There isnt many people I'd do this for but aside from my brother, he is one of them.
This tom broke off with the female and sub, yesteday I imagine after they came out of the rocks, on the opposite side of the mountain of where we treed the female the other day.
I had plans to meet Mike at 7 but at 6a.m it was pissing rain and although we have a lot of snow on the ground, its days old and its been raining ever since, almost called him and said forget it.
Glad I didnt.
The rain quit at about 9 a.m and it turned into a decent day.
We cut this cat hunting the perimeter of the cut blocks up and down from the lake and eventually lined out and headed up to the top to a mountain where there is a radio tower.
It took near 3 hours to cut him a third time and I figure I freshened him up a good 4-5kms. I
found him coming straight up in 2'+ snow through a slash into an enormous section of timber with a very busy road on the other side just under 1km and slightly over a bit more of an elevation gain.
I ran that road to ensure he didnt cross, it was almost hood deep in snow where I turned around, slightly higher in elevation to where I marked him on the gps on the mountain.
I radio'd MIke to bring the truck up as high as he could, my plan was run the dogs back in 2.5 km, dump them and wait and see if they crested over towards that road and whip back down and around if they were headed that way.
Fortunately they didnt, The snow was too deep I imagine and the cat clearly was doing a huge circle.
It was about 10C today and the snow was heavy heavy, all the snow had come out of the trees days ago so that wasnt a problem but it was fairly hard for them in the timber, the snow was only half as deep as the road and slash though.
They took it fast off the road but instantly were fanning out in the timber.
Ben took a while to get going but eventually caught up to the other 2, about 700 yards away.
None opened for a good 500 yards and then were quiet but still leap frogging away on the astro at a decent enough pace.
They were clearly following a bench on the garmin so I headed back out to the truck once they were out of range on the long range antenna (2.3km) and headed down around to the lake and back in towards where we orginally cut it, about 7km by truck.
We never got to hear much of the race as they were 1.5km above the mainline and under 1000' above us but a big bench of timber muffled the music.
We followed below on the astro and saw the whole jump (less tham a km chase from what I saw) and then lock tree go down on the astro, that was pretty cool to watch, being zoomed in to a 12m scale and have them from updating just a few yards to all of a sudden updating out 20 or more at a time, a zig, zag, circle back and then show treed.
It would have been a brutal hike up but the tracked quad got us to within 600m as the crow flew, only reason we couldnt make it closer is due to the 3' of snow on either side of the ditch, being so wet I didnt want to try and end up stuck. Still relatively easy compared to the last few and I know Mike was glad we got that close, he said he never woulda made it from the truck.
This heavy snow sure sucks a lof of fuel through the tracked quad.
http://s1024.photobucket.com/albums/y30 ... Tom068.mp4
http://s1024.photobucket.com/albums/y30 ... Tom069.mp4
