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ii

Wildlife StalkerDays in the Life of Filmmaker Bob Landis

By Kevin G. Rhoades

iv

Copyright © 2011 by Kevin G. Rhoades

Photos by Kevin & Andrea Rhoades and Bob LandisIllustrations by Ed Sutton and Todd Fredericksen

Book cover by Ken Lockwood

All rights reserved. No part of this book, either in part or in whole, may be reproduced, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means,

electronic, photographic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in literary articles and reviews.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of this book should be made to: www.FiveValleysPress.com

Quantity discounts are available to your company or nonprofi t for reselling, educational purposes, subscription incentives, gifts and

fundraising campaigns. For more information, please contact the publisher.

Five Valleys Press6240 Saint Thomas Dr.

Missoula, Montana 59803 www.FiveValleysPress.com

info@fi vevalleyspress.comwww.BobLandisBook.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011901706International Standard Book Number: 978-0-615-44223-5

v

Acknowledgments vi Foreword vii Preface X

Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Wildlife Stalker 5

2 Beginnings 11 3 Dawn 17 4 Teen Years 25 5 The Hunt for Druids 33 6 The Search for the 40-Inch Ram 43 7 Ennui Infi niti 49 8 North to Alaska 61 9 The Gold and the Rule 71 10 Defi ning Moments 81 11 The Thunderer 91 12 Triumphs 101

13 Bugles 109 14 Refl ections 119 15 Of Wolves and Beasts 127 16 The Hunt for Otters 137

17 The Rise of Black Wolf 145 18 Cabin No More 155 19 The High Defi nition Hurdle 163 20 Dynamite Day 169 21 Full Circle 175 22 A Christmas Serenade 183

Films/Videos by Bob Landis 189 About the Author 191

Contents

vi

Acknowledgments

vii

Foreword

viii

ix

x

Preface

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xii

xiii

The presence of the wolf adds immeasurable richness and a wilderness spirit to the landscape.

One need not see a wolf to benefi t from his presence; it is enough to know that there is the possibility of

discovering one on some distant ridge. It is enoughto know that the wolf still makes his home in this

beautiful wilderness region to which he contributes vividness, color, and adventure.

– Adolph Murie

1

Introduction

It is Christmas Eve and it’s snowing and few people are thinking about wolves. One man sits in the dark in a

Subaru hatchback parked along a frozen road in Yellowstone National Park near Cooke City, Montana. Bob Landis wears an Eskimo-style parka and woolen pants. It is 25 below zero and both windows are rolled down.

In his lap Landis has a sound recorder connected to a fur-ry, directional microphone pointed up the hill. He listens into the blackness of the wilderness through headphones, prepared for a probable Christmas hymn from a few wild friends.

And then the sonata begins. Landis’ tape rolls. Bounc-ing off the mountains of the Lamar Valley, a solo wolf howl boomerangs into the snowy night. Other members of the wolf pack quickly join in and harmonize, and the chorus fi lls the valley in stereo. Howls fi ll Yellowstone’s wilderness taberna-cle with music sweet to Landis’ ears, a concert he termed, “A Christmas Serenade.”

Capturing the sound of wild animals is only part of the job for a wildlife fi lmmaker. Landis has been known to pack 70 pounds of tripod and movie-making gear into the sage, searching for tantalizing images of wild animals exploring and interacting with their world.

Recording incredible wildlife behavior on movie fi lm and

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high-defi nition video is the hallmark of Bob Landis’ fi lms. For more than 40 years, he has made wildlife movies about swans, coyotes, elk, bison, bear, otters and more, and he loves to show animal conduct and the unusual: an eagle drowning a duck, or a coyote chasing a wolf, for example.

A place dear to his soul, Yellowstone National Park is where most of this story takes place. This book contains two narratives wound into one: a depiction of days afi eld with a wildlife cinematographer who has fi lmed and co-produced stories about Yellowstone’s iconic species – the bear, the wolf, the bison. His fi lms have aired on the Public Broadcast Service (PBS), Nature and on National Geographic Television.

The book also is a collection of fl ashbacks to Landis’ past – growing up as a small-town Wisconsin boy who followed his destiny to become a football player, teacher, diehard Green Bay Packers fan, and a wildlife fi lmmaker.

After nine hunting trips with his father to Canada, fi rst as a hunter but eventually as a wildlife fi lmmaker, Landis and his bride Connie explored the wilds of the American West, western Canada, and Alaska, including Denali National Park. The couple then permanently relocated in Montana, where his high school teaching profession morphed into a successful wildlife fi lmmaking career.

This chronicle also illustrates key moments in Landis’ fi lm-

Introduction

3

making career when he captured an extraordinary predator-prey sequence showing a grizzly bear taking down a caribou and devouring it in an Alaskan stream. Countless times he sold the footage, which prompted professionals to recognize him as a force in the wildlife fi lmmaking business.

What drives Bob Landis? Wolves. Coyotes. Bears. Trum-peter Swans. The Green Bay Packers. Day after day, Landis continues to carry out a daily, decades-old purpose: To record stunning wildlife behavior images on fi lm.

He has created more than 20 wildlife fi lms, many of them winning awards and airing on television screens around the world. According to sources cited in this book, it is no acci-dent that Landis recorded “A Christmas Serenade.” He is one of America’s premier wildlife fi lmmakers.

– Kevin Rhoades

4

1

5

Wildlife Stalker

In a 90-year-old cabin faded red and perched on a bank overlooking the Yellowstone River, a bedside alarm clat-

ters to life in the wee hours of the morning. The numbers say 3:05 a.m. According to the March 1998 calendar it’s two days before spring, but in Yellowstone National Park it is winter. Minutes later, a single overhead lamp spreads light over the small, simple kitchen. Water for hot cereal gurgles in a pan on the old electric stove, and Raisin English muffi ns heat up in a Toast-R-Oven.

Bob Landis, trimmed mustache and bearded face taper-ing off to a prominent chin, sits on a wooden chair and pulls

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up a woolen sock. An electric fl oor heater on the cracked and aging linoleum fl oor blows heat at the man as he prepares for another day.

Outside, it’s snowing lightly in the small mountain town nestled up against the north entrance to Yellowstone. At one mile above sea level, Gardiner, Montana, sits in a depression surrounded by the mountain peaks of Yellowstone and the southern Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. Compared to Yel-lowstone’s snow-covered Lamar Valley, 1,000 feet uphill and 30 road miles away, there is little snow here. Gardiner lies in the rain shadow of 11,000-foot Electric Peak, the most promi-nent mountain to the west.

March, when little goes on, is one of the quieter months in Gardiner. In summer, tourists bombard the town and its 800 residents. Despite the hordes of outsiders, Gardiner maintains an informal, friendly feel. Those who live here are a mix of business owners, hunting outfi tters, freelance nature guides, artists, concessionaires and Park Service employees. For a wildlife cinematographer like Landis, Gardiner remains the closest thing to heaven.

Just south of town, pronghorn race across the rolling brown hills. Gardiner also sits in the heart of bison and elk winter range. During the snowy season, one might drive by a motel sign stating, “DISCOUNT WINTER RATES.” Below,

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the sign announces, “ELK STAY FREE.” During September or October, a fi lmmaker in search of an elk fi ght need not travel any farther than the greenest feedlot in town – the high-school football fi eld – where two bull elk smash antlers under the goal post. At the other end of the fi eld, receivers run crossing pass patterns in search of a quarterback’s bomb.

Breakfast over, at 3:45 Landis climbs behind the frozen steering wheel of his little hatchback. It’s chock-full of cords and plywood boxes crammed with cameras and zoom lenses, a large tripod, wolf research reports and yesterday’s mail. The engine whines. Two minutes later, he cruises by a herd of town elk bedded in the snow. Chewing their cuds, 20 brown heads turn as one, following the movement of Landis’ car as it zooms through the north entrance of Yellowstone.

From there, the road winds along a little river before climbing a steep hill to the town of Mammoth Hot Springs, fi ve miles uphill from Gardiner and within the confi nes of America’s fi rst national park. Landis turns left at the fi rst and only junction in the sleepy village, then drops down a lengthy hill before crossing an icy high-level bridge. Finally, the Subaru inside warms from a frosty 20 degrees to something above 60. Landis unzips his coat. He four-wheels it up the snow-covered incline into the wintry hills of the Blacktail Deer Plateau. Headlights illuminate fl its of fl ying snow.

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Today’s trip is a sketchy rerun of the last 139 days. Landis’ goal today is to fi lm wolves for a National Geographic one-hour special. He’s also the project producer. This is Landis’ second Geographic fi lm; the fi rst, airing fi ve years earlier, was about coyotes.

What sets a Landis fi lm apart from other wildlife cinema-tographers is his ability to capture unique wildlife moments. For example, in his fi rst coyote fi lm he showed the canines forming sizeable packs, much like wolves do, to prey on Yel-lowstone’s abundant elk.

Landis has fi lmed ravens rolling barrel-style down a snow bank, playing, and coyotes hunting as cooperative partners with badgers. His unfl appable persistence to fi lm day after day, season after season in Yellowstone, allows him to shoot rare scenes others never see. He can’t bear to leave Gardiner or the Yellowstone area for fear he will miss fi lming spectacu-lar wildlife behavior.

Landis’ contribution to the documentation of Yellowstone National Park compares with historic park photographers from the late 1800s. Today his work is in the same league as that of Wolfgang Bayer and Hugh Miles, although Landis is not as well known.

Landis’ job this day is to locate Yellowstone’s wolves, and to document further what has become his trademark: captur-

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ing on fi lm eye-popping moments of wild animals doing the remarkable.

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11

Beginnings

As a bright-eyed 11 year old, Bob Landis made his fi rst images while photographing ducks and geese

with his dad. “We built a blind in a haystack,” he recalled. “Then the geese and ducks would fl y over and land in front of the haystack to feed. We hunkered down in that blind for a couple of days and it was amazing to see thousands of geese – snow geese and blue geese and Canada geese – all fl ying just

2

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over our heads, much like black-and-white clouds moving across the sky.”

Bob’s love affair with the outdoors started while spending time with his dad. Dr. Ralph Landis placed a shotgun, fi shing pole and camera into his son’s peewee hands. Together, they shot ducks and hooked trout and photographed wild animals. Dr. Landis and his son booted their way through stubble fi elds in search of pheasants. They slogged through marshes and listened for beating wings.

Landis was born on July 11, 1940, in Appleton, Wiscon-sin, when his father was 42. Landis was the youngest of four children, including an athletic brother and two sisters. John is nine years older; Ruth is seven years older; and Peggy is fi ve years older. “I’m sure I was an accident,” Landis said.

As a toddler, Landis’ fi rst memories were that his dad was extremely busy with his medical career because World War II was going on. Bob didn’t accompany his dad on trips during those early years because Dr. Landis was busy running a large Army-Air Force hospital in Illinois.

Two other children, a boy and a girl, both died of scarlet fever before John was born. Sometimes Bob’s parents visited the cemetery, the signifi cance of which the boy did not under-stand. “That was a family secret and never talked about.”

Not yet a teenager, Landis and his parents traveled each

Beginnings

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spring to wildlife refuges in the Dakotas to fi lm annual migra-tions of geese and ducks. Bob remembers staying in a one-room South Dakota motel with a wood stove; brother John didn’t come along because he was in college, and his sisters weren’t interested.

“I had a little Brownie Hawkeye camera that took two-and-one-quarter-inch fi lm im-ages, the camera I used to take pictures of fl ying geese and ducks. They were loud and the sounds of their beating wings and honking were incredible.” Although Dr. Landis hunted bears, sheep and birds, hunting ducks was his favorite sport.

“Looking up at ducks was his life ambition,” Bob remem-bered.

Those early outdoor experiences were less than pleasant. Father and son sat together in duck blinds, in bone-chilling cold, when nothing much happened. Hunkered down in a metal duck skiff while watching the sky and idling the morn-ing away seemed like a thumb-twirling, miserable existence. Bob remembers not liking it much. But as he matured, he be-came more successful hunting ducks and learned how to dress

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for the cold. In time he grew to love his dad’s hobbies, includ-ing fi lming wildlife and splicing together images to make wildlife fi lms. As their experiences grew, so did their collec-tion of memories and footage, and both father and son derived much satisfaction from showing their fi lms to others.

Born in Indiana in 1898, Dr. Ralph Landis was fi ve when his family moved to Wolford, North Dakota. They relocated to a wheat ranch after some sodbusters sold out, acquiring 200 acres of prairie pothole country. “It was very much part of their lives watching the seasons turn according to migrations of ducks and geese that would fl y over,” Bob explained. “Dad hunted geese for food and sport at a very early age.”

Dr. Landis wanted to start hunting big-game animals, but couldn’t afford the outfi tters, licenses and the cost of travel while raising a young family. Especially, he couldn’t manage time away from work, but when the kids were in their teens he eventually hunted with friends in Alberta, Canada, north of Jasper. As Bob grew older, his father’s interest in big-game hunting infl uenced the youngster and the sport offered com-mon ground.

On a trial hunt at age 13, Bob and his parents set off on a 14-day horse pack trip up and over the spine of the Continen-tal Divide and into the million-acre Bob Marshall Wilderness. They started on the windswept east side, rode the forested

Beginnings

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trail along the Sun River, crossed over the crags of the Divide into White River, and came back over to the Sun River on the return trip out to Augusta, Montana.

Bob was both awed and inspired by the expedition. For someone raised in Wisconsin, this was a genuine wilder-ness experience. “Still, after all these years, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the backcountry’s ‘Chinese Wall’ leave vivid impressions on my mind,” he said.

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17

Dawn

It’s now 4:45 in the morning. Landis is parked along Yel-lowstone’s Lamar Highway, near Cooke City, Montana.

Wearing an Eskimo-style parka, woolen pants and winter boots, the 5-foot-10, 58 year old sits in the dark with both windows rolled down. At 6,800-foot elevation, it’s only 15 degrees. A cord runs from a tape deck out the passenger-seat window to a furry, wind-guarded microphone. The direc-tional mike is jammed into an embankment of snow-packed ice made by a snowplow. The mike is aimed downhill. With the aid of headphones and an amplifi er, Landis tunes into the night but hears nothing. About 100 yards below, an elk

3

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Dawn

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Dawn

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Dawn

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25

Teen Years

One horseback trip led to another, and before long fa-ther and son packed rifl es and cameras farther north

than the Bob Marshall Wilderness into the rugged mountains of British Columbia, where Bob killed a trophy-sized caribou that made the record book of the Boone and Crockett Club.

When 16, Bob and his parents drove the Alaska Highway to hunt in northern British Columbia. Bob’s siblings didn’t come along because two had left the nest and were off and married, while the other visited Scotland.

At that time the long road to Alaska was not paved, and the section between Edmonton and Dawson Creek added 450

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Teen Years

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Teen Years

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Teen Years

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33

The Hunt for Druids

7:01 a.m.: Two miles east of the Lamar Ranger Station, a government truck is parked along the road. Inside,

two men point the antenna toward the hills to the south. Lan-dis’ car rolls to a stop. It’s mostly overcast, but a few rays of sunlight burn holes in the clouds and light up patches in the valley fl oor. Through binoculars, Landis scans the hills rising from the snow-covered fl ats. Three more cars stop, apparently wolf-watchers. Landis then spots three gray-colored wolves trotting along a ridge more than a half-mile distant.

7:10 a.m.: Landis locks his 16 mm fi lm camera onto the

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The Hunt for Druids

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The Hunt for Druids

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The Hunt for Druids

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The Hunt for Druids

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6

43

The Search for the 40-Inch Ram

Before Landis graduated from Lawrence College in Ap-pleton, he and his parents made another trip to Brit-

ish Columbia to hunt with Tom and Rose. Because hunting season opened August 1, Landis was able to hunt most of the month before football practice began. His coach didn’t think he should hunt because he always returned too thin. “I’d hunt all day and eat maybe a sandwich and a piece of canned ham. So I always lost weight,” Landis said.

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The Search for the 40-Inch Ram

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The Search for the 40-Inch Ram

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Ennui Infi niti

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Ennui Infi niti

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Ennui Infi niti

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Ennui Infi niti

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61

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North to Alaska

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North to Alaska

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North to Alaska

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North to Alaska

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71

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The Gold and the Rule

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The Gold and the Rule

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The Gold and the Rule

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The Gold and the Rule

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Defi ning Moments

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Defi ning Moments

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Defi ning Moments

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Defi ning Moments

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The Thunderer

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The Thunderer

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The Thunderer

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The Thunderer

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Triumphs

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Triumphs

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Triumphs

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Bugles

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Bugles

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Bugles

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Bugles

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Refl ections

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Refl ections

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Refl ections

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Of Wolves and Beasts

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Of Wolves and Beasts

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Of Wolves and Beasts

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Of Wolves and Beasts

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The Hunt for Otters

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The Hunt for Otters

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The Rise of Black Wolf

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155

Cabin No More

1:05 p.m. With his fi rst eight-hour shift complete, Lan-dis takes a seat and removes his boots. Across from

the bench, the kitchen opens into a dining area with large win-dows looking out to prominent mountains to the west.

Floors throughout the home are mostly ceramic and cork tile. Walls are pearly white and decorated with paintings – one of wolves playing in a forest, another a portrait of a black

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Cabin No More

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Cabin No More

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Cabin No More

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The High Defi nition Hurdle

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The High Defi nition Hurdle

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Dynamite Day

4:45 p.m. Continuing the drive south of Beaver Lake, Landis slows down when he sees a group of photogra-

phers behind tripods. Lenses are tilted a few degrees upward at a grizzly and two cubs walking up hill through a meadow; Landis decisively aborts his otter mission. He knows this bear and family have appeared several times this spring, here at “Dynamite Curve.” Because there’s nowhere to park, Landis drives beyond the photographers and parks in a tight spot be-

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Dynamite Day

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Dynamite Day

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Full Circle

Sixty years have elapsed since Dr. Ralph Landis and son booted their way through stubble fi elds in search of

pheasants, cast their lines into the waters of Trout Haven, and watched Canada geese move like clouds across the sky. And almost four decades have passed since Bob and Connie fi rst explored Alaska and Denali National Park and found the cour-

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Full Circle

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Full Circle

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Full Circle

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A Christmas Serenade

Two seasons have passed since the day Landis hunted for otters and fi lmed the grizzly family at Dynamite

Corner. Summer, always fl eeting in the northern Rocky Mountains, swiftly blended into autumn, and all of fall’s glory surrendered to winter’s hush and solitude. It’s now Decem-ber 2010, and snow again blankets the Lamar Valley. Landis spends Christmas Eve with a few wild friends, a time when few people are thinking about wolves.

On the dark eve before Christmas, Landis sits alone in his

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A Christmas Serenade

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A Christmas Serenade

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Produced/distributed by National Geographicwww.nationalgeographic.com/ Yellowstone: Realm of the Coyote Wolves: A Legend Returns to YellowstoneThunderbeastThe Rise of Black Wolf

Produced/distributed by Nature www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/ Yellowstone OttersIn the Valley of the Wolves Clash

Produced by The Living Edenswww.pbs.org/edens/Yellowstone: America’s Sacred Wilderness

Produced/distributed by Trailwood Films(Bob Landis and Dale Johnson)www.trailwoodfi lms.com/ Song DogElk of the Northern HerdTrumpeter BluesCatch Me If You CanSeasons of the OtterYellowstone: High Country TreasureYellowstone: The Unfi nished Song

Early fi lms by Bob Landis landiswf@wispwest.net The Search for the 40-Inch Ram Bald Eagle Master Fisherman

Films/Videos by Bob Landis

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Five Valleys Press6240 Saint Thomas Dr.

Missoula, Montana 59803 www.FiveValleysPress.com

info@fi vevalleyspress.comwww.BobLandisBook.com

Quantity discounts are available to your company or nonprofi t for reselling, educational purposes, subscription

incentives, gifts and fundraising campaigns. For more information, please contact the publisher.

191

After working as a wildlife re-searcher in Yellowstone National Park in the ‘80s, Kevin Rhoades returned to America’s fi rst national park to spend days afi eld with wildlife fi lmmaker Bob Landis, to write his life’s chronicle. A freelance writer, Rhoades received his bachelor’s of science degree in biology from Manchester College (Indiana) and a master’s of

arts degree in journalism from the University of Montana. From 1999-2004, Rhoades worked as publications editor

for Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA). From 2004-2010, he served as OWAA’s executive director.

Rhoades, www.KevinRhoades.com, is an avid outdoors enthusiast and lives with his wife and two children in Mis-soula, Montana.

About the Author