Managing wildlife is no easy task. Wild animals are, after all, wild, so the variables are infinite in trying to track and understand patterns from year to year. Game animals like deer and elk are extremely important to an ecosystem – as are the number of predators in a given region. Striking a balance is always at the forefront. Then there’s public perception. Game biologists, and game wardens, have long taken criticism from the general population. Often unfairly. Sometimes, controlling game can even be deadly, and it has nothing to do with animal encounters.
That’s what first came to mind when I came across this viral video from this winter that shows a mountain lion make an incredible leap over the head of a wildlife biologist who was trying to tag it for tracking purposes. Travis Legler is a volunteer houndsman working with Arizona Game and Fish biologists to track mountain lions in the northern reaches of the state. He captured this video of a biologist shooting a lion with a tranquilizer. The cougar then makes that unbelievable jump over the biologist’s head, and it looks as though it’s trying to escape the tight slot canyon.
Legler is a part-time hunting guide and full-time dog trainer who often works with fish and game agencies. “You can’t see it in the video, but I was standing on a two-foot by two-foot ledge with a 150-foot cliff behind me,” Legler told Outdoor Life. “So, if the cat hit me, me and the cat were both going off the cliff.”
The story is pretty wild. Legler was out on a training hike with his dogs when he found the cat in the rocky, cliffed-out area. Randomly, he was then buzzed on his phone from a biologist looking to find and track mountain lions (he’s on the agency’s list as an available volunteer). Legler let him know he’d already found one that day and the biologist, who didn’t want to be identified, met him and they walked to the canyon.
After the biologist hit the mountain lion with the tranquilizer, it made the jump before falling asleep 60-70 feet below where it was first encountered. Legler helped the biologist belay down to the cat, who then took samples and got it collared. The animal was given a drug to help it wake up. It was unharmed.
What about that wild, throaty screaming you can hear in the video? That was Legler, screeching at the mountain lion to keep it away from him.
Read more on the encounter, here.
