Wyoming Wildlife Guide Photographs Rare Mountain Lion Near National Elk Refuge

Billy Fabian was leading a tour group for Jackson Hole EcoTour Adventures when he caught something most wildlife photographers never get: a mountain lion on camera, peering out from a rocky outcrop near Wyoming's National Elk Refuge in Teton County.

Fabian captured the footage using a Swarovski Optik ATX 95mm spotting scope with his smartphone attached via an Ollin Nature Snapshot adapter system — a digiscoping setup that let him pull detail from a safe distance. The resulting images show the cat against a cliffside of orange and gray rock, patches of snow scattered across the scene, a large bushy tree filling the background. The cougar looks directly toward the camera with what PetaPixel described as "an untrusting and skeptical gaze." Fabian posted the footage to Instagram under the handle @strategist.to.naturalist.

The shot is a rare one. Sightings in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which includes the National Elk Refuge along with Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks, are genuinely uncommon. In the weeks leading up to Fabian's capture, photographers had been staking out positions in the refuge hoping to glimpse a lion that had been spotted sporadically in the area. Even knowing a mountain lion is nearby doesn't mean you'll find one: they blend into rocky and forested terrain with remarkable effectiveness, and their cautious, deliberate movements make them easy to miss even in open country.

Mountain lions in the Greater Yellowstone region are solitary hunters that prey largely on mule deer and elk, with smaller mammals rounding out the diet. They gravitate toward rocky terrain and dense forest cover, which gives them concealment from competing predators like wolves and bears. They also cache their kills, a behavior that draws other predators to the site.

Fabian's sighting wasn't the only recent evidence of lions moving through the valley. A separate mountain lion was caught on a security camera in Teton Village in the early hours of Monday, December 23, when Tyler Shand, a front desk manager at Hotel Terra, recorded video of the security footage that subsequently circulated widely. These cats are present in both Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks and have documented history in the area, including a valley sighting photographed by Nick Sulzer in September 2020.

The Jackson Hole photography community has a long-running fascination with mountain lions. Wildlife photographer Savannah Rose spent years pursuing them and described finally documenting a large tom as "a dream come true." Rose and a collaborator are now making a documentary about the experience, drawing a parallel to films about snow leopard photographers: Jackson Hole, Rose noted, has its own "shadowy, mysterious big cat that lives up in the snowy mountains." Separately, legendary local photographer Tom Mangelsen dedicated an entire book to the subject, "Spirit of the Rockies: The Mountain Lions of Jackson Hole," and his Images of Nature Gallery at 170 N. Cache in downtown Jackson remains a reference point for any serious wildlife shooter working in the region.

Anyone who spots a mountain lion in the Jackson area can report the sighting to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department's Jackson office at 307-733-2321. The Ollin Nature Snapshot adapter Fabian used has become a practical solution for digiscopers who want to capture frame-worthy wildlife footage without hauling a dedicated telephoto rig into the field — and Fabian's footage makes a strong case for the technique when the subject is a cougar on a ledge 200 yards out, deciding whether it trusts you.