Puma Hunting — Torres del Paine

The Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia has become the world's premier puma-watching destination following decades of habituation between the park's guanaco-hunting pumas and the vehicle-based wildlife observers who follow them — a convergence of extraordinary landscape, high puma density, and habituated animals that creates close-range puma encounters in the most dramatically beautiful mountain setting of any large cat destination. The park's estimated 20 to 30 resident pumas occupy territories on the open scrub slopes above the Torres' famous granite towers, and specialist guides who track individuals daily can often locate specific known females with cubs that tolerate vehicle approach to within 20 metres. Watching a puma stalk guanaco across the windswept Patagonian steppe — the cat's tawny body moving in slow-motion through the yellow-brown grass, the guanaco grazing unaware, and the Torres del Paine's ice-capped granite walls rising behind the scene — creates a wildlife spectacle of theatrical intensity in one of the world's most photogenic landscapes. The park's combination of puma, Andean condor, Patagonian fox, and Darwin's rhea in the same open terrain creates a Patagonian wildlife circuit of considerable richness accessible from the park's comfortable lodge and camping infrastructure. The austral winter from June through September now rivals summer for puma visibility as the sparse vegetation aids spotting.