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Outside Magazine May 2003

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Stalker (cont.)


	The trackers: biologists Toni Ruth, (left), and Jesse Newby take a reading on a collared cougar in Yellowstone. (Antonin Kratochvil)

BY THIS POINT I'd been looking for a cat for nearly a year. I'd trekked miles in the Absarokas and Gallatins in search of another cougar. I'd checked old burns, plowed through waist-deep drifts and over ledges, and all I'd gained was a bone-weary appreciation for the cat's ability to go over, under, and through, navigating the terrain like a liquid ATV. I was desperate. Unless I strapped T-bones to my back, I was going to need a professional.

One bitter January morning, I met Toni Ruth, a biologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, at the northern entrance to the park. Ruth is a small, blond 39-year-old woman lit with the glow of someone who's spent way too much time in the woods. I'd been warned that not only was the Gardiner, Montana-based scientist one of a handful of researchers doing the grueling fieldwork of tracking cougars, but that

I'd been looking for a cougar for months, and all I'd gained was a bone-weary appreciation for the cat's ability to navigate the terrain like a liquid ATV. Unless I wanted to strap T-bones to my back, I needed a professional.

I'd better be prepared to hike my ass off. Of all the biologists in Yellowstone—and the park is swarming with them—the lion people are the hardcore ridge-grinders. Ruth is dogged: Her 1990s research on cougars and wolves in Glacier National Park nailed the first solid data on interaction between the two predators, and her Yellowstone Cougar Project is part of the first to study what happens when one predator—the wolf—is reintroduced into others'—the cougar's and the grizzly's—turf. Ruth says things like "Current single-species approaches to large-carnivore conservation lack an understanding of carnivore assemblages and interactions at a wildlife community level." That morning all she had to say, as if to dampen my enthusiasm, was "We've been out ten days without a cat."

We geared up in the dark, bitching about the cold. Ruth's team—young researchers Jesse Newby and Jason Husseman—checked radios and avalanche beacons, while Tony Knuchel, a hired houndsman, uncrated two black-and-tan hounds, Cooter and Buck. The goal today was to capture and recollar F125, one of the 15 to 17 adult cats wintering in the park's 2,000-square-mile northern range, a female who'd been using the Rattlesnake Butte area, near the north entrance. F125 had a pair of kittens—more teenagers than fur balls—that Ruth hoped to fit with monitors. Three cats. I liked my odds.

We set off, and Yellowstone unscrolled its usual beauty. Husseman, a former wolf researcher, pointed and said, "Check out the alpenglow, dude." I nodded but thought, Screw alpenglow; I want a cat. We topped a hill, and another, until we were on a steep north-facing slope that dropped off to the Yellowstone River. After traversing a narrow game trail, Ruth huddled the crew and pointed down toward the river. "We're going to take a reading," she whispered, as if some cat sense had told her we were close. Newby fiddled with the tracker, listening for the collar blips. He quickly froze and pointed to a tiny fold of trees that seemed deceptively quaint and manageable. There was a cat down there, but the trick was going to be cutting off its escape route, a steep, rocky ledge that led downriver and back the way we'd come.

I volunteered to go down the steep bank with Newby to head the lion off while Ruth and Husseman took the high route. Knuchel would hold the hounds until we radioed for him. Ruth looked down several hundred feet to the Yellowstone River. "Be careful," she said. "I don't want to call in a helicopter."

Halfway down the rocky slide, it was apparent that Newby was part mountain goat and I was the human sled. I caused several loud slides that chunked off into the nothingness below, and Newby looked up, pissed and then alarmed. But when he took another reading, we still had cat. We split up, Newby taking the cliff edge while I crept silently along a game path 50 yards above. A little ways along, the wind shifted and I caught the familiar stench of dead things. That's when I saw something white flash against the bark of a tree. I froze and squinted and there it was—the unmistakable white-and-brown mask of a cougar, sitting under a crooked pine.

There is an odd moment of swooning surprise when you glimpse any animal in the wild and your brain clicks through the appropriate responses, from fear to awe to who-cares-keep-moving. I settled on awe. For a long time it was just the two of us, the lion casually twitching its tail and cocking its head with unsettling feline calm while I tried to stifle my irrational urge to get closer. After all the time I'd spent searching, I wanted to stumble down the rocks and have it flash some tooth and claw, give me a taste of its power. Instead it regarded me as I suppose it regards most humans—two-legged, clumsy, an annoying interloper who, when the mood struck, it would try to eat or, more likely, simply saunter away from.

But the arrival of Ruth and Husseman changed all that. Sensing something hinky, the cat rose as Newby galloped out from a clump of trees, baying like a hound. Then the real dogs appeared, and in a flash the cat glided away, with the dogs in hot pursuit. Stunned by the speed of it all, I gave chase with the others, scrambling over a steep ridge, mainlining adrenaline, wanting to see the cat run one more time.

By the time I caught up, the dogs were howling and jumping at a tree like beery frat boys as Knuchel circled, taunting them, "Skin 'em up, skin 'em up." Several times the lion crept out on a branch and fixed me with its gaze, its eyes full of sheer predatory disdain as it hissed, giving me a peek of fang.

Ruth unpacked her gun and hit it with a ketamine-laced dart. Newby climbed up and lowered the animal, and the crew went to work, measuring, snipping fur samples, siphoning blood, and shoving what looked like a high-tech meat thermometer up its ass. Up close, the cat was all bulging forearms and broad paws, its white fur stained with blood from a recent kill. Ruth pinched one paw, and out squirted a long, sharp claw. She pulled back its muzzle to display the powerful incisors. When we finally released F125, it was hard to watch it crawl and stumble away, its eyes dull and stoned, tail dragging limply behind. I looked away.

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