Dinner Date with a Cougar

I was invited to a meal with one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever laid eyes on, actually two of them to be exact. But alas... they were both dinner date no shows. Either that or they split as soon as they saw me coming. And if you don't think my mind was awash with painful memories from high school and college, you obviously don't know me very well. Those memories are hard to shake. But today's no show, although a bit of a let-down, had some inkling of relief mixed in, for these were no standard dinner dates. They were not the dates many young men dream of, no...they were real-deal cougars. They were fine specimens of Puma concolor, also known as mountain lions or panthers.



My dream date!

The date itself was arranged by a friend of mine who is a cougar specialist in the Southern Rockies. He  has been tracking the large cats for a number of years trying to measure their response to large-scale fires. One would think it's quite intuitive. Vegetation patterns change in response to disturbance, ungulates follow the changing food sources, and hence the cats follow suit and go wherever their prey goes. Unfortunately assumptions usually lead us astray so it's always good to verify what's really go on out there. Looking at detailed data and seeing how every trophic level reacts to the change will ultimately allow wildlife managers to better predict response to catastrophic fire.

As impressive as this sounds, this is just but one of the many potential products that may come from this project. There are other facets being investigated as well, one of which is kleotoparasitism from bears. This is simply a fancy word for the act of a bear stealing a cougar's meal after he has killed it. Thus, the need to set up trail cameras over fresh cougar kill sites.

Needless to say I was just happy to be along for the ride. Our mission for the day was to locate two recent cougar kill sites and collect some of that much needed data.

Let me first start by explaining that finding a cougar kill site is not as easy as my pen makes it out to be. These cats are smart. Not only do they ambush large ungulates, mostly mule deer and elk, from concealed ambush points, they then often drag their kill to a concealed location where they bury the carcass for consumption. Total consumption may take few days or in some instances with an extremely large carcass, a few weeks. This latter "burial" place is usually called a cache site. And yes, a large male cougar can drag a 700 pound adult elk to a more secure site if need be, a true testament to the brute strength and fierce determination of these predators.

What makes finding these kill and cache sites even remotely possible is technology. If not for having cats with radio-collars, finding fresh-kills would be akin to finding a needle in a haystack. As an apex predator, they are simply few and far between. Fortunately, however, these tracking devices change the game.

Whenever possible, cougars are captured and fitted with radio collars. What is remarkable is that today's collars are equipped with extraordinary features that truly benefit both cat and researcher. One of those features is capturing a GPS coordinate at timed intervals. For this particular study, the collar records a data point every three hours. If the data shows a cluster of GPS coordinates within the same 150 meter area it is assumed the lion made a kill and is on or near the cache site. And when the data creates a cluster, the real work begins. Never knowing when this clustering is likely to occur, the biologist and their team must stand at the ready.

It just so happened to be my luck that our subject, a large male cougar that I will call "Max", created a cluster in the heart of a pretty rugged area and it was up to me and Art, a grad student, to investigate.

Fine....it was truly up to Art. I was just a tag-a-long, but little did I care. I was going to visit my first-ever cougar kill site!

Up next...Tracking Max's Kill