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!!

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!

December 2009

This dandy mulie was taken a few days before Christmas by Mike Wear.  Mike and his buddy Tony Celia were here in New Mexico for the holidays.   Both Mike and Tony are Warrant Officers in the army.  Mike flies the Apache Helicopter and Tony flies Blackhawks.  They will be deployed before next fall, Mike to Germany and Tony to Kuwait.  Both will be flying sorties in and out of Afghanistan.  This was the last chance to get in a hunt here in New Mexico before returning to work.

Fortunately for Mike and Tony, the Game Park is not under state jurisdiction and we can hunt whenever we want.  We set our own seasons, bag limit and there is no license to buy.

Although they didn’t plan it this way, they were hunting during the beginning of New Mexico’s mule deer rut.  Bucks here start getting interested in does about Christmas time and will breed through January.  Bucks are less wary during the rut, but a skilled stalk must still be made to get within reasonable shooting range.

Mike and Tony had already glassed up several bucks when they spotted this Management buck.  He was nosing around some does and acted like he was sore footed or injured.  He walked with a limp.

Mike liked the looks of him and soon had a trophy for the wall and venison for the dinner table.

Mike and Tony, we wish you good luck on your missions and a safe and sound homecoming!

December 2009

Anyone that has hunted very much is bound to have made a mistake while hunting, or at least witnessed one.  In my hunting career, I’ve had 2 clients accidently shoot 2 bull elk.  These were honest mistakes that could have happened to anyone.  In both instances, we packed both animals to the trailhead and called the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.  We could have easily walked away from the second bull and nobody would have ever know.  In each case,  the game warden wrote the hunter a warning ticket for exceeding the bag limit, told him to be more careful and let him keep one of the bulls.

I was recently reminded of this situation while on a New Mexico oryx hunt on White Sands Missile Range.  I had been invited to tag along with client and friend Dan Herman of Colorado on his oryx hunt.  I’m not an oryx guide and on the Rhodes Canyon hunt only a very inexperienced hunter would need one. Oryx were everywhere.  These African antelope were released on the missile range in the 1970’s.  Approximately 90 animals were released by the New Mexico Department of Game an Fish.  The population is now estimated to be about 3000 animals.

Dan had already decided that he would take any respectable animal.  He thought, “This is only a 2 day hunt, there are a lot of hunters around and bulls and cows are difficult to tell apart.”

Late the first morning, Dan and his son Matt stalked to within 300 yards of a herd of about 20 oryx.  I was about 75 yards behind them watching.  Dan carefully picked out an animal with good horns and shot.  The herd went loping off to our right.  One animal went slowly meandering off to our left.  After a few seconds, Dan settled the crosshairs on the lone animal and fired a second shot.  We all saw the animal go down.  When we approached the animal, we noticed he was a nice bull, but with one broken horn.  Dan immediately said, “This is not the same animal.  I shot at one with 2 full horns the first time.”  We went back to where the herd was and sure enough there was a downed female with a full set of horns.

Dan called the New Mexico Game and Fish with his cell phone and a warden was on his way to investigate.  The game warden handled this situation in the same manner as my elk hunters that accidently shot two animals.  Dan kept the cow and the Game and Fish sold the bull to another hunter.

I still believe honesty is always the best policy.  Thanks for the invite Dan.

March 2009

John Novellino of New York, took this mountain lion on the second morning of his hunt.  We were about 30 minutes from the truck and trailer when the hounds had her treed.

We skinned the lion and were headed to the truck when I noticed 2 of my hounds were missing.  I knew they were with us at the tree when John shot his lion, but now they were long gone.  I put the other hounds in the trailer and John waited at the truck while I went to find the them.  With the help of the telementry collars, I found the other dogs with a second lion treed about a mile further on.

At the time, we hadn’t realized that the female was running with a tom.  It’s not uncommon to find toms and females running together, especially in March and April.  I took this photo, gathered up my hounds and left him sitting in the tree.  Great hunting day!!

The next day I went back to where I’d left him in the tree.  The hounds trailed him back to where he and the female had killed a deer, then trailed him across the Middle Fork of the Gila River.  The dogs were going pretty good on the track when it started raining.  In a matter of minutes, the scent was wiped out and that ended the hunting for that day.

October 2009

Julie and I slipped off for a day bear hunting, before we got busy with our rifle elk hunts.   Our dogs worked the track really fast and had this bear caught in just very short time.   Julie shot this beautiful bear with her 45 Long Colt pistol.

We realized after we skinned the bear, that the mule and horse we had ridden were probably not going to like carrying a bear.  We tried putting the hide on my mule “Bugs”.  He was a total idiot.  Pawing, kicking and trying to tear down the tree he was tied to.  We decided to try Julie’s horse “Slingshot”.  He has a history of being a knot-head about being packed, but we had no choice.  To our suprize, he barely noticed when we put the bear hide on him.  He ended up packing me and the hide out to the truck.

Slingshot got an extra shot of grain that night for not living up to his name.

December 10, 2009

Julie and I live here at Lake Roberts on what we call Sapillo Creek.  There are some spectacular bluffs and rims on down the canyon from our home.

I was out tuning up the hounds, getting them in shape when I treed this lion in the Sapillo.  I was trying to find the track to see if the hounds were trailing it in the right direction, when the dogs jumped the lion out of one of the bluffs.  The dogs went squalling off further towards the bottom and treed.

I got the dogs off the tree and went over in the next canyon and waited about an hour.  I then returned to where I’d left the lion treed and the race was on again! We trailed and treed this mountain lion again.  I had some young dogs with me and this was some excellent training for them.

I took a few photos and videos and left her sitting in the tree.

November 2009

Frank Sullivan of Oklahoma, took this nice mulie on the 3rd evening of his hunt. Not to far away from where his hunting partner, Robert St. Pierre, took his buck.

Frank was sitting in an elevated blind about 1/4 mile from some irriagated alfalfa fields.  These blinds make it easier to see over the mesquite brush while glassing.

A little before dark, Frank spotted a group of bucks working their way towards one of the fields.  These bucks were a long ways off and Frank was running out of time since it was getting close to sunset.

He got out of his blind and took off trying to intercept the deer.  By the time Frank made it to the field, the deer were already out in the middle.  Frank made an outstanding 450 yard shot to collect his trophy mule deer.

Great shot Frank!

December 16, 2009

While out exercising the hounds, they treed this magnificent tom overlooking the Gila River.  It took me a while to find the track after the dogs started trailing. I finally did find it and confirmed that they were going the right way.  I stayed with them until the terrain got to rough then I had to leave them and go around a different way.  When I caught back up, the hounds were looking at this big ol’ tom.  I caught the dogs and left him there.

I returned the following day to where he had been treed and the hounds started trailing him again.  They were going at a pretty good pace.  We were headed further down towards the Gila River and the country was getting rougher and rougher with each step.  The dogs jumped him out of some bluffs not to far out of the river bottom and ran him into some even bigger bluffs about 1/2 mile away.  That’s where we left him!

November 2009

Robert St. Pierre of Oklahoma, took this nice mule deer on the first day of his hunt.  We were sitting on the edge of an alfalfa field that was being heavily used by deer.

About 30 minutes before sunset, 20 does poured out of the mesquite brush into the field.   We could see a couple of bucks come right up to the edge of the brush line, but were reluctant to go into the field.  They were just out of range and stayed back in the brush, so Robert eased up towards them and waited.  One of the bucks finally jumped the fence and trotted into the field right at sunset.  He was 300 yards when Robert put him down.