A mountain lion lingered on a slope above Jackson, Wyoming, for several days in January, alternating between feeding on a mule deer carcass and lounging beneath a juniper. The cat’s presence attracted throngs of observers. PHOTOS BY RYAN DORGAN/JACKSON HOLE NEWS & GUIDE
JACKSON,
Wyo. (AP) – Photo safari trip leader Brent Paull’s game plan one day in January
happily went out the window.
A traveling
wildlife guide from Tulare, California, Paull had just wrapped up leading three
West Coast photographers on a three-day Yellowstone National Park
tour. The group rolled into Jackson in the late afternoon to round out their
week in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, pulling in around 4:15 p.m.
to the parking lot of the Super 8 Hotel.
Greeting the
bunch was “a line of 150 photographers” immediately across Highway 89.
Naturally, they moseyed over with their cameras to see what was up.
Even as
sunlight faded, there was no mistaking the critter centered in the viewfinder
of Paull’s long-lensed camera, mounted on a tripod on the sidewalk next to the
Maverik convenience store. In the frame was a mountain lion, tucked into the
base of a juniper tree on High School Butte.
For almost a
week the buzz around Jackson has been about a mountain lion drawn down to the
base of the butte towering above town and staying put to dine on a mule deer
carcass stashed by a rock-retaining wall above South Park Loop Road. Word
spread quickly after the secretive cat was first sighted, and quickly dozens of
onlookers had assembled to lay eyes on a cougar, a rare sighting anywhere in
the world let alone in view from your gas pump.
Peak cat
activity, at least in the light, came that first day.
“Here it comes,
here it comes, here it comes!” Bridger-Teton National Forest wildlife biologist
Jason Wilmot exclaimed from the driver’s seat of his pickup truck. “It’s
moving.”
The apex
feline predator took a few big bounds and bombed the hillside, sending magpies fleeing
from the remains of the deer carcass, which partially protruded from the snow.
On Jan. 15, the awe-inspiring behavior repeated itself a handful of times: The
mountain lion would linger upslope obscured by the branches of the nearest
juniper tree, and then, seemingly annoyed, scamper downhill to send scavenging
corvids skyward.
But the chance at seeing the native big cat on the move proved fleeting.
Photographers and wildlife watchers gather to catch a glimpse of a mountain lion Thursday outside the Maverik gas station and convenience store at South Highway 89 and South Park Loop Road. The lion attracted dozens, if not hundreds, of people each day.
In the
overnight hours on Jan. 15, the cougar took the initiative to fully cache its
carcass, covering it entirely in snow. With ravens and magpies out of the
picture, the cougar appeared content napping in the trees and sagebrush during
nearly 10 daylight hours in subsequent days, padding down only to chew off
pieces of frozen venison once the sun had set.
“This has
been the name of the game,” bundled-up Victor, Idaho, resident and avid
wildlife photographer Jack Bayles said from the seat of a lawn chair. “We’re
all disappointed how good she’s been at caching [the deer]. There were a
hundred crows through here today, but none of them actually touched down.”
The lion,
Bayles explained, hardly budged during daylight hours for three straight days,
though there were a couple of exceptions, including one feeding foray around
dawn. Out on a walkabout much higher up High School Butte on the morning of
Jan. 19, the cougar was also observed spooking a herd of mule deer, he said.
Wildlife
officials, who didn’t intervene by moving the carcass, said they were not too
concerned with the cat and its proximity to a crowd. The Wyoming Game and Fish
Department dispatched employees on occasion to check in, but the agency didn’t
maintain a presence at the scene.
“Obviously,
the priority for us is public safety, and we don’t view it as a public safety
issue really,” Game and Fish spokesman Mark Gocke said. “The cat’s been keeping
to itself for the most part, and it seems like everybody’s staying at a safe
distance.”
Gocke said
that because the cat isn’t “marked”—wearing an identifiable tracking collar or
ear tags—it’s difficult to say anything about its life history with certainty.
While not exactly routine, the animal’s presence right at the edge of town on a
slope that holds mule deer in the winter isn’t shocking, he said.
“We have
good lion habitat all around us,” Gocke said. “I’m sure they’re around more
than we know. They’re just so secretive.”
When lions
do come within eyeshot of roads and developed areas, a carcass, which can
sustain a cat for a week, is often the reason. Such was the case in March 2018,
when a cougar fed on a downed bull elk carcass about 500 yards off of the
National Elk Refuge Road across from Miller Butte. Dozens of viewers turned
into hundreds, fueled by the cat’s snowballing presence on social media, which
attracted wildlife watchers from afar.
The Elk
Refuge also was host to Jackson Hole’s most famous visible mountain lion, a cat
nicknamed “Spirit.” In 1999, the lioness denned with her three kittens on the
southeast corner of Miller Butte near the road. The weekslong show inspired the
formation of a Jackson-based advocacy group the Cougar Fund and a book, “Spirit
of the Rockies: The Mountain Lions of Jackson Hole,” along with ample press
from national media.
This
go-around at High School Butte, Jackson Hole wildlife filmmaker Jeff Hogan was
a mainstay at the scene. A cinematographer who has left remote cameras at many
mountain lion kill sites, he was glad the public has had a chance to see what
he has observed many times.
“I think
everything that cat is doing is completely normal behavior,” Hogan said nine
hours into filming on Jan. 23. “The only thing that’s kind of unusual is that
we spotted her. If that kill was behind one of those junipers up there, we’d
never even know that cat was there.”
Some folks
surmised the cat looked unusually thin and bony, but to Hogan’s eye the animal
looked to be in good shape.
“She looks
frickin’ great,” he said. “She’s a gorgeous, sexy-looking cat.”