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.
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”.
Topic: Unicorn Kitty (Read 1582 times)
