Author Topic: Bearpaw Season - Fall 2013 (Read 71211 times)

irishevox · « **Reply #225 on:** February 09, 2014, 07:43:21 AM »

I love this thread can't wait to see what 2014 brings!

Killmore · « **Reply #226 on:** February 09, 2014, 08:38:39 AM »

Oh I remember those snowmobile days, but man that looks cold when I'm sitting here at the computer.

Good luck

bearpaw · « **Reply #227 on:** February 11, 2014, 06:28:15 PM »

Day 3 of the 2nd Cancellation Cougar Hunt
We had pulled two stranded motorists out of the ditch in the early am, then I was traveling slowly due to the drifting. The highway had completely disappeared, I was fine until there were no fences to judge exactly where the highway might be, next thing I know we are in the ditch with a snowmobile trailer. Spent a couple hours digging out the truck and getting it back on the road. Next we hooked a tow strap to the trailer and pulled it out too. Then a couple miles up the highway I got stuck in a deep drift across the road, so after we got unstuck again and got the trailer turned around we found a place to park and I snowmobiled the rest of the morning looking for cougar tracks.

mulehunter · « **Reply #228 on:** February 11, 2014, 07:05:18 PM »

glad u got it out ok. Oh boy...

Killmore · « **Reply #229 on:** February 12, 2014, 08:39:50 AM »

And I thought opening all those gates in Montana was bad.

bearpaw · « **Reply #230 on:** February 12, 2014, 08:42:04 AM »

Day 4, 2nd Cancellation Cougar Hunt
There was plenty of good snow in fact about 4+ feet in the higher elevations, we had been finding females so we kept going back watching for a tom to pass through, there just had to be a tom come through checking on those females. Sure enough after checking a couple drainages right at daylight on the way back to the truck with the snowmobile I spotted fresh tom tracks which I thought had crossed since we had gone in the road. We hurried back to the truck to get the dogs, got everything ready, and headed back to start the track. The dogs opened up good, we released them and watched as they wallowed through the deep snow following the lion tracks.

The tom had turned to the left following the canyon and then started up the side of the hill towards a rock outcropping. It was fairly open country and I could see the dogs were having trouble getting up those rocks. Suddenly it sounded as if Queen was treeing and pretty soon the other 3 dogs sounded like they were barking treed. Oh great, the dogs are hung up on the rocks, we're going to have to help them get up over the rocks, I figured the tom jumped up over the rocks like they so often do.

Brian had moved his snowmobile a couple hundred yards down canyon and started wading through the deep snow to go help the dogs. At the same time we were watching from where we had started the dogs. Suddenly one of us spotted the cat on the rocks, about the same time Brian spotted the cat as well. The dogs had only gone a few hundred yards and had jumped the cat out of his bed at the base of the rocks, the tom was now bayed up on the rock outcropping. This ranks right up there in the one or two handfuls of the shortest quickest lion hunts I have ever seen in my 37 years of cat hunting.

We all moved our machines down to Brian's snowmobile and walked in from there except for me, I stayed at the snowmobiles and videoed everyone climbing up the steep slope to get to the cat and I videoed the cat up on the rocks swatting at the dogs whenever one of them would get to close. The guys were about halfway to the rocks when suddenly the cat jumped off the rocks, over the top of the dogs, and run/slid straight downhill toward the nearest big fir tree and quickly climbed about 20-25 feet up the tree. The guys made it to the tree and leashed the loudly barking dogs.

The cat's head and body size resembled a tom and the tracks looked like a tom, but this cat kept his hind end out of sight, finally after about 20 minutes Brian climbed up the tree to make sure we had a tom, he broke off a dead limb about 30 inches long and lifted the cats tail to check for the spot. That really pissed off the cat, he turned around and snarled at Brian who had now seen the cat was a male "the dark spot under the tail" so Brian quickly retreated back down and out of the tree.

Tim rested his 500 pistol on his shooting stick and when the pistol barked it knocked the tom out with a perfectly placed shot through the heart and out the back. The cat landed and slid down the hill and was dead when the guys got down to him. The dogs followed as Brian drug the cat downhill to the road. After handshakes, more video, and photos we got everything packed up and snowmobiled back to the trucks. It was another great day on the mountain, I love it when a plan comes together. Congrats to Tim on an excellent shot and beautiful tomcat.