Brandenbowhunter
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Looks like someone stole my dogs...here is what mine do most of the time...wife stole them
Montana Mountain Lion- The Rookie Hunt
- Thread starter Gerald Martin
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Gerald Martin
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We got back after them today. I didn't get home from a company Christmas ( read Christmas not holiday, 
eh Schmalts ) dinner until after midnight so I slept in a little this morning. Rick and I met at 4:30 and headed up a local drainage. We split up and each took a series of gated roads on our snowmobiles to look for a track.
I went exactly one mile from where I parked the truck when I hit the motherlode. Not one but two lions had crossed last night and both tracks looked fairly big. It wasn't even 6 a.m. and there was nothing to do but wait until daylight. I checked in with Rick at 7 and Charlie and Jimmy were also availible to help run it. Rick's son-in-law Anthony and one of his friends Zarech rounded out our party for the morning.
When Charlie saw the track he thought it was plenty old, but said if the dogs can smell it they can run it. Turns out the dogs could smell it and were off plenty fast when we turned them loose.
Some shots of the track and snowmachines.
eh Schmalts ) dinner until after midnight so I slept in a little this morning. Rick and I met at 4:30 and headed up a local drainage. We split up and each took a series of gated roads on our snowmobiles to look for a track.I went exactly one mile from where I parked the truck when I hit the motherlode. Not one but two lions had crossed last night and both tracks looked fairly big. It wasn't even 6 a.m. and there was nothing to do but wait until daylight. I checked in with Rick at 7 and Charlie and Jimmy were also availible to help run it. Rick's son-in-law Anthony and one of his friends Zarech rounded out our party for the morning.
When Charlie saw the track he thought it was plenty old, but said if the dogs can smell it they can run it. Turns out the dogs could smell it and were off plenty fast when we turned them loose.
Some shots of the track and snowmachines.
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RockyDog
Member
wow this is cool. ive never been on a real lion hunt, would be excited to be doing what you are......
highmountian
New member
Man that looks like fun. Hope you get a big one!
Gerald Martin
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This track was older than the one we ran on Wed and there were two cats. After listening to the dogs and driving around to here from a couple different places it was obvious that the cats had split and the dogs were on different tracks. Charlie's dogs Winnie and Bill were trailing low on the ridge and Lucky and Bailey were taking a track that went further and was moving up close to the road a mile or two from where we were listening. Charlie and Jimmy went back down to check on Winnie and Bill and the rest of us drove further up the road to listen to Lucky and Bailey.
When we got to the top it sounded like Lucky and Bailey were treed. After listening to them chop for about 10 minutes we were getting ready to head down to them when they lined out and were quickly out of earshot. They went from 300 yards to 700 yards in just a couple of minutes and were now down at the bottom of the canyon. One concern we had here was the valley floor was all private land. Fortunately we knew several of the landowners and after talking to a couple of them we were given permission to cross their land and get over to the dogs.
By this time its been over an hour and Baily and Lucky were up a side canyon and they sounded like they were treed.
Okay, my narrative got interrupted. I'll cut to the chase. After a bunch of running around here's the cat that Lucky and Bailey treed. I might have shot this cat but in the process of videoing, taking pictures, and trying to determine the sex of the cat , he got nervous and jumped the tree. It was so thick when the cat jumped the dogs overran the cat. In trying to backtrack and find the origanal cat they cut other old tracks and in the riot of dog tracks, lion tracks, boot tracks, and everything else they lost the track. We pulled the dogs and got back to the house around 4 p.m.
We're heading out again @ 3.00a.m. to try and find the big cat that Jimmy found the track of when he went in to get Winnie and Bill.
We think there's probably a female in heat with several males in the close area. We know we found 3 seperate tracks and maybe 4 within a couple square mile area. Hopefully the big one comes across and we can find a fresh track in the morning.
This was the only decent pic I got of the cat before he jumped.
When we got to the top it sounded like Lucky and Bailey were treed. After listening to them chop for about 10 minutes we were getting ready to head down to them when they lined out and were quickly out of earshot. They went from 300 yards to 700 yards in just a couple of minutes and were now down at the bottom of the canyon. One concern we had here was the valley floor was all private land. Fortunately we knew several of the landowners and after talking to a couple of them we were given permission to cross their land and get over to the dogs.
By this time its been over an hour and Baily and Lucky were up a side canyon and they sounded like they were treed.
Okay, my narrative got interrupted. I'll cut to the chase. After a bunch of running around here's the cat that Lucky and Bailey treed. I might have shot this cat but in the process of videoing, taking pictures, and trying to determine the sex of the cat , he got nervous and jumped the tree. It was so thick when the cat jumped the dogs overran the cat. In trying to backtrack and find the origanal cat they cut other old tracks and in the riot of dog tracks, lion tracks, boot tracks, and everything else they lost the track. We pulled the dogs and got back to the house around 4 p.m.
We're heading out again @ 3.00a.m. to try and find the big cat that Jimmy found the track of when he went in to get Winnie and Bill.
We think there's probably a female in heat with several males in the close area. We know we found 3 seperate tracks and maybe 4 within a couple square mile area. Hopefully the big one comes across and we can find a fresh track in the morning.
This was the only decent pic I got of the cat before he jumped.
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elk_hunter
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SWEET! Love the story and pics!
Gerald Martin
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I probably would have shot this cat given the chance. Our concensous is it was probably a tom @ 115-125lbs. Not a big one but a nice looking cat. The track that Jimmy found on the way out was of a much bigger cat. Hopefully he'll be around tomorrow.
Bailey getting a much deserved ride back to the truck. You think Rick likes his dog?
Bailey getting a much deserved ride back to the truck. You think Rick likes his dog?
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Gerald Martin
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Gotta get my gear together ... 2:30 is going to be rude wakeup call in the morning.
HUNTMAN
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Good Luck Gerald.HUNT
Gerald Martin
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Well, no lion in the tree pictures tonight. We started running at 3 a.m. and headed back into the same drainage as yesterday. I did find two sets of tracks, but probably the same cat, one was heading back down into the drainage and then 1/4 mile further up the ridge a track of the same size came out of the same drainage and went up across the road. Snow conditions were really bad and the track was small so we didn't spend a lot of time trying to figure out which was was the hottest. If we hadn't had any races the past couple of days we'd have turned Bailey out but this was not a shooter cat and Bailey was really stiff and sore from yesterdays hunt.
Charlie and Jimmy hunted on their own today so at daybreak Rick and I took the snowmobiles up some gated roads on the other side of the main drainage. We saw tons of elk tracks and probably 30-40 elk between us. No cat tracks.
At about 10:30 we decided to try and solve the mystery of what happened to Bill and Winnie yesterday morning and get a firsthand look at the "big" track Jimmy saw. Rick walked down the creek to where the dogs had hung up and Jimmy had caught them while I walked out a wilded road higher up the ridge.
As Rick says, "The snow doesn't lie." The "big" track Jimmy found was pretty average at best. Definitely not a "platter cat" as Rick likes to refer to the track of a 140-160lb tom. Exhuberate optimism or fish tales?????? At any rate our self imposed pressure to hit this drainage everyday just lessened. Turns out there were two tracks in there. Our female in heat with toms chasing, scenario was thought through and the hypothesis has changed. A female with a two year old offspring is the new hypothesis.
On my walk about I found yesterday's dog and cat tracks as well as another cat and kitten track that we didn't know about yesterday. So now I don't know if there were at least four and maybe five lions in this drainage.???? We think we treed a tom yesterday, but there was no positive I.D made. ??? It's tough to say without walking out every track and in the cedar and hemlock thickets over several miles that's a mystery that is going to stay unsolved. Sometimes the scenarios we envision to explain the evidence we find turn out to be figments of the imagination. Is our new scenario reasonable? Who knows? One thing for sure, we haven't seen the track of the monster cat that we've heard rumors of. We heard a lot of ("We found a big track up "Packer"Creek during the last week of hunting season", from enough different people that we were starting to think it's probably true. So maybe a big tom is in there, maybe he isn't. That's why it's called hunting I guess.
When I picked Rick up on the snowmobile after our hike, he was standing in two lion tracks that came out of the bottem where the "big" cat was supposed to have been. They were on top of our morning snowmobile tracks. They were less than 400 yards from where we parked the trucks. We couldn't decide if they had crossed after our first, predawn trip or just in the 1 1/2 since we had gone up. We're pretty sure it was the same female and 2 year old track that Rick found where Winnie and Bill hung up. I rode a short loop on a little two track and picked up where they had crossed that. We got kind of excited then, thinking it might be smoking hot and if Bailey could tree them in the bottom, I would be able to go get the kids and let them see a lion in the tree. We went back to the truck and got Bailey. We wanted to see how she acted. If she blew up, we'd know it was hot. While Rick got Baileys tracking collar on I did some snooping up the main road to make sure the lions hadn't crossed. Turns out they crossed the main road several hundred yards from the truck and went straight up a very steep mountain face. Getting my kids to a tree, was out of the picture now. We walked Bailey to the tracks and she could smell the cats. By the way she was acting we could tell they were from this morning, not smoking hot. She was talking enough to convince us she could catch them so Rick turned her loose. Within fifty yards it became apparent these tracks were older and the scent was nearly frozen out. Rick was able to coax and convince her into coming back and we loaded her up.
It was a very educational day. Short on excitement but long on learning. Now we need some new snow. Its getting really hard to see a track and determine how fresh it is. We'll probably give it a rest for several days.
I'll close with a pic of Baily at Wednesday's tree.
Charlie and Jimmy hunted on their own today so at daybreak Rick and I took the snowmobiles up some gated roads on the other side of the main drainage. We saw tons of elk tracks and probably 30-40 elk between us. No cat tracks.
At about 10:30 we decided to try and solve the mystery of what happened to Bill and Winnie yesterday morning and get a firsthand look at the "big" track Jimmy saw. Rick walked down the creek to where the dogs had hung up and Jimmy had caught them while I walked out a wilded road higher up the ridge.
As Rick says, "The snow doesn't lie." The "big" track Jimmy found was pretty average at best. Definitely not a "platter cat" as Rick likes to refer to the track of a 140-160lb tom. Exhuberate optimism or fish tales??????
At any rate our self imposed pressure to hit this drainage everyday just lessened. Turns out there were two tracks in there. Our female in heat with toms chasing, scenario was thought through and the hypothesis has changed. A female with a two year old offspring is the new hypothesis.On my walk about I found yesterday's dog and cat tracks as well as another cat and kitten track that we didn't know about yesterday. So now I don't know if there were at least four and maybe five lions in this drainage.???? We think we treed a tom yesterday, but there was no positive I.D made. ??? It's tough to say without walking out every track and in the cedar and hemlock thickets over several miles that's a mystery that is going to stay unsolved. Sometimes the scenarios we envision to explain the evidence we find turn out to be figments of the imagination.
Is our new scenario reasonable? Who knows? One thing for sure, we haven't seen the track of the monster cat that we've heard rumors of. We heard a lot of ("We found a big track up "Packer"Creek during the last week of hunting season", from enough different people that we were starting to think it's probably true. So maybe a big tom is in there, maybe he isn't. That's why it's called hunting I guess.When I picked Rick up on the snowmobile after our hike, he was standing in two lion tracks that came out of the bottem where the "big" cat was supposed to have been. They were on top of our morning snowmobile tracks. They were less than 400 yards from where we parked the trucks. We couldn't decide if they had crossed after our first, predawn trip or just in the 1 1/2 since we had gone up. We're pretty sure it was the same female and 2 year old track that Rick found where Winnie and Bill hung up. I rode a short loop on a little two track and picked up where they had crossed that. We got kind of excited then, thinking it might be smoking hot and if Bailey could tree them in the bottom, I would be able to go get the kids and let them see a lion in the tree. We went back to the truck and got Bailey. We wanted to see how she acted. If she blew up, we'd know it was hot. While Rick got Baileys tracking collar on I did some snooping up the main road to make sure the lions hadn't crossed. Turns out they crossed the main road several hundred yards from the truck and went straight up a very steep mountain face. Getting my kids to a tree, was out of the picture now. We walked Bailey to the tracks and she could smell the cats. By the way she was acting we could tell they were from this morning, not smoking hot. She was talking enough to convince us she could catch them so Rick turned her loose. Within fifty yards it became apparent these tracks were older and the scent was nearly frozen out. Rick was able to coax and convince her into coming back and we loaded her up.
It was a very educational day. Short on excitement but long on learning. Now we need some new snow. Its getting really hard to see a track and determine how fresh it is. We'll probably give it a rest for several days.
I'll close with a pic of Baily at Wednesday's tree.
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Gerald Martin
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shoots-straight
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I would, and you did.
wingman1
New member
Looks like a nice one, hope you did!
HUNTMAN
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Well lets hear the rest of the story.Like Paul Harvey.
Gerald Martin
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Guys, the rest of the story is going to have to wait till tomorrow. I'm hammered and just about can't see to type anymore.
I will say this. This dog Bailey is one amazing hound. She was a one dog show today and got it all done on her own.
As you can guess, I did... I'll save the rest of the pics until I can do them some justice with a storyline.
I will say this. This dog Bailey is one amazing hound. She was a one dog show today and got it all done on her own.
As you can guess, I did... I'll save the rest of the pics until I can do them some justice with a storyline.
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Time's up. Get on with it my friend.
