Leslie Patten - Ghostwalker: Tracking a Mountain Lions Soul Through Science and Story

GHOSTWALKER

Copyright 2018 Leslie Patten

Published by Far Cry Publishing

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.

ISBN: 978-0-692-16385-6

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover and interior design by www.DominiDragoone.com

Cover photo: Drew Rush/ National Geographic

A cougar patrols its territory inside Yellowstone National Park
Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem map by Charlie Beck and Mark Mahaffey Index by Steve Rath

All photos are from the personal collection of the author or in the Public Domain, except for the following: courtesy Mountain Lion Foundation.

Theres no one. Do you hear? Its the puma
stepping in the air and the leaves.

PABLO NERUDA

A lot of books and articles about the puma pass across my desk. I try to read them all, but must admit I have become jaded and groan with every request for a review. So when Leslie Patten appeared with her manuscript, my skepticism flared. I had never heard her name, and braced myself for one more volume that either decried the cruelty of puma hunters or proclaimed alarm over puma threats to human welfare. I grabbed my red pen (figurativelythese days you key up track changes) and settled into my hard-nosed critic mood. Within a few pages, I realized that I was reading, not editing. The copy was clean, and the author had done her homework. She had read the scientific literature, and had interviewed most of the best biologists studying the species. She had clearly delineated the issues affecting wildlife agencies responsible for puma regulations. This effort to this point might have resulted in a useful perspective on the status of the species in the American West.

But she reached further. She read the lore as well as the science and sought people living near and engaged with pumashounds-men, trappers, and owners of livestock. She became their neighbor and interviewed them with empathy finding no demons.

While accumulating this written and oral knowledge, she also went to the field. She learned to recognize puma sign from biologists and hunters, and she and her dog roamed alone through an isolated landscape bounding Yellowstone, following puma tracks and setting trail cameras in strategic places. She became an accomplished wilderness naturalist in the habitat of pumas, grizzlies, and wolves.

And best of all, she engagingly interwove her experiences with the science and lore to create the best popular treatise on pumas that Ive read in decades. Her scholarship is impeccable, she tells a good tale, and she writes with a journalists eye for clarity. Asked to recommend a book that summarizes the current state of the puma, Ill choose this one for some time to come.

I congratulate Leslie for a job well done.

HARLEY G. SHAW

Retired Wildlife Research Biologist

Author: Soul Among Lions

Managing Editor, Wild Felid Monitor

After living in the Canadian backcountry for an entire winter tracking and studying mountain lions, writer and naturalist R. D. Lawrence summarized his experiences this way: I had developed the ability almost to think like a lion, to recognize instantly those places that would not offer prospects of prey, or that were too tangled for quiet travel. I could read tracks and tell from the width of the stride and the depth of the impressions whether a cat was walking unhurriedlyalert, but not stalkingor whether it was intent on hunting, but not yet within sight, scent or sound of game.

This book aims to empower the reader with that kind of knowledge. It is also meant to answer a personal question I carried with me as I followed lion tracks through every snowy winter of Wyoming, and one I posed to every interviewee: What does it feel like to be a mountain lion?

I live next to Yellowstone National Park, one of the greatest wildlife viewing parks in North America. People from all over the world come to Yellowstone and to Grand Teton National Park, its neighbor to the south. They see grizzly bears and wolves, coyotes and elk. Yet most will never see a mountain lion. And neither have I. Ive only encountered their ethereal presence on the landscape, which left me pondering where they were and what they were up to. For five years, through serendipitous encounters with their tracks and scat, as well as following their wanderings, I gathered more anecdotal information about cougars than scientific knowledge. I grew to know their habitat and where I might find their spore. I could recognize a lion kill, and I knew where to set up my trail camera. I caught photos of males courting females, mothers with young, and males marking their territorycougars doing what cougars like to do. Still, I never encountered a mountain lion. And even though I was learning where to find evidence of their presence, that burning questionWhat is the essence of the lion?compelled me to dig deeper.

This book is an attempt to answer that question. In a sense, I began a hunt, but one that ends in total absorption, not in a kill. As I interviewed people, scouted for lion sign, and pondered how to focus the story, the book took shape as a tracking tale. The track in the snow or sand became the lion itself. Just as a tracker views sign from every anglefrom ground level, from a standing view, in different light, and by walking around the printI was following the crumb trail as best I could, over every substrate. Sometimes the outline was clear and at other times it disappeared. Slowly, a more complete picture emerged, driven by my curiosity of a lions illusive nature.

My journey is this book. My initial questions were perfunctory how do I track more efficiently, how do I make the best use of my trail camera, and what does a kill site look like? But as winter arrived each year, and I saw mountain lion hunters with dogs showing up, my curiosity grew. Why do these houndsmen hunt mountain lions? What laws do western states have to protect these animals? What are conservationists and scientists saying about mountain lions? Soon I was on a road that led to interviews with dozens of people with diverse backgrounds.

Every September, as Wyomings mountain lion hunt season began, I picked up a hunt brochure to check the quota for my valley. Throughout the long winter, I visited the Wyoming Game and Fish Harvest Report website and watched the count tick off as cougar kills were added each week. One year I called the local office of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to ask a biologist how they set these quotas. Why was my quota of twenty the same every year? Did they know how many lions were actually in my hunt zone? Did they know how old they were? When I found out the Department uses a sketchy method of tooth aging, suitable lion winter habitat, and hunter success to set those quotas, and that mountain lion populations are difficultin fact, almost impossibleto count, and that the Department doesnt even attempt it, I began to wonder how hunting pressures might be changing lion dynamics in my area.