Dina Garzón Pacheco

Without a doubt, our best trail camera capture yet: the first documented observation of a cougar with kittens in Minnesota in modern history. Turn up the volume to hear all the vocalizations. The footage, which was captured on March 25, shows a cougar with 3 large kittens while they feed on a deer they killed just south of Voyageurs National Park. We captured this surreal footage because we started a study to understand the survival and mortality patterns of deer in our area this winter. As part of that work, we GPS-collared several deer in the area in January.  In late March, we received a mortality signal from a GPS-collared deer and found the carcass buried under a pile of leaves on a hillside—a tell tale sign of feline predation.  We suspected it was likely a bobcat but thought, just possibly, it could be a cougar. So we put up two trail cameras on the cached deer carcass and 4 hours later, two cougar kittens returned to the kill. The entire family showed up that evening and spent hours in front of our cameras. In total, we captured 7.3 hr (435 minutes) of video footage of these animals. We will share more footage soon! Huge thanks to the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund for supporting the Voyageurs Wolf Project and the recent effort to understand deer survival in the area. Their support was critical to this observation—without it, we would never have captured this footage. And huge thanks to the >10,600 donors who have supported our project and enabled us to purchase trail cameras supplies. The cameras (and batteries, SD cards, mounts) we set at this kill were purchased with funds from donations.