Here's the rest of the story.
After catching my breath and taking some pics I decided to shoot the cat. John secured the dogs while I strung my bow and took a practice shot with a judo point. All was good. My shot opportunity was five yards from the base of the tree, about eighteen yards up where there was a clear patch chest between the cat’s front shoulders. Concentrating on the center part of his chest I was in shock as I saw my arrow sail over the cat into thin air. I couldn’t believe I had missed! The next arrow went right next to where I was aiming, left of center half way into the cats chest with good blood. The third arrow hit the cat’s elbow and bounced out coming to rest in the tree, three feet below the cat. The cat changed his position in the tree leaving me a poor shot and only one arrow left in the quiver. A half hour later the cat was in that same spot and still bleeding. At that point we weren’t sure if the wound was fatal. I had to get another arrow into him. I positioned myself at the best angle to get an arrow into his chest and watched in disbelief as my last arrow sailed past the cat into the canyon. The arrow that I had put into the cat’s chest had now worked its way out and was laying close to the other arrow that was laying in the pine bough. I needed those arrow. After numerous attempts to free the arrows with rocks, John starts to head up the tree. I had heard his stories about climbing up trees to reposition cats for a shot but that’s something you don’t quite believe until you see it for yourself (and in my three years of lion hunting with John I had yet to witness such a thing). But there he was, three quarters of the way to the cat with stick in hand trying to knock loose one of my arrows. When suddenly the cat came alive with anger snarling at John and trying to reposition itself to get down the tree. John started to retreat as fast as he could and barely made it to the ground, when the cat fell halfway down the tree caught himself and jumped off the back side only a pounce away from both of us. Then he took off running across the open bowl. As quickly as we could we let the dogs loose. They were hot on its tail when we last saw them about a hundred yards away. By the time I grabbed the leashes, my pack and bow, John had climbed the tree to retrieved my arrows that were both still shootable. The dogs had the cat treed again within two to three hundred yards. We got there to find the cat only ten yards up with blood gushing from it’s wound. At that point we knew it was all over but to speed things up, I put one last shot into it’s chest. Ten seconds later he fell out of the tree stone dead and slid a hundred yards before coming to a stop with all five dogs noshing away.
I hope you enjoyed my story, it’s a pleasure sharing our Montana life style with brothers off the bow.
-Lenny the Lurker
Topic: Lurkin Lenny got his Lion (Read 7211 times)
