We just came over this ridge
and suddenly there was just wolves.
It’s just unbelievable.
Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic is a land
with some of the most extreme conditions on Earth.
Across the seasons,
the team goes searching for the stars of the show,
Arctic wolves.
These incredible predators need to eat regularly,
and they hunt in packs to take down their prey.
The crew are here to film how they survive
this extreme and changing landscape.
But with Ellesmere Island being about 76,000 square miles,
it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.
After days with no luck,
the team resort to some less conventional methods.
That didn’t sound like a wolf.
It sounds like a moose.
That’s a pretty big foot.
They’re out there somewhere.
The only question is where?
Gone somewhere over there.
But who knows?
Excitedly, the crew take off in the pack’s direction.
We just came over this ridge
and suddenly there was just all this cotton grass and then wolves.
It’s just unbelievable.
A very wolfish welcome.
There’s one of these wolves that has a gaping hole in its ribcage.
You can actually hear it gurgling and wheezing. It’s a punctured lung.
Unbelievable that it’s still alive.
Having initially not been able to locate the wolves,
now the team struggled to keep their distance from these curious predators.
They’re just so confident.
Almost too confident.
With the family of wolves successfully located,
the crew can easily track them from here in.
Filming begins and continues over the course of eight weeks,
amongst ever-changing seasons and weather.
But the crew certainly aren’t as well adapted to the landscape here as the wolves.
It’s just insane how quickly they move across it and they make it look effortless.
And we’ve been struggling at every turn.
As the footage stacks up, so do the problems.
From small ones…
Oh, my God. I’m just like covered in bugs.
..to big ones…
This is hell.
If anyone thought wildlife filmmaking was glamorous,
it’s really not.
..to really big ones.
The wind is going crazy.
It feels like the tent is about to blow away.
This is not good.
Filming throughout the seasons here is tough,
no matter what time of year.
As the filming continues despite a snowstorm,
the crew see how the wolves sustain themselves here.
This isolated bull is a large prize for the coordinated pack,
and there’s a surprise for the crew.
The injured one, its wound is healing.
He was actually the main instigator of the hunt.
Hunting and killing the bull takes many hours,
which is never easy for the crew.
I feel pretty sorry for the bull.
He’s not doing well.
It’s just the way it is out here.
We’re just here to wait it out, see what happens.
After many gruelling hours, the hunt enters its final stage
as the bull is slowly brought down.
It’s pretty heavy.
It took a while.
Basically, they just wore him down.
It’s just, it’s just rough.
It’s hard up here. Everything is hard up here.
When the shoot comes to an end,
the crew leave with high hopes that the wolves here will
keep surviving in this most extreme of landscapes.
It’s pretty special being able to follow these guys on their journey.
It’s been an unbelievable experience.
We were hoping to find wolves
and get close to them, but to get
this close is just absolutely incredible.
It’s better than I could have ever imagined.
