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Main Boards => PowWow => Topic started by: Walt Francis on January 30, 2008, 01:52:00 PM
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Reading the thread on four blade broadheads reminded me of the first time I used one and it appears the hunting stories are getting fewer so I figured the account of this hunt in 1994 might make give everybody some mid week entertainment.
Steve,
Here is the story; it takes a good ten minutes to tell when I have a few beers in me. It's funnier in person too.
I was elk hunting and working a five point bull with a cow call when I spotted movement though the brush to my left. My first thought was it was an elk, and then figured the color was more that of a mule deer, then that the movement was that of a predator like a coyote so I raised my bow and drew it ¾ in preparation for the shot. About five seconds later the critter, a mountain lion, cleared the brush fifteen yards down hill and looked directly up hill at me. Unfortunately, even though I had a mountain lion tag, I couldn’t shoot because the season did not open until the first of December. So I remained still while it stared in my direction for about thirty seconds before heading directly towards me. During this time my thoughts are damn, a cat broadside at fifteen yards, I can’t shoot, and now he is coming at me. Next, I raise all the way up on my knees to make myself look bigger and yell “you better get out of here”, which stops the cat at about eight yards with a quizzical look on his face. After a couple of seconds it continued forward in what I call the full stalking mode. I am now thinking screw the regulations this cat wants dinner and is looking to make me the main course, so I start drawing the arrow and picked a spot on the center of his chest. As I released the arrow the cat crouched, starting its final pounce causing the arrow to hit between the eyes. The cat dropped immediately. Thinking it was dead I went over and nudged it with my foot with no reaction.
I was shooting one of the old Beman 2300 carbons, tipped with a Magnus I and bleeder blade, out of a 68# Marriah Thermal and the over-sert was completely buried in the skull. Anyway, as the adrenaline rush subsided I walked off about tens yards to collect my thoughts and was replaying everything in my mind when I heard a rustling behind me. Turning around I see the cat walking down the hillside for about fifteen yards then he turned following the elk trail it had come in on. Walking away the cat looked like a drunk, weaving side to side and its paws crossing over one another: the right paws being placed on the left side of its body the left paws placed where the right ones would normally be placed. Needless to say, my jaw was almost touching the ground as I watched the cat walking away with an arrow sticking out of its head, looking like a unicorn’s horn.
After about ten minutes (and checking the tracks to verify I hadn’t imagined incident) I started cow calling to see if I could get the five point that had been coming in before the cat arrived to respond. After about two or three minutes of calling I hear something rustling in the brush behind me about thirty yards up the hill. Turing around slowly, hoping its an elk coming in, I saw the kitty sneaking through the brush in my direction with the arrow, still stuck between his eyes, hitting the brush. Thinking this has gone far enough and hoping to scare it away, but not wanting to explain a bullet in the side of the chest to game wardens, I removed my pistol from its holster and put a bullet in the ground directly underneath the cats’ chest. Instead of running away as expected, it crouched down and starts snarling at me, so I let off another round, this one intended to kill. The cat turned and disappeared, running into the brush.
My state of mind at this point, to put it nicely, is a little unsettled and I move down hill into an opening where I sat for a half hour “rubbernecking my surroundings”… hum, I mean collecting my thoughts. After the wait getting my head screwed on right, I finished the remaining two hours of the evening hunt, though I spent more time looking over my shoulder then for elk. After the hunt I met up with my brother Bob and we drove down to Big Sky and spent an hour reporting the encounter to the authorities over the phone. (We probably wouldn’t have bothered, but I wasn’t sure if the cat had been hit with the last bullet and didn’t want the wardens knocking on my door sometime in the future asking why I hadn’t reported the incident.) It was determined that we would meet Harry, one of the Fish & Game biologists who had hounds, in the morning and track the cat. The next morning we returned site with two really skeptical houndsmen and went over the details of the encounter. When the hounds started going crazy they changed their attitude and we started on the scent trail. After around two hundred yards we found my arrow, broken off ¾” above the over-sert. Now Harry and his friend really believed their was a cat the incident happened as I described. They released the hounds and the chase was on. Unfortunately, the hounds lost the trail after about half a mile and we never recovered the cat.
Harry checked in all the mountain lions for this region until his retirement two years ago and no lions were taken with a broadhead between the eyes during the following eleven years. Harry ways jokes that he believes I gave the kitty a frontal lobotomy and it wondered off and died somewhere. I think if would have had a 600 grain arrow the encounter would have ended with the first shot. :knothead:
Buy me a beer the next time we meet me and I will tell you about the time I told the Grizzly “You had better get out of here”.
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Great story Walt :thumbsup: Hope I have a Moose Drool handy, I want to hear about that Griz :D
Brent
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:biglaugh:
Your lack of penetration comment makes just a bit more sense now! I wish I could have know to ask about that at the PBS dinner...
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Steve and Brent,
I will be in Pittsburg for PBS, remind me then and I will tell it there.
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Outstanding. Very entertaining.
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Walt
That was a very enjoyable read. Thanks for posting.
Shawn
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Quite an experience. Pretty cool head. Thanks for sharing. I'll look you up at the PBS banquet. Definitely want to hear about the Grizzly.
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:campfire: :coffee: darn there is no "beer" graemlins.....
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WOW!!!
I would love to hear that in person!!!!! That would leave me rubbernecking each time I went back the woods... :scared:
That just adds to the evidence that them cats are tough!!!!
Perhaps this should be a weekly thing, you know you telling stories, a diff one each week would work... :goldtooth:
thanks for sharing
Jake
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great story!!!!! that must have been a site seeing that cat with the arrow sticking out of his head
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Good tale Walt. A fellow handled "Slow Walker" on here did a similar thing to a large boar at Laguna ranch a few years back when it came at him. He wanted to know if we thought he had killed it and could we track it for him. It had never blacked out like your kitty, just ran off with the unicorn arrow. We did not find it either.
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The skull is one tough bone especially at the top of the forehead. Great story Walt. Glad I didn't have to do your laundry the next day.
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Walt I will be looking fowar to hear that story in Pittsburgh. Is Lenny coming to PBS with you?
Jack
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WOW
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I'm thinking that if that was me I would have finished that hunt with my back to the biggest damn tree around.
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:thumbsup:
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Loved that one too! :readit: :thumbsup:
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I heard it before, and yeah it's better in person and with a beer! Good one to share, though, Walt.
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Dang, now I really wish I was going to Pittsburgh.
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Barney....We'll get a chance to liquor him up and get the real version at TBM. Less he has to go through Roswell to get there. :bigsmyl:
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How about a german beer?
I pay the beer, you pay the flight :goldtooth:
Great story!
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That was a fine story.
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Great story Walt!!! I remember reading about a similar type situation where the lion was actually shot a year or two later by a guy with a rifle. I believe that particular lion was actually in good health when it was finally taken. The broadhead was found imbedded in the skull by the eye socket and positively identified by the guy who shot it previously. Love to have a beer with you sometime and hear that story and the grizzly story!
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Great story Walt. Thanks for sharing.
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A cornered house cat can be scary enough, I couldn`t imagine a mountain lion crouched down and stalking me.
I have to say, as soon as I let him know that I was me, and he didn`t care, and kept stalking, my sidearm would have done the talking.
I`m glad they are more afraid of us than we are of them???????
Great story for sure.
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Well told - interesting story! It makes you wonder how you would react in that situation. You did well, my friend! :scared:
Wells
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WOW!!
Note to self,when goin to the mountains,try to take Walt with you!!
Exellent story Walt,may have to get to Mojam if you're comin.
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Walt, I live in Colstrip MT. Where do you hunt elk?
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Glad to hear that you will be in Pitts, Walt. I'll put a beer down on the griz story. See ya there!
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Stoney,
Before the wolves decimated the herd I did most of my elk hunting in the Gallatin Canyon, a couple of miles north of Yellowstone Park: which is where this Kitty encounter occurred.
Kenny,
Mark Baker and I will be going to MoJam, hope to see you there.
Vance I will give you a call.
To be honest, during the first encounter with the cat I didn’t feel threatened until he went in the final stalk mode. Until then I figured it would be like my previous encounters with cats, it would run away as soon as it recognized I was a human. Though it appeared to be extremely large at the time, my best guess after seeing numerous cats the past few years is that it was a young male around 120 pounds.
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Great hunting story. I'm sure it is much better in person (seemed a quart low on alignment fluit).
:scared:
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Don't know how I missed this one. Will have to buy Walt a beer at MoJam to hear about the Griz.
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GREAT STORY WALT , thanks for putting it up here for us to read
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Great story, I wish all you guys would share some of your old stories.
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I just saw this thread. It must be a Montana thing as an almost identical incident happened to me in 1992, except it was on the first leap and my arrow hit a foot lower. Afterwards F&G told me of a bunch of incidents that never reach the media, including one of the wardens shooting one out of mid air with a shotgun as it jumped for him. Hairy stuff. BW
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TTT This is s great read
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Good stuff!
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Great,Great story.... :)
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Great story