MeatEater TV Web Exclusive: Steven Rinella Hunts Mountain Lions in Idaho

mountain lions go by many names cougar puma panther Catamount and they live in many places from Patagonia to northern British Columbia we're tracking one in the dense forests of the Idaho Panhandle or sub-zero temperatures and piling up snow have created ideal hunting conditions span at that a nice track theory it involves a lot of walking a lot of listening a little bit of running in some of the finest tracking know-how that an outdoorsman can muster [Applause] I'm Steven Rinella to me hunting isn't only about the pursuit of an animal who we are and what we're made of I lived on 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 could 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 snow if they can yes guys they're pretty short legged they have a hard time in this deep snow professionally Bart is a wildlife biologist with the Kalispel tribe he does research work on a host of native wildlife from links to Grizzlies to Mountain caribou he's also a dedicated hounds Minh who raises and trains his own track and dogs for the pursuit of mountain lions whether it's for research or hunting purposes fellow hounds when Bruce Duncan is his friend and mentor together they've tracked mountain lions across a large swath of the American West they hit a bunch of elk and deer Bruce will be joining us as well 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] the first step is the head into likely country and find a fresh track the dogs will just hang tight for now so the female track the actual toe is a point you're appointed one that's the morning of big Tom's you when they walk and sometimes they'll push a point a little bit but they're they're round toed yeah we cut a couple of different Mountain Lion tracks but they're small and could be from females so we passed them by in many areas mountain lion seasons will end when a quarter of just one or two females is killed even in areas without a quote most hounds been refused to hunt females at all for fear of having a negative impact on the local population clearly down there oh yeah that's beautiful about 20 miles in we cross a mountain lion 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 are you looking at well 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 go you know left to left I like to see a 40 inch stride if you find a 40 inch stride it's pretty much always gonna be a good Tom when you see a big one you always know 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 one hour old or 12 hours for this job Bart trusses dog whisperer [Music] man that's a nice track good grief what do you guys think how like how do you rate that dogs excitement level well like I said she's not a real mouthy dog I'm not just gonna blow up unless the cats well here's mine yeah let's 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 hounds men spent as much time searching for lost dogs as they did mountain lions 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 surroundings [Music] 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 lions tracks by walking over them once the dogs get excited and confirmed that they're on the trail we cut him loose they're murdering men with the dogs running we head out behind him man Bruce is right but we're lying the line of travel that thing is gonna do he's done this before he knows the routine unfortunately they're headed back to that River we're worried about yeah they are it was early 800 900 yards oh yeah there nine hundred yards out we could have a loss at the river it wouldn't surprise me if they turn one way or another when they hit that river either that cats probably not just gonna cross he was just on the river he'll find a log to cross 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 him where we can hear him you 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 and see where he crossed hop he hopped on that log right there and worked his way across that you can see where the dogs clamored made it up you think they ever picked up his track on the earth side oh yeah no I'm sure they did they tracked him across that log gosh darn it they're 400 yards they're working back up towards us they're having a hard time yeah we need to help him out this is yeah this is troublesome [Music] what's going on here yeah there's a mess so those tracks oh he's going this way hey just turn around right here enough to confuse us and for the dogs had trouble when dogs get turned around and lose a track a hounds Minh 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 them off here the bed we're lying was laying different line I'm not going out that way yeah track right there so the rivers right here below us the dogs are skunking around 600 yards down there it's possible I haven't so much trouble yeah I don't know I need to get a better look at this track there's yet another cougarhunt in this area examining the tracks I think of the controversy 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 for working in tandem each with its own strengths and weaknesses there's an ancestral Beauty to it it's corny to think that all this goes on and that lion doesn't know any this has happened there's no idea what's what's coming doing his thing cause business yeah there's 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 the other about hearing is just totally silent you can picture why they climb a tree and they're just like you don't hear anything out here and all the sudden there's four dogs just screaming their guts out coming up behind you yeah yeah so when do they just jump up a tree and hope it passes as much as Hausman might use the word chasing or running cats most of the action occurs out the mountain lion no one was going up this cat is hours ahead of us at this point has no idea that any of this is happening there are long ways from us now they're a mile and a half away and I've lost service on all of them we gotta yeah we gotta climb up out of here let's do it [Music] it's late now I got a couple hours daylight left yeah but the dogs are on the edge of what would become a large unloaded area that's hard to get into so they want to gather them up now because you're not gonna 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 chip good girl tipsy coming here tip the RIP Hugh good hound dog good girl good girl tip after a day of tracking and considering the confusion for multiple sets of Lion tracks it becomes obvious that it's not gonna happen today temperatures are too cold to risk having a dog out overnight they did a good job today they covered a lot of ground it's 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 lead [Music] before dawn we head off 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 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 he date 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 just knows real fluffy it's hard to tell if it's a elk or a cat there's no track it must have done this most of night yeah I think it's no that's all you're not seeing toe and pad anymore where I lose it all you're seeing is dimmable yeah and the dimples just Peter up you know just gone we explore all the logging 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 game rich area when you follow this track is that you can sense that that cats hunting or you get a sense he's migrating I think he moved into all these deer and he's just hunting now he's a good know they're all here yeah yeah yeah cats coming this way cats going that way old tracks going that way he just has been everywhere the dogs are going there find in 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 or cutting their own tracks [Music] finally Bruce finds what we're looking for that's attractive one right there so you 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 a bump out of here you know but it's hard to tell it's easy to miss a track in this thing mess of traction here this tracks going up towards the keel that we found had it cached away up underneath the curious lens almost always do he had it packed up there hidden where the birds couldn't find it pretty nice buck a lion that sighs 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 will find it summertime bears so they get pretty good at hiding them and up underneath those trees would have been a good spot where he can 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 day and up in that swamp just for security because you see we're kind of out in a big brush field here he wouldn't want to lay it out and 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 will be your repeat of yesterday but then suddenly the sound of the dogs becomes altogether different they found what they've been looking for yeah their bark and scale guys [Music] some what kind of bargains that sound like I can't believe it after two days of staring at this mountain lions tracks it's stunning to see it in the flesh but then just like that he's gone the dogs are right behind him the dogs treat a cat a second time and again it bails out no way I'll be shooting there I couldn't see you or the dog young dogs tell me one 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 my home and the meat is excellent suitable for dozens of preparations [Music] the meat looks like white meat with bad eye looks like your skin important look at that man don't you smoke that thing like poor camp yeah [Music] when I've cooked mountain lions in the past I've always taken legs and just slow-cooked legs and then you know break the meat off and make like and you kind of pulled pork type recipe or sloppy Tom's which is a sloppy joe with a male mountain lion so this is the whole back strap right here it's really kind of remarkably similar to pork loin maybe if you just look at it you know and this guy has some body fat on him just like if you pull it back chef's off elk or deer you have this thick silver skin or fell on there you're gonna work that off 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 [Music] and it's it's so strange to be um you know if you hunt deer and other servings you get really used to all your wild game me having that same mahogany color and it's just really unusual to be working with something that's just call the report now it looks just like bored this right here big pad of fat that was sitting off the side of the rump so I'm gonna trim this a little bit and then just put this piece in there too just to experiment with and see how it turns out it's multi fat a little bit of meat about it be curious what that's gonna taste 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 internal temperature of 160 degrees [Music] 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] warden say what you do with this then did you see her - seared it in the woman did you bake it or did you ask 400 degree oven for how long until it was way beyond where it's gonna make anybody sick in a month what would you get from a lion lions aren't your noses really yeah ma'am that looks good is just both off of that point mmm this one's got the fat on it I take a piece of the fat you know what this chucky chucky fruit I haven't had line in 10 years you had lion meat last summer lasts our spring having a good line in ten years I mean I much prefer the fatty pieces really yeah it doesn't have that where the coats your mouth like deer fat it's not like that you know no film at the end yeah pretty good that's so surprising it tastes like that how could I like a carnivorous animal tastes like that well they only fresh meat yeah yeah they're eaten sour drawn me a man and stuff it's like not like a wild pig but it's like what's like people probably say pork because there's no other you know I mean like what else you gonna compare it to people are generally shocked that it's so light mm-hmm eunuch got another piece there yeah we're going to eat the whole thing and cut her like 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

Channel: MeatEater

Views: 3,254,088

Keywords: steven rinella, meateater, onX

Id: Mqv1arVKWR0

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 30 2018