Jill decided she wanted to give big game hunting a try this year so I took her and Patrick up to a piece of state land along the Recreation Road near the Missouri River to look for deer. We hiked to the top of the ridge and started noticing cat tracks. I'm not real good at identifying tracks in the snow but I was pretty sure they were mountain lions. I pointed them out to Jill, not really thinking much about it or even fully believing they were lion tracks.
We pushed up the ridge and saw a slide were it looked like two of the cats took down a deer and slid with it down the mountain for about 50 yards. "The shit's getting real," I thought to myself but still questioned whether or not the scene actually played out the way the signs were telling us.
I crested the ridge and started looking for deer when I caught some movement below. There it was; a mountain lion sneaking along a cliff wall and then quickly went out of sight. I glassed the cliff and was amazed to see a second cat sunning itself and then another one just up the wall from it also sunning itself.
I waved Jill and Patrick over to get a look at them. They were less than a hundred yards away--totally content on bathing in the sun and watching us, watching them. That's the crazy thing about these cats; they'll just lie there watching the world go by and they won't move or hide or do anything because they don't have to. You usually won't even see them. We talk about it all the time where we know there are cats there but they are just too smart and too sneaky to ever lay your eyes on them. It's actually kind of scary, especially since I just heard of a guy, (we talked about it on The Montana Dream Cast last episode,) who was attacked by one of these cats last week. For the most part, they don't want anything to do with you but there are those occasions...
Just to give you an idea of how rare this is; I've been hunting in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Montana for almost 40 years. I have worked and lived in the back country of Montana and have put on some serious miles hiking around for elk, bear, deer, grouse, even juvies, and just about anything that lives in the mountains. I have never seen a mountain lion outside of the one or two that crossed the road in front of me late at night. The chances of getting close enough to shoot one without dogs treeing them is next to nothing. This was pretty cool and I'm glad Jill and Patrick were able to see something most of us will never get.
The next day, I took John and Johnny LaRue out on a little adventure to test out my theory/plan to put a boat in on the river and motor into some of the chunks of BLM sections that don't get any hunting pressure because they're just too hard to get to. We'll talk more about that as the plan definitely worked but before a shot was fire, we ran into this guy. Trust me; this ram is huge. It's the biggest one I've seen in the wild in person. We do see some rams throughout the summer and I even posted a pic of one last August that was barely legal. This ram had a more than a full curl and it's just a testament that the strategy to re-introduce these guys is working and that the bruisers would rather just hang out were nobody can bother them until the time comes when they do their thing...
We pushed up the ridge and saw a slide were it looked like two of the cats took down a deer and slid with it down the mountain for about 50 yards. "The shit's getting real," I thought to myself but still questioned whether or not the scene actually played out the way the signs were telling us.
I crested the ridge and started looking for deer when I caught some movement below. There it was; a mountain lion sneaking along a cliff wall and then quickly went out of sight. I glassed the cliff and was amazed to see a second cat sunning itself and then another one just up the wall from it also sunning itself.
I waved Jill and Patrick over to get a look at them. They were less than a hundred yards away--totally content on bathing in the sun and watching us, watching them. That's the crazy thing about these cats; they'll just lie there watching the world go by and they won't move or hide or do anything because they don't have to. You usually won't even see them. We talk about it all the time where we know there are cats there but they are just too smart and too sneaky to ever lay your eyes on them. It's actually kind of scary, especially since I just heard of a guy, (we talked about it on The Montana Dream Cast last episode,) who was attacked by one of these cats last week. For the most part, they don't want anything to do with you but there are those occasions...
Just to give you an idea of how rare this is; I've been hunting in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Montana for almost 40 years. I have worked and lived in the back country of Montana and have put on some serious miles hiking around for elk, bear, deer, grouse, even juvies, and just about anything that lives in the mountains. I have never seen a mountain lion outside of the one or two that crossed the road in front of me late at night. The chances of getting close enough to shoot one without dogs treeing them is next to nothing. This was pretty cool and I'm glad Jill and Patrick were able to see something most of us will never get.
The next day, I took John and Johnny LaRue out on a little adventure to test out my theory/plan to put a boat in on the river and motor into some of the chunks of BLM sections that don't get any hunting pressure because they're just too hard to get to. We'll talk more about that as the plan definitely worked but before a shot was fire, we ran into this guy. Trust me; this ram is huge. It's the biggest one I've seen in the wild in person. We do see some rams throughout the summer and I even posted a pic of one last August that was barely legal. This ram had a more than a full curl and it's just a testament that the strategy to re-introduce these guys is working and that the bruisers would rather just hang out were nobody can bother them until the time comes when they do their thing...
Both this pic and the video above were taken through my binoculars. We got to about 150 yards when I took this photo. I don't have the attachment so the photos aren't great but you get the idea. Eventually, my phone died and I didn't have the GoPro with me but we wound up getting about 60 or 70 yards from him and then...the plan came to fruition.
Keep 'em where they live...
P.S. The violence has to stop and we as sportsmen and women need to do our part. #sportsmenagainstgunviolence and be a part of the conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment