that she can take her back, and that she can take her back.
32:30And she's coming back, and is a little bit more of the lightning.
32:32Her life is perfectly related to her.
32:39And she's coming back, and she can't take her fortnight with her time.
32:43And she's coming back in a minute.
32:45The kitten finally just wanders off, and that's where the footage ends.
33:15Springtime out here is just incredible.
33:43Cute baby animals are bumbling around everywhere.
34:12After about four weeks, the fox pups first venture above ground.
34:31Once the pups are mobile, the male doesn't seem to stick around long, and the female takes over the hunting duties.
34:41She spends a lot of time out hunting, and they are amazing hunters.
34:48Over and over again, she goes out and comes back with meals for the pups.
34:53The pups are pretty competitive and voracious when feeding time comes around.
35:10The mother can't divide up the meals, and so they learn to be aggressive if they want to eat.
35:22We had willow in the sea.
35:50We had willow and the six kittens on camera in February when we first meet them.
35:59We were worried about this abandoned kitten.
36:03Was it lost?
36:04Was it lost?
36:05Did it survive?
36:08But then we get really clear imagery again in April.
36:11We see that the entire group is reunited.
36:20The mother must have come by and picked that straggler kitten up.
36:30This is a single mother raising six kittens.
36:41And then we keep seeing them here and there and here and there through Davis Creek and in different places.
36:46And she manages to raise this group to adulthood.
36:50Willow is the only one hunting for this group.
36:57And hunting is a dangerous business if you're a mountain lion.
37:01The risks are enormous and it could end her and it could end her family.
37:05And she has to do this consistently to feed this giant family.
37:23Male mountain lions don't really contribute to raising and feeding their kittens.
37:26And as a result, their story can be harder to piece together.
37:31We seem to lose the territorial male every year in this study to hunting.
37:40Last year we had this really distinctive cat come onto the ranch, M44.
37:45He's short, he's squat, and his ears look like they were damaged from frostbite.
37:50So he's very distinctive and he stands out.
38:00And then later in the spring, he shows up again at a fox den.
38:03And so we see these kits playing outside just before he comes through.
38:10And then we actually see the mother fox sitting at the den
38:13with the lion in view in the background.
38:16And she's barking a warning at it.
38:43Mountain lions can be a real danger to foxes, and especially young foxes.
38:51But M44 passed by, and the next day the foxes were back about their business.
39:07Over the course of a season, it's fun to see how the foxes react to the various animals
39:11that move through the woods around them.
39:33Lions, bears, coyotes, and wolves are all potentially dangerous.
39:37And you can see the active interest the mother takes when she smells the other predators that have passed by.
39:46It's dangerous for her to leave the pups alone while she hunts,
39:49but there's no other way for her to provide the food that they need, and that she needs.
39:53.
40:23Satsang with Mooji
40:53Satsang with Mooji
41:23Satsang with Mooji
41:52Satsang with Mooji
42:22The following year, about a mile away, we were filming a bobcat.
42:52It had found a dead deer and had been trying to navigate this surly moose with other larger
42:57predators to try to get in and scavenge this carcass.
43:09And one night, a one-eyed fox showed up on the scene.
43:15It's impossible to say, but I like to think that at least one of those fox pups is still
43:20running around these mountains doing fox things.
43:27In the fall of 2019, we found a kill where a lion had brought down a spike elk in a wallow.
43:51This presented us with a really unique situation because these mountain lions were not able
43:57to get this elk out of the wallow.
44:00They tried because they don't like to get their feet wet, but they could not do it.
44:06So they're forced to feed in the open.
44:10And we had this incredible filming opportunity.
44:13We were also able to collect DNA off that site to determine which individuals were there.
44:37And what we found was Sula, Willow's first kitten from five years ago, and Sula's three kittens.
44:49We also see an unrelated male come in and share this kill with Sula and her family.
45:08For the first time, we have proof of resource sharing with non-related individuals.
45:27And this all worked out really well until they were able to drag the kill out of the wallow,
45:34consume it a little bit more quickly.
45:37And as the food resource disappeared, we begin to see tolerance diminish between the related
45:46and unrelated individual.
45:52And this all worked out really well for us to be able to drag the kill out of the wallow.
46:20Never do we see anyone actually follow through with violence.
46:27There's a lot of bluffing.
46:29There's a lot of noise.
46:32But they work it out.
46:33And they still share that kill.
46:37The next morning, we see the family group come in.
46:59They're a tight unit.
47:00And we have that unrelated individual just removed a little bit.
47:09Everybody's tense and competitive for scraps.
47:14And they're quiet and defensively.
47:17No, we don't care.
47:33and then we see the family group leave
47:44and they go together
47:48and a period of time passes
47:51and then that lone male
47:54follows them down the exact same track
48:03the conventional wisdom is that cats are very solitary
48:07and they won't share their food resources
48:09and they're incredibly territorial
48:10and family members can fight amongst themselves at a kill
48:16but ultimately what we also see
48:19is a reciprocal relationship
48:22where if I'm successful
48:24and you're having no luck
48:26I may share with you
48:27and then that is returned
48:28and so these relationships form
48:33and it increases the potential survival for everyone
48:38we found a spot where a drainage constricts
48:44and becomes a prime travel corridor
48:46it's a favorite ambush spot for mountain lions
48:50and this year
48:56a cat managed to kill a cow elk
48:58and her calf
48:59when we found it
49:01the calf was partially consumed
49:03and the cow elk was cached whole
49:05the mountain lion at this kill was F-27
49:11one of Willow's giant litter of six
49:14from a couple years before
49:16we had cameras up on these two kills for many weeks
49:22and one day another adult cat showed up
49:25it fed for an afternoon
49:28and that night F-27 returned
49:31and they fed in peace together
49:32they shared the kill through the night
49:37and in the morning the other cat was gone
49:39genetic sampling revealed that cat to be Sula
49:43so both cats are the offspring of Willow
49:46from litters a few years apart by different males
49:49we had no prior indication
49:52of them having ever encountered each other before
49:55but it seemed pretty clear
49:57that our residents are all well aware of each other
50:00it's just another example
50:02of how complex the social life of mountain lions really is
50:05last winter we put cameras up at all of Willow's known den sites
50:27and she never showed up
50:28some other cats stopped by
50:32and they investigated here and there
50:33but we just never saw Willow
50:37and yeah there's something sad about thinking that that story has ended
50:45but all things change
50:51Willow may be gone but in a very real way
50:54her offspring carry her story forward out here
50:59they're using the skills that she taught them to survive
51:02so I like to think of it that her story carries on
51:11by any measure Willow was an extraordinary cat
51:18it was a privilege to witness her life as we did
51:20her amazing hunting skills
51:26her amazing hunting skills
51:27and her phenomenal success as a mother
51:32and I've come to realize
51:38that all of the animals out here
51:40passing in front of these cameras
51:42they have their own stories
51:44we just don't see them
51:46we just don't see them
51:47but when we can
51:52we realize that they lead lives
51:54more complex
51:55and vastly richer
51:57than we imagine
51:58i think
52:00oh my god
52:01it'll be a place
52:01that she's the most
52:02we sow
52:03that you can
52:04they let it
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