mountain lions go by many names kougar Puma Panther Catamount and they live in many places from Patagonia to Northern British Columbia on this hunt we're tracking one in the dense forest of the Idaho Panhandle where Sub-Zero temperatures and piling up snow have created ideal hunting conditions man that's a nice track good grief it involves a lot of walking a lot of listening a little bit of running and some of the finest tracking knowhow that an Outdoorsman can [Applause] muster I'm Steven renell to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an animal it's about who we are and what we're made of I live to hunt and Hunt to live I am a meat eater [Music] Winter's coming on hard in Idaho and most hunters are calling it quits for the year but not Bart George the coming of snow means that you can begin tracking and hunting mountain lions or cougars so he's looking ahead to a couple months of intense activity so the Lions go down chasing game but also just to get out of the snow like they can't this kind of snow they're pretty short-legged they have a hard time in this deep snow professionally Bart is a wildlife biologist with the Callis spel Tri he does research work on a host of native Wildlife from links to Grizzlies to Mountain Caribou he's also a dedicated houndsman who raises and trains his own track and dogs for the pursuit of mountain lions whether it's for research or hunting purposes fellow houndsman Bruce Duncan is his friend and Mentor together they've tracked mountain lions across a large swath of the American West that had to have been the track on right now could be could they hit a bunch of elk and deer Bruce will be joining us as well [Music] we're up before sunrise on a frigid morning headed deep into the mountains to an area where several mountain lions have been working a herd of deer [Music] [Music] [Music] the first step is to head into likely country and find a fresh track the dogs will just hang tight for now for the female track the actual toe is a point pointed more big Tom you when they're walking sometimes they'll push it point a little bit but they're they're round toed a bit more we cut a couple of different mountain lion tracks but they're small and could be from females so we pass them by in many areas mountain lion Seas seasons will end when a quota of just one or two females is killed even in areas without a quota most houndsmen refuse to hunt females at all for fear of having a negative impact on the local population come down here you can really see a good paw oh is it clear down there oh yeah it's beautiful about 20 m in we cross a mountain Li track that's moving down slope along a small Creek it's big we follow it down to get a better look when you're talking about the stride on a cat obviously you're talking about determining its size right right but what what are you looking at like how far one leg travels I would measure like this track to this track I wouldn't do the right side to the left side I'd go you know left to left I like to see a 40in stride if you find a 40in stride it's pretty much always going to be a good Tom when you see a big one you always know it it's like a big deer you know so this is this is definitely a cat we want to get a look at now that we know it's a male we want to test it for freshness considering the timing of the last snowfall the track could be 1 hour old or 12 hours for this job Bart trusts his dog [Music] whisper man that's a nice track good grief what do you guys think how like how do you rate that dog's excitement level well like I said she's not a real mouthy dog she's not just going to blow up unless the cat's well that's a good s there's a line yeah let's uh go back and get the packs and let's run this thing I think we got a good chance of putting it up before it gets to the Big River yeah let's get gathered up and do it come on tip a generation ago houndsmen spent as much time searching for lost dogs as they did Mountain lies today GPS collars are in wide use not only do you know where your dogs are by watching their movements you can learn an enormous amount of information about how a lion moves across the landscape and relates to its [Music] surroundings we walk some of the best dogs into the woods aways to get free of the confusion from other dogs and any disturbance we made to the mountain lion's tracks by walking over them once the dogs get excited and confirmed that they're on the trail we cut them loose they're muring man with the dogs running we head out behind him man Bruce is right about where line the line of travel that thing is going to do he's done this before he knows the routine but unfortunately they're headed right to that River we're worried about yeah they are they're already 800 900 yard out yeah they're 900 yd out we could have a loss at the river it wouldn't surprise me if they turn one way another when they hit that River either that cat's probably not just going to cross just hunt the river he'll walk that River find a log to cross [Music] hopefully the fear about the river is that the dogs will try to cross it in their search for the lion in this weather getting soaked like that could be deadly especially if the dogs get lost and they're out overnight there's something happening in here and I don't know what it is but I like I want the dogs to be together yeah so let's try to make tracks down this River get in where we can hear him we press on ahead to catch up we hit the river and it's hard to figure out what exactly happened the dogs are split apart and headed in different directions something went wrong you see where he crossed H he hopped on that log right there and worked his way across that you can see where the dogs clamored made it up but you think they ever picked up his track on the other side oh yeah no I'm sure they did they tracked him across that log gosh darn it they're 400 y they're working back up towards us they're having a hard time yeah we need to help them out this is yeah this is [Music] troublesome what's going on here yeah there's a mess so there's tracks oh he's going this way no I saw him going that way look at that track oh they just turned around right [Music] here enough to confuse us I'm sure the dogs had trouble when dogs get turned around and lose a track a houndsman will call it a loss as we try to figure out what happened to the dogs and the cougar they're chasing we hit some evidence of what might have thrown him off here's a bed where lion was laying different lion left going out that way yeah we got an out track right there so the river right here below us the dogs are skunking around 600 yds down there it's possible they're having so much trouble cuz there's two tracks that's definitely different yeah it's a smaller cat I don't know I need to get a better look at this track there's yet another cougar hunt in this area examining the tracks I think of the controversies surrounding mountain lion hunting even though the species is thriving even expanding its range across the American West from Southern California to the Black Hills of South Dakota some people feel that the use of hounds has given Hunters an unfair Advantage as though it's cheating in my view it's a critique that's way off never mind the fact that we've hunted with dogs for perhaps tens of thousands of years and that hunting might be the foundation of the relationship between man and man's best friend besides all that there's the fact that it is the collaborative effort the hunters two-legged and four working in tandem each with its own strengths and weaknesses there's an ancestral Beauty to it it's funny to think that all this goes on and that lion doesn't know any of this is happening he has no idea what's what's coming like doing his thing know about his business yeah has no idea that people are paying such careful attention to where he was a few hours ago or a day ago yeah it's funny they live out here and it's just totally silent you picture why they climb a tree I me they just like you don't hear anything out here and all a and all of a sudden they're four dogs just screaming their guts out coming up behind you I mean yeah it's no wonder they just jump up a tree and hope it passes as much as houndsmen might use the word chasing or running cats most of the action occurs the mountain line knowing what's going on this cat is hours ahead of us at this point it has no idea that any of this is happening they're long ways from us now they're a mile and a halfway and I've lost service on all of them we got to yeah we got to climb up out of here let's do [Music] it Tipsy come Tipsy come come here it's late now we got a couple hours of daylight left yeah but the dogs are on the edge of what would become a large unrooted area it's hard to get into so they want to gather them up now because you're not going to get them later huh no if they kept on the way they're going and that you guys see how fast they're moving we'd end up here all night yeah here comes tip good girl Tipsy come here tip there rip you Good Hound Dog you good girl good girl tip after a day of tracking and considering the confusion from multiple sets of lion tracks it becomes obvious that it's not going to happen today temperatures are too cold to risk having a dog out overnight oh they did a good job today they covered a lot of ground if nothing else this give us a good starting point tomorrow in the morning we'll try to pick up this track again wherever it might [Music] lead Before Dawn we head out to try and find Fresh Tracks from yesterday's Mountain line our hope is that he's hunting the area and hasn't moved too far it snowed overnight that's bad because the old tracks we were following yesterday are now obscured but it's good because any new tracks we find will definitely be fresh I don't know what he's doing here snooping around I guess I don't think we saw these tracks yesterday they like this Rocky stuff though they're tough to hunt in the Rocks I think you dated up up there and came back down here hit this Road and went up and then turned back off to where we think he's headed now snow is real fluffy it's hard to tell if it's a elk or a cat you never saw him come off the road there's no track you got to be me it must have done this most of the night yeah I think it snowed a little bit so that's all you're not seeing toe and pad anymore where I lose it all you're seeing is is diple yeah and the dimples just Peter out you know just gone we explore all the log and Roads and trails around the area where we lost the cat yesterday in search of a fresh track from this morning already though the new snow is a confusion of deer and Elk tracks and zigzagging Mountain Lion tracks from the night before obviously the cougar is trying to capitalize on a gameer area when you follow this track yesterday you get sense that that cat's hunting or do you get sense he's migrating I think he moved into these de and he's just hunting now he's in a good know they're all here yeah you got cats coming this way cats going that way old tracks going that way he just has been everywhere the dogs are going they're finding yesterday's tracks today's tracks last night's tracks you know they're having a hard time making circles making Loops getting something lined out they're probably running some stuff backwards they're going forwards they're cutting their own [Music] tracks finally Bruce finds what we're looking for that's the track we want right there so he likes that track huh so this is the out track we've been looking for all day and I don't know if we missed that this morning and or if maybe in a perfect world we would have put a little pressure on him and bumped him out of here you know but it's hard to tell it's easy to miss a track in this thing so we got got a mess of tracks in here this track's going up towards a kill that we found had it cashed away up underneath the trees Lions almost always do he had it packed up there hidden where the birds couldn't find it pretty nice buck a lion that size I mean he weighs almost as much as this deer probably in this country if the birds find it the coyotes and wolves and everything else find it summertime the Bears so they get pretty good at hiding them and up underneath those trees would have been a good spot where he could come back and revisit this thing for several days I think that's probably why we're seeing such a mess of tracks I think what that cat was doing was feeding up here on his kill and moving down and daying up in that swamp um just for security cuz you see we're kind of out in a big brush field here he wouldn't want to lay it out in this open very long finding that deer carcass is a good sign the mountain lion is likely to be in the area we Trail it for several more hours until it seems like today we'll be you a repeat of yesterday but then suddenly the sound of the dogs becomes altogether different they found what they've been looking for yeah they're barking still [Music] guys so what kind of barking do that sound [Music] like I can't believe it after 2 days of staring at this mountain lion's tracks it's stunning to see it in the flesh dude I could notot believe it man [Music] he's moving he's going to go hey hey watch out but then just like that he's gone the dogs are right behind him it the dogs treat the cat a second time and again it bails out there's no way I was going to shoot in there I couldn't see you or the [Music] dogs there it is you other the dogs tell me when he's in the water we got him it's like a strange dream after many years of just glimpsing mountain lions in the wild I'm handling one I'll tan the hide for my home and the meat is excellent suitable for dozens of [Music] preparations the meat looks like white meat with fat on it looks like your skin and por look at that man might just smoke that thing like a pork can oh [Music] yeah when I've cooked Mountain lies in the past I've always taken legs and just slow cook the legs and then you know break the meat off and make like any kind of pulled pork type recipe or sloppy Toms which is a sloppy joe with a male mountain line so this is the whole backstrap right here it's really kind of remarkably similar to poine if you just look at it you know and this guy has some body fat on him just like if you pull a back STP off the elk or deer you have this thick silver skin or fell on there going to work that off cuz this this no matter what you do is very hard to chew up I mean this is the same material that they used to make bow strings out of It's just tough tough stuff and it's it's so strange to be um you know if you hunt deer and other servid you get really used to all your wild game meat having that same mahogany color and it's just really unusual to be working with something that's you know just the color of por man looks just like [Music] pork this right here big pad of fat that was sitting off the side of the rump so I'm going to trim this a little bit and then just put this piece in there too just to experiment with it and see how that turns out it's mostly fat a little bit of meat about just be curious what that's going to wind up tasting like and since the meat is pork like I'm preparing this loin like I would the loin from a wild pig searing the outside then roasting it until it reaches an inter internal temperature of [Music] [Music] 160° I want something sweet and something sour to go with it so I'm mixing up an apple chutney alongside a pot of sauerkraut [Music] more than safe what' you do with this then did you seared it seared it in the oil and then did you bake it or did you 400° oven for how long till it was Way Beyond where it's going to make anybody sick in a month what would you get from a lion lions aren't tronis really yeah man that looks good is this both off the Lin mhm this one's got the fat on it [Music] take a piece of the fat go what's this Chutney Chutney fruit I haven't had lion meat in 10 years you had lion meat last summer last spring I haven't had good Lion in 10 [Laughter] years man I much prefer the fatty pieces really yeah it doesn't have that where that It Coats your mouth like deer fats not like that you know no film at the end [Music] yeah pretty good man it's so surprising it tastes like that how could like a carnivorous animal taste like that well they only eat fresh meat you know yeah they're not out there eating sour rotten salmon and stuff mhm it's like not like a wild pig but it's like I don't know what it's like people probably say pork because there's no other you know what I mean like what else you going to compare it to people are generally shocked that it's so light mhm you're going to cut another piece there yeah we're going to eat that whole thing cut [Music] her you like it yeah they're tasty the rest of the meat goes home to my freezer where I'll save it for only the most special occasions to be served to friends who want a taste of something truly Wild long after the meat is gone and a new cougar has taken this one's place on the mountain there will still be something of extreme value left the experience of being on the trail of one of these creatures one Predator following in the tracks of another