What are the odds of this?

[Mike Leonard]

Got a call early yesterday morning from a lion hunting friend of mine. He said I just hit a pretty good tom lion's track on the dirt he is scraping a lot and the hounds are moving the track pretty good can you come? I said sorry i am hooked up with work but keep me posted and if you get in a bind call me. Well I recieve a text from time to time that it is slow going in very rough bluffs and bare ground with very little vegitation, but they are still moving. Well I wish him well and go back to work. Well I get a text from another lion hunting friend of mine telling me that a nice tom was just killed on the highway and he even sent me photos of it. Well I knew where my first friend was trailing and his direction and i felt he was trailing the lion that had been road killed. I let him know but he said well I am still on this one moving better and it is still across the river in the bluffs. Well i told him about where i felt the lion would make a turn and cross the water and head for the road becasue i have trailed so many lions in this area over the years and they seem to follow a general travel route. He still had hope he was on a diffeent lion and the dogs were really picking up speed on the track. Well a little later he calls me and said just like you said he went so far turned at a hard left angle crossed the river and went to the highway. I told him I would come and get him and his 3 hounds and take him back because his Mule was a long ways away up on the top of very steep bluffs. Once i picked him up we drove up the highway and sure enough the very lion he was after made it across two lanes but got whacked when it reached the other two lanes, so he had in fact been trailing a dead lion.

He was a little down because of this bad luck but I couldn't help but tell him what a great job he and the dogs had done trailing that thing thru all that bad country in the bare dirt. In fact this dead lion did his dogs more good than half a dozen hot jump snow lions. To be a real lion dogs a hound has to learn patience in trailing and lion hunters have to be dedicated eneough to follow them wherever they go.

This guy and his dogs have the stuff!

[freetrapper42]

Thanks Mike, It was a great day to be in the hills. To be honest I was pretty disappointed that the lion got killed on the road but was very proud of what the dogs accomplished. I knew in my head that we were after a dead lion but my heart kept hoping we would jump him in the end. The dogs have worked very hard this year with little to show for it but our time will come. Thanks again for picking us up. It would have been a very long day climbing all the way back up those cliffs.

Al

[Big Mike]

What a bummer. Its Hard enough to find a good trailable track sometimes. Dam lion probably crossed the road a hundred times and the one time your trailing him he has to go and get hit.

A guess the silver lining is you at least it wasnt your dog on that road!

[sheimer]

I'd say the odds of trailing a dead lion are slim to none, butas big Mike said, good thing you were still coldtrailing instead of having him jumped when he crossed the road!

Some of my proudest times following the hounds were not when we caught a cat but rather when we grubbed an old track all day and had to earn every step. Seems like any dog I have owned could catch a popup but only a few would work all day for me even though i know deep down inside the odds of actually cathing were slim. Those are the dogs I'll always treasure....

Scott

[jube baker]

Damn nice loin too, the one iv been trailing on the other side and was about to get into my area. damn the bad luck o well hope a bigger tom moves in soon..

[Gunn]

If it's going to happen and be strange, it's going to happen to Al. I told him he should have bought a lottery ticket that day. When that crew gets one treed no one can say they didn't earn it.

[Kevin D]

Not quite the same scenario, but one slow day a hunting partner and I decided to dump on a two day old lion track. The dogs trailed it up over a divide and down into another canyon. It was there that we noticed the snowmobile and dog tracks from another hound dogger made the previous day. There was also a blood trail from where they had killed the lion.

Sure enough, one by one the dogs trailed into the tree of the dead lion. So yeah, I've run dead lions.

[Mike Leonard]

Gunn,

I think that sort of luck comes from hanging around me too much. LOL! If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all.

[Black Mountain]

Same thing happened to us about 12 years ago. We actually drove right passed the dead lion lying on the side of the road and then on up to where we cut his track. Turned the dogs out and they made a big 3 to 4 mile circle and right down to the road killed lion.

[nitetime]

Hey look on the bright side you kepted the dogs off the highway. They will be ready to run again. I hait when dogs get by busy roads.