Figured I'd better start a new thread for the story.
This adventure started a couple weeks ago when my buddy Tom called and asked if I'd like to chase cats. Well duh
A neighbor of his, John, with a great dog, Jessie, had found a nice lion and Tom had other comitments and to many taxidermy bills coming up already. I said when and where!
I arrived brite and early at John's the next morning, we headed up canyon to where he's run this cat the day before after jumping it off a deer kill. He'd run the cat nearly three miles up a nasty steep drainage then had been left in the dust as Jess and the cat turned and headed torward the top of the mountain a couple thousand feet higher. John had eventually gone back to the truck and a couple hours later Jess came in too.
As we made our way up to the kill Jess started getting excited and soon we saw why as there was fresh tracks leaving heading west. Jess was off baying every step and soon out of hearing. John and I followed the tracks in the snow and after climbing several hundred feet were looking into an incredibly nasty caynon with nearly vertical icey sides, huge boulders and roaring water in the bottom. We could hear Jess in the bottom and with my binocs I could see tracks in the snow crossing the bottom.
Not being too brite I bailed over the edge and climbed down toward Jess but by the time I'd gotten there she was up the other side. I crossed the creek on an ice bridge and clawed my way up the other side. It probably took an 45 minutes to cross the canyon and John was nowhere to be found. I stayed on the track and eventually caught up with Jess again.
She was baying in a jumble of boulders the size of my pickup. I searched everywhere but no cat. John had crossed the creek but couldn't get up my side and had caught Jess when she circled to the bottom again. We could barely hear each other over the roaring water but I thought John had told me to follow the track while Jess and he went up caynon to jind a crossing place. Well off I went toward the top again and found Jess's back trail.
A couple hundred yards up tthe trail I found where the lion and went thru several blowdowns cross a few logs and lost Jess. I was able to circle and pick up the track above this mess and took it up traveling fast as I could. I kept expecting Jess to overtake me and continue on the trail any minute.
I'd probably gone three hundred yards and looked uphill to the base of a big rock slide and there 40 yards away was the lion stepping from behind a big fir tree. He looked over his right shoulder, gave me this eat sh!+ and die look then turned up the slide. My first instinct was put him up the tree and I charged at him hollering and barking like a dog but he just trotted up the rocks out of sight.
My first impression was that this was an old cat with a real disdain for people and dogs. This was the only time he broke out of a walk all day that I could tell. I climbed the slide thru a chute in the cliffs above and over the top heading into the next drainage.
I told myself that I was not following down into the next drainage and was about to turn around when he turned and started circling back into the mess we'd just left. Just before dropping into the steep stuff again he stepped out of a group of small scattered pines. He was probably 70 yards away but I got the another dirty look as he walked away.
Again not being the britest bulb on the tree I bailed off after him again. Two hours later across the canyon again I was following smudges on a bare south slope where the snow had melted away. After pretty much loosing the track I climbed to the top of the slope and made a big circle but with no luck. My butt was draggin the ground and it was time to get down off teh mountain.
Day two...
Topic: The Lion Hunt (Read 2479 times)
