Glutton for footage
The Nature of Things
Andrew Manske has the quickly deployed smile of a man at his best outdoors, and shows well- earned weathering around his twinkling blue eyes as he recounts how he spent the last five years, quietly hunting.
Pushing his equipment t hrough oceans of deep snow, setting camera traps to pinpoint his prey, and living in small blinds for weeks straight in northwest Alberta, Manske’s quest was simple enough: film the first and best high- definition footage of wild wolverines. And boy, did he.
“It was like Christmas morning,” he says of seeing his first motion-captured footage of the fuzzy moving appetites, early in his journey. However, the videography isn’t just beautiful; it also challenges some of our presumptions about the social behaviour of these thick-coated, rather selfprotective carnivores named in Latin after gluttony. Q Why wolverines? A There’s very little been done on them. They’re probably the most elusive predator in North America. I’d spent 20 years out there filming polar bears, grizzly bears, but had never seen a wolverine in the wild. It took getting to know some trappers. Wolverines are really good at smashing traps and getting the bait without getting caught. The trappers started putting out consumer-grade cameras to see what was stealing their food. I got word of this. I went out and put out video-trail cameras and started seeing wolverines, every night, and eventually during the day. Q How does it feel to be part of the front line of scientific discovery making art?
A It’s so amazing to be up close and personal with wolverines. Like, 20 centimetres away there’d be a wolverine lunging at me, and you can smell their breath — which smells like rotting beaver from the trap. My skills helped discover some families. We caught one called the White Buffalo and my trail cameras caught another one hanging around. He was just following his dad around. We didn’t know they were that social. Q You’ve finished a five-year journey. Is it over?
A Because I’m getting the footage, other clients are popping up. BBC is coming out with a “great mountain” series, and they want wolverines for the Rockies. I’m leaving March 1 to go sit in my blind for a month. As soon as you get footage, you find out how to do it even better. Q Susan Sontag talks about how photography preserves and yet destroys. Are you concerned about your impact?
A When I’m out filming wolves and wolverines, they’re definitely impacted by my presence. Their behaviour changes. I was filming wolves off the coast of B.C., and they were smelling the places I’d been, even just walking. All of a sudden tails tucked beneath them. They’d look scared and leave. I’ve had so many wolves roll around in my poo spot. They know I’m there.