Filming winter wildlife in the USA
We flew back to the USA on January 25 for two weeks filming winter wildlife of the western US. Yes this was really my first winter experience in three years and first real winter in a decade. Fortunately for all of us heat lovers and for filming purpose we had really good weather. Cold and snow returned as they were flying back to Italy. None the less a mild weather stint in Wyoming at the beginning of February is still very cold for me, and the snow brings back distant memories from my Minnesota days.
Our first filming was out at the wolf dog rescue center in New Mexico, most of their animals are wolf dog hybrids but they have a few pure wolves that we filmed. As she frequently does Claudia went in with the animals. One of the wolves was excited and jumped up to lick her face, as he did this one of his teeth nicked her chin. She wore the scar with pride, (my kind of woman). For the few pure wolves they had, they had a good variety; there were Arctic Wolves (white), a black wolf and several shades of the more common grey color.
We then returned to the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge that we had visited in December. The Snow Geese were not as congregated as before, as they had spread out over more ponds then before, but there were still tens of thousands of them there. It was a little disappointing to Claudia and I, but was still very impressive to Leo and Simona who had not been there before. And of course the Sandhill Cranes were still there too. We also saw a couple of skunks, but most mammals are hard to see there.
Next stop is another wolf center in Colorado. These are mostly pure wolves. This time we all got to go in with two of the wolves. He was a big black wolf who loved attention. I should add that in both of these cases not just anybody can stop there and go in with the wolves. They are still largely wild animals and the people there have gotten to know which ones have the personality that will let them interact with other people. Even then it is with a person that the wolves know and only an occasional thing for a short amount of time. It has been 8 1/2years since I worked on the Idaho wolf project; it was really nice to have another chance to touch a life wolf.
I have grown to be more and more tolerant of people but the lady at the wolf center was crazy. She immediately decided she didn’t like me and that I was an animal hater. Yes, how crazy is that, me hating animals. She came to this conclusion because I had done volunteer work on the Mexican wolf project. For some reason the Idaho project which I did far more work on didn’t seem to bother her. She actually believes the government went to all the trouble of reintroducing the wolves just so they could again completely exterminate them. Since I had been involved then I must hate all animals. Sounds logical; if you’re crazy! If one doesn’t share her feelings and beliefs completely then they are her enemy, if an organization, or government agency compromises at all from her view then they’re all bad, no matter what else they have done.
I believe that people with such extreme views hurt their own cause. When someone who knows little about an issue hears about it from a fanatic they’re more apt to lean the other way because they see that individual as being crazy so therefore people of that opinion are crazy. She even went so far as asking Claudia how well she knew me, and trying to convince her that I was a bad guy. Her opinion of me was completely based on my volunteering with a government agency. I quickly avoided her and let Claudia do a little damage control. We all had a good laugh about her after we left.
We were not able to film in Yellowstone even though that had been a key piece of the original plan. This was because of the ridiculous amount of bureaucracy that now affects anything involving the US government. A fee to sign up to seek permission to film, then more than 2 people there is an additional charge of $150 per day, doesn’t matter if it was 3 or 12 people. We considered just having Leo and Claudia involved but they wouldn’t let Simona and I even be around them. Plus a million dollar insurance policy, obviously a video camera used by a professional is way more dangerous than if used by a regular person, (apparently the government is withholding important documentation on catastrophes caused by professional cameramen.). Both the fee and the policy are geared to large scale productions and not a small crew. We kept trying different solutions right up to just a few days before we would have been going there. We finally had to give up on this part of the film and go other places
The Elk Refugee was a wonderful spot to get great footage of a large heard of Elk. There are over 5000 Elk there. We got to watch some of the younger males practicing their skills for next year’s rut. They would lock their antlers and just twist their heads around for a while. Sometimes another male would come up and challenge one of them. On a few occasions it became much more of a real rut and one of the animals would push the other one way back. On one occasion a bigger mature male came up to challenge two young ones during their dual, they both wisely declined and ran off. They lose their antlers later than most animals, not dropping them till early March. When we returned in the morning there was a carcass being picked at by a bunch of Ravens.
We got lucky and found a couple Moose by the side of the road that were not camera shy. The moose had already lost their antlers, which is too bad because a moose displaying its rack is one of the more spectacular things to see in nature. At one point the more dominant animal felt its space was being crowded so it did a short bluff charge. Other than this one occasion they were fine being near each other. We also saw some moose at a little more distance on another occasion, but still quite close.
The bighorns that had eluded Claudia and I in July were a little more cooperative this time. I would love to be able to see them in the fall, competing for breeding rites, but that will have to be another trip. Every other year they have a roundup of some of the Bighorns to relocate them to other areas. Unfortunately that was not this year. I did talk to the lady at the Bighorn center about getting involved in that another year, but do I want to spend part of another winter here, (it’s done in January).