by Gary Webb on March 9, 2010
February 1, 2010
Chad White of Kansas took this Tom lion with his 357 handgun on the first day of his hunt. We were fortunate with our catch, since January brought lots of rain and snow to the southwest and hunting was difficult. I missed some hunting days due to really bad weather during January.
When I’m lion hunting, I often take our family dog, Kebler along. He’s a Jagd terrier and weights about 20 pounds. This breed of dog originated in Germany and has typical terrier traits. Kebler usually stays close to me chasing rabbits and squirrels, while my hounds work at trailing and ignoring him.
On this particular morning, the hounds started trailing on ground that was frozen hard as a brick! Our mules weren’t even leaving a visible track in the frozen mud. Chad and I had no way to know if we were trailing in the right direction, so we left the hounds alone and followed as they worked the track. They eventually trailed off into a rough little header. Chad and I watched them work from a vantage point. They tried to work the scent out of there in several directions and finally cold trailed up an open hillside to the top of the ridge. We led our mules across the header and started working our way towards the hounds.
A few minutes later, Kebler took off yapping after something below us. I figured he was after a deer or rabbit. We kept riding towards the hounds when I could hear him barking like he was looking at something. I told Chad to wait and I hiked off towards the ruckus. When I go within about 300 yards I could see he had a lion treed in a big Ponderosa pine. The lion saw me and bailed out of the tree. The fight was on! A few minutes later, I could hear Kebler going over the ridge after the cat.
I hurried back to Chad, told him what happened and then went to get the hounds. In a few minutes, we had all the hounds gathered up and started off towards where Kebler had been. My hounds went squalling off in the same direction he had gone. Kebler had the lion treed again in a juniper a short ways away. He kept him treed until the hounds got there. When the cat fell out of the tree dead, Kebler meant to eat this lion up and we could hardly keep him off it.
The cat evidently had a kill in the header and had left tracks coming and going as he fed. My hounds had done all the work trailing to get there, but our little house dog jumped and treed him by himself.
As you can guess, I took quiet a bit of ribbing about having my high powered lion dogs being bested by my little lap dog!!
by Gary Webb on January 7, 2010
December 31, 2009 – January 1, 2010
While mountain lion hunting here close to Lake Roberts, I treed this cat the last day of 2009 and then caught him again the next day on January 1, 2010.
We’d had a storm come through a couple of days before Christmas and dumped about 6 inches of snow. Normally snow melts fast here and is gone in a couple of days. However, it was really cold and this time the snow was slow melting. I don’t particularly like hunting in snow and prefer bare ground conditions, but snow hunting is usually more productive and has many advantages.
By New Year’s eve day, the snow had melted off the south facing slopes and was no longer clinging to the brush and trees. I’d already spent a couple of days re-shoeing my horses and mules with an equine version of ”mud and snow tires”. With a torch, we drip hard facing Boron in a jagged shape on the heels and toes of the horse shoe to help them with traction on slick rock, ice, frozen mud and snow.
I was riding up a ridge on the north slope when the hounds started bawling and trailing up the country. There was about 5 inches of snow still here and after 10 hounds go thru, there’s not much chance of seeing a track. I went back a ways to a spot where everything hadn’t been wiped out by the dogs. The snow was so powdery it was difficult to determine dog tracks from lion tracks. I finally did find the lion track and the dogs were going the right way on it. They weren’t going real fast for a snow track, but were steadily moving it.
I would find out how fresh the track really was when we reached the first south facing slope with no snow. If the track was a few days old, the scent would be gone with the recent snow melt. I knew it was worth letting them go on when the hounds trailed across the bare ground at the same pace.
When my little 20 pound black terrier started yapping and going with the hounds, I knew we were getting close. They soon jumped this lion out of some bluffs and treed him in a small ponderosa pine about a mile further on. It took several attempts to get the dogs to quit the tree, but I finally got them off and headed for the truck and trailer.
Julie had a New Year’s dinner planned, but I couldn’t resist going back and seeing if my other hounds could trail him away from the tree I’d left him in the day
before. As I approached the tree, the dogs started yesterdays track again and trailed right to the tree he’d been in. At the tree, they kept on trailing at a pretty good clip. The track was now about 22 hours old. It was extremely brushy and me and my horse ate plenty of brush and sticks while trying to stay within hearing of the dogs. After a long wild race, the hounds treed the lion again in an oak tree. I was along ways from the truck and trailer so I called Julie on my satellite phone and she picked me and the hounds up at a closer rendezvous point.
Even though it was the same lion, I can’t think of anything better than catching a lion the last day of the year, then catching a lion the first day of the year!
Chad White of Kansas took this Tom lion with his 357 handgun on the first day of his hunt. We were fortunate with our catch, since January brought lots of rain and snow to the southwest and hunting was difficult. I missed some hunting days due to really bad weather during January.
