All language subtitles for Nature.S44E02.Willow.Diary.of.a.Mountain.Lion.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-Kitsune_track3_[eng]

Lisbon: What if we could follow
animals in the wildest country

without actually being
there to observe them?

On one special ranch in Montana,

we've been working
on that approach for 10 years.

We use remote cameras,
hundreds of them,

all across
the rugged backcountry.

Shot by shot,
we've been able to witness

how an entire
wild community interacts.

One life in particular
has been truly special...

...a young female mountain lion
has surprised us over and over.

Her life is full of danger...

...but also astonishing triumph.

Her name is Willow,
and this is her story.

Lisbon: I started tracking
as a boy with my dad

and my brother walking
through the winter woods.

What really struck me was that
there is a story in the snow.

That lit me up.

I love the idea that
I can piece together a story

from what's left behind
by the movement of animals

on the forest floor
when I'm away.

This is MPG Ranch...

...over 15,000 acres
of privately owned land

in western Montana.

We don't actually ranch
anything here.

We're more like
a research institute...

...and we study everything
from soil and plants,

to the animals
and how they all interact.

I'm Joshua Lisbon,
and for over a decade now,

I've led a very unique
mountain-lion study here.

It's unique
because we don't handle cats,

we don't collar cats,

we don't want to disturb them
in any way.

When we find
mountain-lion tracks,

we go in the opposite direction.

We backtrack to find out
where the cat came from.

That's how we discover
their dens and find their kills.

And we also track ourselves,

dropping waypoints
when we see cat tracks

so we can map how mountain
lions are using the land.

We collect genetic samples
as we go

and keep tracker logs
of everything we find.

But our study is also unique

because of all our
motion-activated cameras.

We've installed an extensive
network across the entire ranch.

Our goal is to see
and not be seen.

And the cameras
have become our window

into a mountain lion's
very private world.

Hirschauer:
My name's Maggie Hirschauer

and I've been with
the mountain-lion project

for three seasons now.

When we walk through the woods,

we create these concentric rings
around us

that kind of
call out our presence.

Being able to put cameras
in the woods

and go back and watch everything

that happened in a specific spot
is kind of a little miracle.

It's not the same
as being there,

but it lets you witness things

that you could never
otherwise see.

I installed a camera
today on a log

that I've seen a fox
come out of several times now.

It's a cool spot and I'm anxious

to see what other animals
I might find in the area.

These cameras give us a glimpse
into the lives of animals,

the way that they interact
with each other

with different species,

but also the way that
they interact with the landscape

and through time.

Lisbon: When we first started
putting cameras out,

we had no idea
that one of the first cats

to walk in front of
those cameras would allow us,

over many years,
to document all the moments

to piece together her entire,
extraordinary life.

In January of 2013,

a family of lions
took down a mule deer buck

on the front side
of the property,

and this family group,
to the best of our knowledge,

is where the story
for F-2, or Willow, begins.

We have a mother and
two young kittens on this kill,

and we start really collecting
solid DNA on this family group

the following year.

One of the ways
that mountain lions communicate

with each other is
through these chirping sounds.

I've only ever heard this
between females

and their offspring,

but they sound like birds.

The kitten, F-2,
came to be known as Willow,

because as she grew up, she grew
really tall, really thin,

and that's
how I'm able to pick her out

when she shows up on camera.

And so, thinking of her
as being willowy,

I started calling her Willow.

The ranch borders
both private and public land

where hunting is legal.

The mountain lions wander
off our property

onto these adjacent lands
all the time.

And in the winter of 2014,

Willow loses her mother
and her sibling to hunters.

But Willow survives.

We believe that she was
still traveling with her mother

at this time
when she was orphaned.

She then moves
off the front side of the ranch

into the more rugged and steep

and secluded areas
on the property.

Her first winter on her own.

Tyler Carlin's been on the crew
for a number of years.

He's amazing.

He puts in the longest days
and hikes the longest miles

and seems to find
the coolest stuff.

So he's been
really indispensable

to the study for years.

Carlin:
Went to Woodchuck 1 today to change cards and batteries

in one camera and put up
three more on other den sites.

I went to change supplies
in the camera in the first den,

which is located in
the south part of Davis Creek.

Just before I got to the den, I
saw pretty fresh bobcat tracks.

When I got to the den,

there were tracks
of a bobcat entering the den,

then leaving it, leaving me
to believe the den was empty.

As I was about to start
messing with the camera,

I heard a noise in the den
and a cougar came charging out.

Apparently, there's another way
into the den.

Checking the tracks later,

the cougar came in
from the top of the den.

I adjusted the camera angle
for this additional entrance.

Ironically, no large
mammals have approached the den

from the front since
I put the camera up in December,

until last night at 6:00,
when the bobcat came.

And then there was
a cougar sleeping in it today.

Hirschauer:
We put cameras on a fox den that we've known to be active.

Foxes will often start
to come by the den in midwinter,

usually around December,
and check it out and mark it.

And eventually,
they just seem to post up there

and wait for a mate.

They can easily sleep
for more than 12 hours at a time

while they're waiting.

Once they've found each other,

they'll spend more time
at the den,

taking turns sleeping
as they excavate

and prepare the den for
a litter of pups in the spring.

Squirrels often continue
to live in their nearby nests,

even when the foxes are
in residence,

and they seem to co-exist.

Maybe the foxes even benefit
from their vigilance and alarms

about other predators.

The squirrel that lives near
this den, like all squirrels,

has favorite routes
through the forest mapped out.

This one always runs up the log

that lies to the side
of the den.

Lisbon:
In the summer of 2015...

...Willow breeds with a male,

and she has her first kitten
in the fall,

and her first offspring is F-9,
who we call Sula.

The first footage we get of Sula
is as a young kitten

with her mother on a kill site
in January of 2016.

She looks to be probably about
3 months old at this point,

so we believe she was born

sometime in the October
or November range.

We were able to get cameras
on a number of kills

that had Willow and Sula
together at these sites.

Carlin: Went back
into the bottom of Davis

to try to figure out if
the cougars had a kill in there.

I found the kill about 100 yards
downstream of the area

where I'd seen all
the tracks last night.

The dead deer is actually
down in the creek,

but it was killed
on the second road to the north

and then dragged there.

At the kill site,
there are multiple beds

and excessive evidence
of play by the young,

demonstrated by tracks
running up leaning trees

and jumping off
and broken limbs all over.

I set up two cameras
at the site.

Lisbon: Later in 2016,

Willow and Sula are
still roaming around together.

And then, in the fall of 2016,
Willow has her second litter.

And their number designations
are F-16 through F-19

and so we just collectively
called them the teens.

Average dispersal age is
15 months.

To have two litters
back-to-back,

one fall following the other
is not normally how it goes,

because suddenly
that mother is now in a position

where she has
newly dependent kittens

and a still dependent juvenile.

And so now you have a mixed
family group of different ages.

Only two of the teens
actually survived that winter,

F-17 and F-19.

So Sula is probably
about a year old

when the new kittens are born.

We started getting
this footage out of Davis Creek

of this mixed family group
together.

We have this really distinctive
large ponderosa,

and this family group goes
past it,

and we can see clearly
that Sula is following Willow

and the teens, and
they're all traveling together.

At this point,
we really weren't sure,

what the future
was going to hold for Sula.

She was, obviously,
very dependent on her mother.

She continued
to follow her around even into

the next tracking season.

We worried she wouldn't be
able to make it on her own

and become a successful hunter.

Mountain lions are
stalk-and-ambush predators.

They're never very far
from their prey.

Mountain lions are
incredibly secretive.

They move through the landscape,
generally at a walk,

and they move really
quietly through the forests.

And they can freeze
at any point...

...and then they'll get really,
really close to their prey

and then close that distance
with a burst of speed.

Hirschauer:
I'd say elk are one of the more spectacular animals out there.

They're highly social
and so fast and strong,

and their bugles in the fall are
one of the most haunting sounds

you'll ever hear.

It's always been amazing to me
that mountain lions,

not only are capable
of killing elk,

but that they do so regularly.

There's a fair bit of risk
to a lion

in going after prey
that bold and powerful,

and you'd think that they would
just stick to smaller deer.

But adult lions in their prime

seem to have no problem
killing elk, even bull elk.

And that's a lot of meat,

especially if you're
feeding dependent young.

Lisbon:
We have hundreds of cameras on the landscape

that have been collecting
imagery for 10 years.

We've caught mountain lions
hunting...

four times.

Mountain lions end up providing
food resources

for a lot of things,

because mountain lions
will be subordinate

to a pack of wolves or bears,

so they'll run off a kill
and leave that

and feed everybody else.

But in terms of fox or coyote
or badgers

or any smaller creatures
coming in,

a mountain lion
is going to be dominant,

and a mountain lion
is going to defend that kill.

We see fox coming in
and they're --

they're really skittish.
They're they're on high alert.

They'll feed a little bit,
and they'll look around,

they'll feed a little bit,
and they'll look around.

And it's because
they're under threat.

They know that they're trying
to sneak a meal.

You're putting yourself
in a risky situation.

We have instances
of mountain lions

running bobcats off kills.

We have documented them killing
coyotes on multiple occasions,

to the point
where sometimes I feel

like they're out to get them.

And we just last winter
documented a mountain lion,

uh, killing a badger.

And what we think happened

was the badger came in
to try to get a meal

and was surprised
by the mountain lion.

Ultimately, all of these animals

are inhabiting
the same landscape,

and they encounter
each other frequently.

In the fall of 2018, Willow has
another litter of kittens.

She uses an area
that we call the Mistletoe Den,

it's a bed site, really.

They don't spend a lot
of time there.

They pass through.
It provides some shelter.

We maintain a camera
there year-round, and so we see

an incredible amount of animals
making use of this spot.

We picked this spot out
because we get

some of the youngest
mountain-lion footage

that we've had of kittens.

She's the only mountain lion
we know of who uses this spot,

and she must have
a natal den somewhere nearby.

We get this imagery of Willow
with two kittens.

We assume she only has
two kittens in this litter.

However, it turns out
that she may have a lot more.

So not long after that,
on a Saturday morning,

I get this call from Tyler.

And he is just beside himself
excited.

He's like,
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

You have got to see what
I just got off of this camera."

It's February, it's six degrees,
it's the middle of the night,

there's three feet of snow
on the ground...

...and an elk walks into frame

with a mountain lion hanging
off of its neck,

with Willow hanging
off of its neck.

We have
a female mountain lion --

say she's 100 pounds --
taking down a spike bull elk --

we'll say he's 400 pounds...

...and she's wrestling him down
by strangling him slowly

while this elk is trying
to stomp her

and kick her and throw her.

If she gets injured,

she can potentially not hunt
for a while.

If she can't recover,
she's done for,

and her kittens are done for.

This is incredibly risky,
and they do it all the time.

And we happened
to catch it on video.

And Willow manages
to drop this elk

directly in front of her den.

As the daylight footage starts
to appear,

all these little kitten heads
are popping up

and they've got rounded-out
bellies and bloody faces.

And we realize
that Willow has six kittens.

And this is --
this is unheard of.

The family group feeds
on that elk for a week,

maybe a little bit more.

What we begin to see
is that they're moving

between different den sites
in the area.

We have these three dens that
are really close to each other.

They're less than
half a mile apart.

And we see Willow at one point
leave the kill site,

she goes off on her own to scout
one of these other dens...

...and then returns
a couple of days after

with all of her kittens in tow.

The average litter size for
a mountain lion is one to four,

with an average survival rate
of one to two individuals.

The fact that we have
a mother raising six,

whether there is some form
of adoption that takes place,

or she just has six kittens
is unbelievable.

We begin to realize
that Willow is moving her young

to this other den site
and then back

and then to another den site
and then back,

and the kittens will sometimes
move independently

back to the kill site and
then will return to another den.

At different points,
we see kittens get left behind

for a little while,
get picked back up by Mom.

What we're realizing is that
the kittens are not as tethered

to their mother
as you would expect.

They're surprisingly
independent,

but this has consequences.

Twice we find kittens
get left behind --

one time, for a
very short period of time.

The mother returns,
picks that kitten back up,

and they move on.

But, later in the winter,
we have this footage of a kitten

that's left at a den site for
an extended period of time...

...and goes out
and cries for its mother

and goes back into the den

and comes out
and cries for its mother,

and does this repeatedly.

The kitten finally
just wanders off...

...and that's where
the footage ends.

Hirschauer: Springtime out here
is just incredible.

Cute baby animals are
bumbling around everywhere.

After about four weeks, the fox
pups first venture above ground.

Once the pups are mobile,

the male doesn't seem
to stick around long,

and the female takes
over the hunting duties.

She spends a lot of time
out hunting,

and they are amazing hunters.

Over and over again,
she goes out

and comes back with meals
for the pups.

The pups are pretty competitive
and voracious

when feeding time comes around.

The mother can't divide up
the meals,

and so they learn to be
aggressive if they want to eat.

Lisbon:
We had Willow and the six kittens on camera in February

when we first meet them.

We were worried
about this abandoned kitten.

Was it lost? Did it survive?

But then we get really
clear imagery again in April.

We see then that
the entire group is reunited.

The mother must have come by and
picked that straggler kitten up.

This is a single mother
raising six kittens.

And then we keep seeing them
here and there

and here and there
through Davis Creek

and in different places,

and she manages to raise
this group to adulthood.

Willow's the only one
hunting for this group,

and hunting is
a dangerous business

if you're a mountain lion.

The risks are enormous
and it could end her

and it could end her family.

And she has to do this
consistently

to feed this giant family.

Male mountain lions don't
really contribute

to raising and feeding
their kittens,

and as a result, their story
can be harder to piece together.

We seem to lose
the territorial male every year

in this study to hunting.

Last year we had this
really distinctive cat

come on to the ranch, M-44.

He's short, he's squat,

and his ears look like they
were damaged from frostbite.

So, he's very distinctive.

And he stands out.

And then later in the spring,
he shows up again at a fox den.

And so, we see
these kits playing outside

just before he comes through...

...and then we actually see
the mother fox

sitting at the den with the lion
in view in the background,

and she's barking a warning
at it.

Hirschauer: Mountain lions
can be a real danger to foxes

and especially young foxes.

But M-44,
passed by and the next day

the foxes were back
about their business.

Over the course of a season,

it's fun to see how the foxes
react to the various animals

that move through the woods
around them.

Lions, bears, coyotes,
and wolves

are all potentially dangerous

and you can see
the active interest

the mother takes when
she smells the other predators

that have passed by.

It's dangerous for her to leave
the pups alone while she hunts,

but there's no other way
for her to provide

the food that they need
and that she needs.

Two of the pups were killed,

and another two
were not seen again.

The remaining pup only showed
eye shine at night in one eye

and seems to have lost
or damaged the other one.

The lion appears
to have been a transient cat

that was just passing through.

It covered up the pups like
it was caching a food source

and returned to pluck fur
and feed that evening

and the next day.

But then the mother moved
the pups bodies

and the cat moved on.

The mother
and remaining pup moved,

but the mother came back
three more times.

Each time she went and looked
into the main, den entrance.

Maybe someday we'll have
a better idea

of what animals think and feel.

The following year, about a mile
away, we were filming a bobcat.

It had found a dead deer
and had been trying to navigate

this surly moose
with larger predators,

to try to get in
and scavenge this carcass.

And one night, a one-eyed
fox showed up on the scene.

It's impossible to say,
but I like to think

that at least one
of those fox pups

is still running around these
mountains, doing fox things.

Lisbon: In the fall of 2019,
we found a kill,

where a lion had brought
down a spike elk in a wallow.

And this presented us
with a really unique situation,

because these mountain lions
were not able to get this elk

out of the wallow.

They tried, because they don't
like to get their feet wet,

but they could not do it.

So they're forced
to feed in the open,

and we had this incredible
filming opportunity.

We were also able to collect DNA
off of that site

to determine which
individuals were there.

And what we found was Sula...

...Willow's first kitten
from five years ago...

...and Sula's three kittens.

We also see
an unrelated male come in

and share this kill with Sula
and her family.

For the first time,

we have proof
of resource sharing

with non-related individuals.

And this all
worked out really well

until they were able to drag
the kill out of the wallow,

consume it
a little bit more quickly.

and as the food resource
disappeared,

we begin to see
tolerance diminish

between the related
and unrelated individual.

Never do we see anyone actually
follow through with violence.

There's a lot of bluffing,

there's a lot of noise,

but they work it out,
and they still share that kill.

The next morning,
we see the family group come in.

They're a tight unit,
and we have

that unrelated individual
just removed a little bit.

Everybody's tense
and competitive for scraps.

And then we see
the family group leave...

...and they go together...

...and a period of time
passes...

...and then that lone male
follows them

down the exact same track.

The conventional wisdom is
that cats are very solitary

and they won't share
their food resources,

and they're
incredibly territorial.

And family members can fight
amongst themselves at a kill.

But, ultimately, what we also
see is a reciprocal relationship

where if I'm successful
and you're having no luck,

I may share with you,
and then that is returned.

And so these relationships form,

and it increases the
potential survival for everyone.

We found a spot
where a drainage constricts

and becomes
a prime travel corridor.

It's a favorite ambush spot
for mountain lions.

And this year a cat managed
to kill an cow elk and her calf.

When we found it,
the calf was partially consumed,

and the cow elk
was cached whole.

The mountain lion at this kill
was F-27,

one of Willow's
giant litter of six

from a couple of years before.

We had cameras up on
these two kills for many weeks,

and one day
another adult cat showed up.

It fed for an afternoon,

and that night F-27 returned,
and they fed in peace together.

They shared the kill
through the night,

and in the morning,
the other cat was gone.

Genetic sampling revealed
that cat to be Sula.

So, both cats are
the offspring of Willow

from litters a few years apart
by different males.

We had no prior indication
of them

having ever encountered
each other before,

but it seemed pretty clear
that our residents

are all well aware
of each other.

It's just another example
of how complex

the social life
of mountain lions really is.

Last winter, we put cameras up

at all of Willow's
known den sites

and she never showed up.

Some other cats stopped by,

and they investigated
here and there,

but we just never saw Willow.

And, yeah, there's something sad

about thinking that
that story has ended...

...but all things change.

Willow may be gone,
but in a very real way,

her offspring carry
her story forward out here.

They're using the skills
that she taught them to survive.

So I like to think of it
that her story carries on.

By any measure,
Willow was an extraordinary cat.

It was a privilege
to witness her life as we did...

...her amazing hunting skills...

...and her phenomenal success
as a mother.

And I've come to realize
that all the animals out here,

passing in front of
these cameras,

they have their own stories.

We just don't see them.

But when we can, we realize that
they lead lives more complex

and vastly richer
than we imagine.