Well Idahos cougar season opened up today in the area I hunt in, so at 4 in the morning I found myself in the old ritual of rolling out of bed and loadin the dog box. Idahos bobcat season in my area does'nt start till the first of the yr but you are allowed to pursue them during cougar season. My main passion is bobcat hunting so usually thats all thats on my mind. Anyways 5:30 I pull up to my normal spot, that I let dogs clean out and collar up at. At about 6 I cut a nice bobcat track, it has been snowing all nite and the track is pretty well covered but under the canopy of the trees I can tell its defintally a good runable track. In Idaho you can only start your hunt 30 minutes before sunrise, so with it being early I decide to go on up the road, break some roads open and maybe find a better track to run since I knew where this bobcat was headed and its not a favorite place of mine to turn a dog out in, Well I had been cutting roads with not much luck, the heavy snow all nite long kept the animal movement almost to nothing, keeping an eye on my clock, I knew I could go back and run the bob but I wanted to break this last one road open before I went back. Getting higher up on the ridge the going was getting tougher the snow was now over a foot deep but the driving was;nt to bad because it was so powdery I was able to break through fairly easy and chug along. I was just looking for a place to turn around and bam, seen the track like a sore thumb, nice cougar had came across probably around midnite or so I figured, the track had about 3-4 inchs of snow in it. I walked the track about 20 feet off the road under a big pine and seen it was a decent tom track. I put 3 of my older dogs out on the track , and they plum hammered the throttle down but problem was they was taking the track up the mnt, not a real good deal. I started up the road to where I last heard them ridge out on me. About 100 more yds and I just sat there and spun my wheels, anyways I whip out the chains and start putting them on, about that time I hear the dogs coming back around the ridge but on the opposite side of the canyon, the dogs dropped off the canyon and was now coming back around below of where I turned out, at this point they was riding him pretty hard and I knew by the tone it was gonna be over in a couple minutes, all about the same time all 3 dogs came smoking into the tree, my 2 females are straight chopped mouth but my male has a huge locate and a big changeover at the tree so when I heard that I knew it was over....so thank goodness I did'tn have to chain up, just backed up to where I could turn aroud and drive down the canyon, only had a 200 yd walk or so into the tree, which I was real glad cause I started gettin the flu the day before and today is my birthday , and if you miss your own party cause your out hunting....well you get your arse skinned...lol Heres a couple pics from today I hope they work.
This is a picture of Molly and Luke treed.
This is a picture of Penny treed, I almost lost this dog on a bear this fall and this was her first time back in action.
And heres the best picture I got of the lion , it was snowing and it did'nt take long for the lense to get blurred but I think you should be able to make out the cat. I estimated him in the 120-130 pd range, he was left to grow a little bit bigger.
This is a picture of Molly and Luke treed.
This is a picture of Penny treed, I almost lost this dog on a bear this fall and this was her first time back in action.
And heres the best picture I got of the lion , it was snowing and it did'nt take long for the lense to get blurred but I think you should be able to make out the cat. I estimated him in the 120-130 pd range, he was left to grow a little bit bigger.
