Christmas cougar

When I was just getting started in wildlife biology, after I finished my BS at Colorado State University in the mid-90's, I was lucky enough to work for a Utah State University grad student's project in south-central Utah studying the population dynamic's and effects of resident cougar populations on the elk and mule deer populations. The Utah Division of Wildlife was also interested in trying to get a better assessment of the true population size of the cougar in Utah and figure out if their harvest quotas for the secretive Rocky Mountain carnivore was appropriate. I was lucky enough to witness the capture of several adult cougars, as well as a few cubs. This young animal was a male born sometime the previous year. We have all heard about the plight of the cougar, or puma or mountain lion as they are also referred to in the Eastern United States, but what many people don't realize is that they have one of the largest overall geographic ranges of any mammal in the world. The cougar is found all the way from Alaska to South America, and many parts in between. It was a tremendous treat to work on this magnificent animal, definitely a gem in my biological fieldwork career. This young male has just been tranquilized, and is soon to be sound asleep for a while. we worked the animal up, put a radio collar on it to track it's movements and then released it unharmed. I posted this image because I felt it had sort of a Christmas feel to it. Iused the orginal version of the Canon Elan camera with a Tokina 400/5.6 telephoto lens to capture this image on Fujichrome 100 film. The good ole days!