Bearpaw Season - Fall 2015

[deerhunter_98520]

Have you ever thought about go pros for your guides? That would of been a hell of a hunt to watch

[bearpaw]

Have you ever thought about go pros for your guides? That would of been a hell of a hunt to watch

Yes, but implementation has lagged! 

[deerhunter_98520]

Me and I'm sure the rest of the hunt Wa crew will look forward to that if it happens 

[bearpaw]

Our next cougar hunter, "Steve" is a concrete contractor from Michigan. His former girlfriend had bought the hunt for him as a present and payed for it in full. Perhaps one of you single guys should try to hook up with this former girlfriend!

At any rate on the 5th hunt day after passing other tracks each day we finally turned loose on a decent cougar track in 6 inches of fresh snow. The track was made early in the night but the dogs frantically followed the tracks. Because this was pretty big country I had Daniel follow the chase from the beginning in case I lost reception of the dog's collars. During the chase Daniel saw where our cat had crossed path with another smaller cat, two of my dogs, Lady and Banjo followed the larger cat and one dog, Blue, followed the smaller cat. As I had figured would happen, I lost signal with all the dogs, but I was able to talk to Daniel with the fm radios and keep track of what was happening with the chase. Daniel figured he was staying within a half mile of the dogs most of the time, the cat was moving straight through the country, it was literally changing country and not hunting at all, this was going to be a tough hike for Daniel.

Daniel was now about 3 miles from where we started the track a couple hours after daylight, he said the snow was thigh deep where he was following the chase. We were getting into the afternoon, I was beginning to worry about wrapping this hunt up by dark. We are not allowed to hunt after dark so time was becoming a concern. Finally Daniel was rolling over the top into another drainage that we could access part way so Steve and I rode the two ATV's back to the truck, loaded them up and drove around to the other drainage. We unloaded two snowmobiles this time since the snow was deeper in this area and headed up the drainage. I stopped and checked the dogs, at least we had a signal on the dogs now. We rode the snowmobiles as far as we can legally ride them, we parked and started walking.

By now Daniel said that he thought he could hear Banjo and Lady barking treed and was headed down into the canyon to where he thought they were treed. He said that he could hear Blue farther up the canyon going the other direction, still trailing the other cat. He said that Lady and Banjo were chasing the bigger track so we were concentrating on them. Steve and I were about 1/2 mile from the snowmobiles when Daniel called and said he got to the tree and was looking at the cat. We continued for another few hundred yards and finally could hear the dogs. That seemed to energize us both as we picked up the pace.

We had it really easy compared to Daniel's hike, the old road we followed came to within 150 yards of the dogs, then we climbed the steep slippery hillside to get to Daniel, the dogs, and the cat. We snapped a few photos, Daniel leashed the dogs, and I videoed Steve as he shot the cat with a 44 lever action. Because we already had a bad experience on a wounded cat this year I reminded Steve to shoot until the cat fell out dead. His first shot was perfect, the cat tried to climb higher while Steve put 2 or 3 more bullets into the cat for good measure, then it fell out dead. Excellent shooting Steve! 

Daniel was now shivering due to his long hard hike and sweating, the sun was dropping and it was really cooling off fast. I checked on Blue and it appeared he was getting closer, hopefully he had heard the shooting and gave up the other track. I drug the cat to the road and left it with the guys while I headed up canyon looking for Blue. I think he had started coming to us but stumbled onto an old cougar kill, I found Blue chewing on bones at an old deer kill. Blue followed me back to the other guys and we all headed back to the snowmobiles, we fired them up and rode back to the truck. After we got back and took care of everything we went to town and had a nice rib eye steak dinner, we lamented on the day's hunt as we cleaned up our plates, it was a great meal.

I love it when a plan comes together!

[JJB11B]

I blew a rear main seal in my Ford F-350 7.3 a few days ago on the way out cougar hunting. I had been watching for Dodges with the older Cummins and manual tranny for a while and jumped on this 2005 a few days later when I saw it had only 49,000 miles.

that's a pretty truck! what year ford was it?

[bearpaw]

I blew a rear main seal in my Ford F-350 7.3 a few days ago on the way out cougar hunting. I had been watching for Dodges with the older Cummins and manual tranny for a while and jumped on this 2005 a few days later when I saw it had only 49,000 miles.

that's a pretty truck! what year ford was it?

The ford is a 2003 with the 7.3 powerstroke. The dodge seems to be more powerful and a little better fuel mileage but I already miss the much roomier ford crew cab. We may keep the ford as a backup truck, not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Apparently the computer shuts the engine off before engine damage can occur when oil pressure drops. That seems to be what happened, I was going down the road and the engine just shut off, the engine seems to be ok.

[Gringo31]

Love the cat stories Dale!  Thank you for sharing them the way you do...   

[KFhunter]

de-stroke that ford   

[bearpaw]

Our next hunters "Ken and Adam" were a father & son from Maine. The father works in a boat factory, the son is a lobster fisherman, they have never gone on a guided hunt or hunted anything outside of Maine. They hoped to get a female and a tom to mount together. We hunted a couple days looking for good sized cats, on day 3 Brian turned loose on a good sized female, it was tough going, we get a lot of wind in that area and the tracks had drifted in several places. After a couple hours the dogs reached the top end of the ridge, the dogs were actually digging in the snow to try and smell the tracks which were completely drifted, but they lost them on the big wind swept top and we couldn't see them at all either!

Brian circled around the back side of the mountain in the timber and found the tracks and got the dogs going again. I was checking other roads to see if the cat had crossed again, no luck, it sure would have been nice to get them on a fresher track. Finally the dogs were making pretty good time following the tracks in the timber. In a few hours we figured the dogs were treed and we searched for the best way to get to them.

Brian headed in from the end of a road and let me know that he could hear the dogs when he got in a ways, the guys and I headed in the same way. Brian got to the dogs to find them not at a tree, they were baying all around some old slash piles. Suddenly the cat walks out about 20 feet from Brian without fear, looked at him and proceeded to walk away with the dogs baying aggressively. One of the dogs got too close and the cat grabbed the dog, here we go again, another nasty cat situation. Brian ran at the cat yelling and the cat let go and ran down the canyon with dogs following.

I knew something was up when the dogs moved down canyon and were now just below me. I could hear little Ruby the terrier going wild so I knew things must have gotten pretty western! I called Brian he told me what happened and said he was just approaching the tree it had gone up. He said the cat was moving all over in the the tree and it jumped out again while we were talking, the dogs followed farther down the canyon and it treed again. The hounds and Ruby were all going wild. I told the hunters to hurry down the hill to the tree as fast as they could, Brian would be there, don't shoot until he has the dogs leashed and tells you to shoot! I would move my snowmobile back down the trail closer to where the dogs were at now and hike in from there.

When the hunters got to Brian he leashed the hounds and called me, "This cat is going to jump again, I'm going to have them shoot it!" I answered, "Go ahead, get it done!" I listened and in a few moments I heard the shot, then a finish shot. Brian called and said it was done, a great shot with a back up shot just to be sure, the cat was dead when it hit the ground. BUT, he said a couple of the dogs got chewed up when the cat was on the ground bayed up. He was going to take photos, skin the cat, and bring out whatever meat was desired. While he did that I went to where his machine was parked and got both dog trailer/sleds and moved them down the mountain and waited for the guys.

When they met me the father "Ken" was elated with his cougar, he said "It was a lifetime dream come true, unbelievable, it couldn't have been any better!" I gave Brian a ride back up to get his machine, we rode back down to the guys, we loaded everything and headed for the trucks. Another great day in the wild outdoors!

(Toes was bitten pretty badly in the hind quarters and her tail was nearly bitten off, the next day she could barely walk, 5 days in the house with lots of antibiotics seems to be working, we were worried about her tail dieing and needing docked like the terrier but it looks like her tail might recover too!)

[RadSav]

...I was going down the road and the engine just shut off, the engine seems to be ok.

I had a similar thing happen to one of my big ford trucks.  Was at the dealership about to trade it in on a new truck when one of the meck-n-nicks came out and said, "Let me try something first."  He peels the carpet up under the passenger dash and whacks the emergency roll over fuel shutoff switch with a hammer.  Then says, "Try to turn her over now."  Vroom vroom!!!  $25 replacement switch was much more in my budget than a new $40K truck.

[jrebel]

That is a hell of a find on the 05 dodge.  Super low miles and looks to be in amazing shape.  My 06 has 160K and is still running strong.   

[bearpaw]

...I was going down the road and the engine just shut off, the engine seems to be ok.

I had a similar thing happen to one of my big ford trucks.  Was at the dealership about to trade it in on a new truck when one of the meck-n-nicks came out and said, "Let me try something first."  He peels the carpet up under the passenger dash and whacks the emergency roll over fuel shutoff switch with a hammer.  Then says, "Try to turn her over now."  Vroom vroom!!!  $25 replacement switch was much more in my budget than a new $40K truck.

Sure wished that was the case! I had oil everywhere in the engine compartment and it was draining out on the ground too. They've got it running again, but it's hard to start, they are trying to resolve that starting issue and I will get it back. I know the rear seal part of the bill will be about $900 plus this other stuff, hoping no more than $1700.

[bearpaw]

That is a hell of a find on the 05 dodge.  Super low miles and looks to be in amazing shape.  My 06 has 160K and is still running strong.   

There was another 2004 with 70k miles, $28,000. Salt Lake area for anyone interested.

This is the best classifieds I know of, over 62,000 autos listed right now, I've bought a lot of stuff through this site:
http://www.ksl.com/auto/

[Boss .300 winmag]

That is a hell of a find on the 05 dodge.  Super low miles and looks to be in amazing shape.  My 06 has 160K and is still running strong.   

There was another 2004 with 70k miles, $28,000. Salt Lake area for anyone interested.

This is the best classifieds I know of, over 62,000 autos listed right now, I've bought a lot of stuff through this site:
http://www.ksl.com/auto/

That's crazy, I paid 32,000 brand new for my 2004. 

[bearpaw]

That is a hell of a find on the 05 dodge.  Super low miles and looks to be in amazing shape.  My 06 has 160K and is still running strong.   

There was another 2004 with 70k miles, $28,000. Salt Lake area for anyone interested.

This is the best classifieds I know of, over 62,000 autos listed right now, I've bought a lot of stuff through this site:
http://www.ksl.com/auto/

That's crazy, I paid 32,000 brand new for my 2004. 

I agree but that's the market! The guy who traded in my truck bought a new Ford Super Duty for $72,000, with tax, license, and fees, I bet it was close to $80k. I think new vehicles prices and cheap fuel is driving up the price of good used big vehicles, especially low mileage desirable models. I felt fortunate to find that Dodge at that price!

2 years ago I bought a 99 Suburban with 96k miles for $4500, I could resell it today for $2000 to $3000 more.
6 years ago I traded in a 2000 Chevy 3500 on the ford for $4000 and felt good, I think the same truck would trade in for at least 50% more today.