Bearpaw Season - Fall 2013

[quadrafire]

Dale
What are the logistics with that cat. Prepping the hide to take home to Denmark, or having taxi work done here?
just curious

That is pretty cool. Travel 1/2 way around the world to hunt the NW.
Do they find your services on the internet, or previous hunters?

[bearpaw]

Dale
What are the logistics with that cat. Prepping the hide to take home to Denmark, or having taxi work done here?
just curious

That is pretty cool. Travel 1/2 way around the world to hunt the NW.
Do they find your services on the internet, or previous hunters?

Some just have the hide tanned for export and then mounted at home, others have the whole mount done here and then shipped. Either way CITES paperwork must be done before the cat can leave the country. I have had hunters from  all over the world so word of mouth gets us many hunters. Other times they find us on the internet.

[bearpaw]

Another cold morning below zero on the mountain, but 8 cat tracks found, a female with two kittens, 4 other females, 1 nice tom but he was headed near private land, best to wait for him to come back the other direction or cross out of that area.

Been battling with keeping equipment running in this nasty cold weather, wheeler wouldn't start again this morning, had to use a snowmobile on some ground with very limited snow, that's hard on them. Picked up a different wheeler from the shop and dropped off the no start for repair.

Hopefully we'll see that tom tomorrow. 

[NRA4LIFE]

"oh yeah, their were also a few beers that disappeared."

Too funny.  I've been to Denmark a number of times for work.  One thing I've learned, when those boys get to drinkin', don't try to keep up.  Did they bring any Aquavit with them?  That's when the real fun starts.

Keep up the good work, and kill some more cats.

[Machias]

Oh man your killing me with the cat photos (PLEASE keep it up!!   ) 

[bearpaw]

Got onto the tom we were looking for yesterday but his tracks were a day old and he was headed into big country. We put my two old dogs Tucker and Chopper, my new dog Queen, and a pup on the track. Brian, Nick, and Daniel walked the track to help the dogs through the rocks. The big cat was visiting every rock pile on the ridge and scratching often. His tracks crossed with two separate females but they were able to keep all the dogs on the tom.

The dogs began moving it out well ahead of everyone and then the tom crossed paths with another female. This time Queen went on the female so we now had two lions going. 

Got the other dogs straightened out and headed toward the remote country on the tom tracks. In the mid afternoon as the dogs were slowly working the day old tracks on mostly barren southern exposure we made the decision to give up the chase. Brian, Nick, and Daniel caught the dogs and walked out the drainage they were in, I drove around and picked them up in the bottom of the drainage, the guys were all pretty tired.

I drove back around to look for Queen who we had abandoned after she took off after the female. As luck would have it we found her on a distant barren southern exposure hillside, it appeared she was still working the female tracks across the barren ground. We honked the truck horn and hollered and was fortunate that she came toward us. We ran out about 400 hundred yards and met her, we got her loaded, tightened a loose wheel bearing on a snowmobile trailer and then headed for home.

This morning, the last day of the Danish Hunt, we looked all around in hopes that the tom came out and crossed a road somewhere, but no such luck. We found 4 female cougars and a wolf track twice, but no tom cougar. At noon we called off the hunt and I hurried back to town so we could get them to the airport in time to fly out this afternoon. The other Danish brother Marc did not get a tom but he and his father will be back next year the first week of season to hunt again.

[RadSav]

That's too bad for the Danish fellas.  At least they go home knowing they worked hard and didn't leave unsuccessful because of lack of effort.

Sounds like you guys are cutting a lot of female tracks.  Is this usual, a growing trend, or something new this year?

[bearpaw]

That's too bad for the Danish fellas.  At least they go home knowing they worked hard and didn't leave unsuccessful because of lack of effort.

Sounds like you guys are cutting a lot of female tracks.  Is this usual, a growing trend, or something new this year?

The younger brother killed a nice tom, just the one older brother didn't get a cat. We are running 75% success so far this season.

It's normal to find more females, I may have not mentioned the number of female tracks in the past, but we almost always find more female tracks.

I tried to get my next hunters to change their dates or come next year because the weather looks real tough for the next 10 days. They say they can't change their schedule so we are stuck hunting next week and it looks like it's going to be very tough weather for cougar hunting. We'll give it our best shot and hope for the best. 

[BOWHUNTER45]

Awesome Dale ! I love hearing cat stories ....sweet photos to go with it ....nice Tom !! 

[buck man]

Love it Dale! Good luck on your next hunt!

[bearpaw]

As expected the next hunt was a tough one, we found females just about every day and several old tom tracks, but went nearly all week without finding a fresh tom track. There were millions of deer and elk tracks in the old snow which made finding fresh tracks really tough. Finally with only 2 days left to hunt we got some fresh snow and immediately found fresh cat tracks of a female and tom hunting together. They crossed the road three times and we turned the dogs loose on the freshest tracks shortly after daylight. The cats would circle around each other trying to confuse the deer and elk, it's really impressive to see how well two cats can work the game in an area.

I was hoping they made a kill and the dogs would catch them quickly. Unfortunately the two cats never made a kill and left tracks all over the mountainsides which had the dogs running in circles trying to figure heads or tales of all those tracks. Finally at about 2 pm we caught up to the dogs who were still somewhat confused and hung up in some trees right above some rock cliffs.

One dog half heartedly thought the cats were there somewhere, but I could tell that Tucker knew that they had been given the slip. I made a half circle around the top the area and the cats had not left. But I couldn't circle the bottom side because we were only a few yards from a property boundary and from previous experience I already knew that landowner will not let anyone hunt. I think the dogs had jumped the cats in those trees and the cats headed straight downhill into the private and jumped through the rocks where the dogs couldn't go. I've seen that happen many times, usually I can circle around rocks and find the cat tracks if the dogs haven't found them and get the dogs going again. Unfortunately this time I couldn't do that and had to pull the dogs and head back to the snowmobiles.

Finally we got back to the snow machines and headed for the truck. When we pulled up to the truck it was just getting dark but we happened to notice that one wheel bearing was gone on the trailer and the wheel was ready to fall off. We disconnected the trailer and drove to town to get a larger flatbed trailer to load the snowmobile trailer onto. Got back with the other trailer and managed to tip the snowmobile trailer up on it's side, I backed the big trailer alongside and we tipped the one side of the snowmobile trailer down onto the big flatbed trailer. Next we lifted the other side of the broken trailer and managed to slide the snowmobile trailer completely onto the big trailer. We secured it and headed for town, I figured we would unload the trailer and take the big trailer back for the three machines.

Halfway back to town we blew a tire on the big trailer, guess what, no spare... 

So we unhooked the big trailer and headed back to town to rummage around for a spare and another trailer to get the machines. That looked really funny, a broken down trailer sitting on top of another broken down trailer, sitting along the side of the highway. I took a spare from another enclosed trailer, hooked up another snowmobile trailer and headed back out. Fortunately the spare fit the flatbed trailer, so then we went and loaded the snowmachines on the other snowmobile trailer I was towing and took them to the house. We unhooked and went back out to get the big flatbed trailer, lucky for us there were no more mishaps and we made it home with everything by about 1 am. We were all whipped, dog tired, including the dogs, I told the hunters we had to take the day off to let the dogs rest so they would be able catch the next lion. We took it easy the next day and headed out early in the evening looking for tracks, it was their last day so we looked all night for tracks. We needed a track by daylight so we could hopefully catch it quick and they could make their plane in the afternoon.

Before daylight I found tracks of a very large tom, I think this is the tom that we were tracking when we got crossed up on the female a few weeks ago, he was covering country and had crossed roads several times, finally I found the freshest set of tracks crossing another road, but going right into private land. 

As we waited my hunter called and changed his flight times. I hoped the tom would pass through this large piece of private but had my doubts, so we waited an hour for daylight and to make sure the people were up and went to ask permission. Dang, no luck getting permission. 

The only other option was to walk up a canyon on the other side of the private property in hopes the cat went that way. I walked over a mile up that canyon and found nothing but another female track and some deer and elk. 

We continued looking for another tom track, I found some more female tracks but no tom. I was making my last run up this creek bottom going pretty fast on the snow machine and saw something that looked big and black coming through the willows toward the road, thoughts flashed through my mind of hitting a bear with the snowmobile, I slammed on the brake and slid half sideways up the road.   

Out pops the biggest beaver I've seen in years, I practically hit him with the snowmobile, at that point I had to laugh and I laughed pretty good. 

I finished my run and we called it a day, my behind was completely kicked, I was dead tired, had trouble driving back to the house. I way over slept the next day and was way late getting the house cleaned and getting everything loaded for the journey home from Idaho. I was on my computer for a while but fell asleep again at the keyboard for most of the night, I was way to late getting started. At 2:30 pm I finally made it home for Christmas, I walked through the door just as the wife was serving Christmas dinner. 

I spent today rebuilding the broken snowmobile trailer, we put a new heavier weight axle under it, rewired and installed new lights. Today we also had to take one of the hounds to the vet, he's got a bad skin infection and infection in his eyes. They have him on three kinds of medication plus eye drops. I've got a few days off to relax a bit and catch up on some overdue paperwork. Hopefully everything is good to go in a week or so. I think my hunter is going to try and come back later in the season to look for a tom again, hopefully we'll have a little better luck! 

[Killmore]

How much snow do you have in Idaho? Here in eburg if I go down the driveway fast enough I can kick up dust. Stay after them cats!!

[irishevox]

impressive~!

[bearpaw]

How much snow do you have in Idaho? Here in eburg if I go down the driveway fast enough I can kick up dust. Stay after them cats!!

There hasn't been as much snow as usual, sometimes we were riding wheelers looking for tracks in a dusting of snow down low at 5000 to 6000 feet, but up at 8000 feet there was probably 14 to 18 inches.

[BOWHUNTER45]

That was a good bed time story