Narrator: Mountains, Big, Rocky Mountains.
Like a stockade,
they guard the heart of our Wild West.
It's an epic stage,
where outlaws and loners face off,
and homesteaders struggle to get by.
Out here, it takes True Grit to survive.
In the Mountains of Western Montana,
the wind carries warnings that
best be heeded.
This is outlaw territory.
For some, grey wolves are the ultimate outlaws.
Feared, but also admired.
Like any worthwhile gang,
this one has a strong leader.
They call him Big John.
And he rules with an iron fist.
He holds his tail high to signal he's the top dog.
His juniors keep theirs meekly lowered.
Everyone knows their place in the hierarchy.
And that makes the pack a threat
to any who cross them.
Together, they can take on adversaries
10 times their size.
It's not just their own bellies the
pack has to fill.
A new generation,
ready to claim its territory.
These pups are less than two weeks old.
Their eyes, just opened,
are still blue, not yet, "wolf" yellow.
The youngsters must put on two or three pounds a week.
They must be fed.
Today, the wolves find something all
too rare in this tight-fisted world,
a free lunch, a very dead beaver.
Big John smears himself with scent from its glands.
Perhaps to cover up his own scent or
maybe he's just partial to the smell
of rotten beaver!
But one beaver, no matter how fragrant,
isn't going to keep all those pups fed.
The pack needs more meat.
To catch wolves in the act, red-clawed,
is almost impossible.
But today, by incredible chance,
a hunt is caught on amateur video.
It's not the big moose they're after.
Man: Shh.
Stay quiet, stay quiet.
She's trying to protect her calf.
Narrator: But the mother is a force to be reckoned with.
She could kill any one of the wolves
with a single kick.
To get the calf,
the pack must work together.
Probe for weakness.
Take turns to attack.
Subtitles captions by National Geographic Sync & Corrected by iscol
For 10 exhausting minutes,
the moose fights them off.
And then, they let up.
Man: Uh oh.
Narrator: But it's a false hope.
Reinforcements arrive.
Fresh legs.
More hungry mouths.
The mother's just one, and it ain't enough.
Man: There she goes.
Wow, I mean, it's sad but it's like, amazing.
Narrator: Life on the frontier is a zero sum;
one animal's gain is another animal's loss.
Hunts like these provide the meat
the pups need to survive.
They're now around a month old,
and will gnaw on almost anything.
But their diet increasingly comes
from the meat the adults catch,
and then vomit back up.
Even at this age, they act wolfish.
The call of the wild, downsized.
And already they're battling for dominance.
This play fighting is part of what will decide
who takes over as the next gang leader.
It ain't easy, becoming a desperado.
Around half of 'em won't make it.
But in a couple of months,
those that do will be ready to join the pack.
A new wild bunch,
chasing their prey across the landscape,
embodying the untamable spirit
of the Wild West.
Just because this land is indomitable
doesn't mean humans haven't tried to subdue it.
For hundreds of years,
cowboys challenged the mustangs that roamed here.
They still do.
And it's just as dangerous today.
Narrator: An age-old face-off between man
and wild horses lives on in rodeos.
Today's bucking broncos are heirs to the mustangs
that once ranged across the plains
and chaparral of the West.
The rugged land breeds fight into
these magnificent animals.
Fight that's honed in battles between stallions
for control of the herd.
The blood that flows through the veins of
Western mustangs courses through these broncos, too.
Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen,
we're gonna have some fun tonight,
no doubt about it,
so you kick back and relax.
It'll be non-stop action.
Narrator: Pitting himself against these mighty beasts,
a young cowpoke can make a couple thousand
bucks in an afternoon.
But it's a dangerous game.
Both horse and rider could lose their lives.
The horses are loaded into the stalls
like bullets into a six-shooter.
Each one of them is cocked,
ready to explode when the gate is opened.
Behind the shoots, the cowboys await their fate.
Measly human muscles and sinew going up
against a horse weighing half a ton.
You can cut the tension with a jackknife.
Announcer: You know, there's power in prayer, folks.
And if you could do us a favor for our young cowboy
on the arena floor there,
say a silent prayer for him,
I'm sure that things will work out.
Narrator: The rules are brutally simple.
Hold on with just one hand.
Stay on for eight seconds.
The horse has those same eight seconds to use
all its strength to buck you off.
Eight seconds doesn't sound like much.
But when that gate opens,
time slows down.
It's Blue Goose who gets the upper hand.
Blaze survived just four and a half seconds.
They call a hard-riding horse
like Goose an "eliminator."
And he's not the only one.
These broncs are bred to be almost un-rideable.
It takes skill, strength and a little luck to
make it all the way to the buzzer.
But these guys have saddles.
The bareback competition shifts
the odds even further in the horse's favor.
No saddle, no stirrups, no nothin'.
Just a handle so you can cling on for dear life.
The riders experience G-forces up to four times
what a fighter pilot feels launching off
an aircraft carrier.
The power of these horses is hard to comprehend.
But even these awesome animals are no match
for the true mountains.
From the mighty ranges of Alaska,
to the icy heart of the Rockies,
the West's jagged edge throws everything
it has at you.
When the big freeze bears down,
animals Hardy as bison struggle to make it through.
Yet even here, the ice eventually loses its grip.
And a long winter sleep comes to an end.
A young grizzly, alone.
At two years old, she's mature enough
to have left her mother.
A pioneer, trying to carve out a new life
in an unforgiving land.
After nearly six months without eating,
she's starving.
But at this age, she doesn't have the
experience to hunt effectively on her own.
Though the snow is just melting,
here in the Rockies, next winter is only
a few months away.
She needs to start laying on the fat, now.
If you aim to make it in the West,
you better learn to adapt.
She'll take her calories where she can find them,
even buried roots and shoots.
Perhaps there's something more promising in the wind.
Her nose is more sensitive than a bloodhound's.
She can pick up a scent from Miles away.
For a hungry grizzly, prey is wanted,
dead or alive.
But dead is a lot less work.
One bison that didn't survive winter
in the mountains.
Instinct tells her it's a feast.
She doesn't know where to start!
Life can be kinda confusing for a greenhorn.
But she is a bear,
and eventually gets down to business.
She'll gorge herself and likely return
for more in coming days.
But a half-ton Chuck wagon is gonna
draw in other takers, too.
If a big grizzly finds it,
he could kill our juvenile to keep it for himself.
Narrator: Adult grizzlies
will take on anything; even challenge the
biggest land animal in the U.S.,
and each other.
Our young female would be no match.
Sure enough, her bison carcass is found.
But she gets lucky.
It's a black bear.
If it comes to a face-off,
the grizzly would likely win young though she is.
But there's one animal she'll never
keep off her carcass.
The blowfly.
Females need protein to develop eggs.
And the bears have left plenty of it.
Enough to feed her and thousands of little ones.
They excrete digestive juices
that dissolve the flesh.
Mouth hooks grind it up.
Given free rein,
they could devour this entire thing.
But they won't get the chance.
Without claws or teeth,
birds have had to wait for
others to open the carcass up.
Now, they can eat bison and maggots alike.
The raven specializes in feasting on the dead.
Each one can consume four pounds of bison a day.
In a matter of weeks, half a ton of meat,
bones and fur is recycled back into the
animals of the Wild West.
But this land is about more than death and decay.
In the spring, many of the animals
have other things on their minds.
Male sage grouse are in the mood.
But the ladies aren't easy.
They need to be wooed.
The Wild West has a tradition of courtship.
And no animal takes courting
as seriously as these grouse.
Early morning finds them literally
strutting their stuff.
The way to a grouse women's heart is
through her eyes and her ears.
The males are uniquely endowed.
These are inflatable sacks.
Begin with a whistle.
Then suck the air in,
and force it out.
The bigger the sacks, the louder the pop.
Surprisingly, she seems underwhelmed.
But love favors the persistent.
Eventually, he gets the girl.
Another group of homesteaders,
prairie dogs.
About six weeks old,
these pups are shaking off the morning cold.
They live in a large, extended family,
hundreds strong.
Though small, prairie dogs are vital
to the health of the plains,
in part, because most of the
predators here eat them.
Narrator: The prairie dog homesteaders
are trying to make it against the odds.
But they just rolled snake eyes,
a rattlesnake.
He's gunning for the prairie dog town's
pups in particular.
The townsfolk have posted lookouts.
When a sentry spots the intruder,
he sounds the alarm.
Like ringing the church bell.
This particular call is specific to the snake.
It's what, "Look out, rattler!"
sounds like in prairie dog.
It works.
The snake's chance for an ambush strike is blown.
And the dogs aren't done.
Incredibly, they now form a posse,
to drive the bad guy out of town.
The snake's quick on the draw.
But the homesteader's even quicker.
They successfully defend their land and celebrate
victory with a different call:
the jump yip.
No one knows for sure what it means.
It may sound the "all clear."
If so, they've jump-yipped too soon.
They stand down, thinking that, now,
they're safe.
But high overhead a dark rider is
circling on the wind.
The golden eagle.
Its wingspan can exceed seven feet.
It can tackle prey big as bear cubs.
A local blackbird tries valiantly to drive it off,
in vain.
Again, the lookouts sound the alert.
One prairie dog seems not to heed it.
Finally, sensing something's wrong,
it moves closer to its bolt hole.
But not close enough,
the quick and the dead.
The golden eagle is the West's most
effective airborne killer.
Today, no other animal can challenge 'em.
But once, there was a predator that even
this magnificent raptor feared.
Narrator: In the Old West,
golden eagles were targeted
by what may be the ultimate hunter.
Plains Indians, like the Mandan tribe,
raised capturing the eagles to a religious ritual.
Few elders are left now who remember.
The eagle was sacred, a messenger to God.
Its tail feathers were holy items,
woven together to make the chiefs' war bonnets.
A Mandan warrior would hunt the eagle.
He'd use no weapons, just his bare hands.
It's not the hooked raptor beak that makes
it so dangerous, it's those talons.
The size of bear claws,
more powerful than a wolf's bite.
And the eagle is hard to fool.
It may have the best eyesight
of any animal on Earth,
with three times the resolution of human eyes.
There's only one place for
an ambush hunter to hide,
down.
Even sinking a pit is not enough.
The bird's eyes see more colors than ours.
The hunter must perfect his camouflage as well.
He weaves grass and branches together with sinew,
to build a lid that conceals his trap.
Now, the hunter can use the eagle's superior
vision to his advantage.
A jackrabbit can draw in the raptor
from up to two Miles away.
Could take hours, days even.
He has only one shot.
It took patience and courage to catch eagles,
an honor bestowed onto a privileged few.
To this day, the golden eagle symbolizes
the freedom and spirit of the West.
Few other animals so completely represent
this rugged land.
Yet maybe there's one,
a predator so secretive,
it uses aliases.
And by the looks of things,
it's been through these parts.
Narrator: A lone ranger that lives in
the shadows and does her work at night.
Cougar,
puma,
catamount,
Mountain lion.
She's wary.
She made this kill a day or two ago,
coming back to it's risky.
The carcass could tempt in other predators,
a bear, wolves.
Animals that could kill her.
She has extra reason to be cautious.
Turns out, she's not alone.
A cub.
Actually, two.
They're around six months old.
It ain't easy raising a family in the Wild West.
Her strategy is to keep a low profile.
Mountain lions are the most secretive of
the West's big predators.
They'll return to the kill night after night,
until it's gone.
She hides the carcass as best she can.
Covering her tracks.
Six months later,
the kittens have become lions,
almost.
It's hard to completely put away childish things.
But this is practice for the skills they'll
need to survive without their mother.
It's time to go their separate ways.
Lone riders, each staking a claim
to their own territory.
A young lion must perfect one skill above all others.
Today, these big cats, once viewed as pests,
are resettling the mountains.
Like all those who roam here,
they'll need "true grit" to survive.
Same as it always was.
It's animals like these,
the loners and the renegades,
good guys and bad,
that will keep the West wild!