Look low for lions.

[Mike Leonard]

This may be a bit of a decieving topic but I thought I would get others opinions on this.

I thought about this early this morning not long after daylight I was way up in a deep canyon that had some pretty shear walls along the side and lots of thick Gambels oak up along the edges and around the pockets. The slopes above were juniper, pinion pine and poderosa pine. I had ridden about 3 miles and the dogs were moving along at an easy gate and it was just a beautiful morning to be out in nature. I noticed my Toby dog who is a coming 3 year old Walker pawing at a track and moving along and pawing at the next impression in the sandy soil. I stopped my horse and looked at it and it was an old female lion track maybe 3-4 days but too old to have much scent in the sandy soil with the temperture extremes we have had from nearly freezing in those canyons at night to a blazing hugh 89's in the afternoon when the sun heats those rocks. He knew it was a lion though and he was trying to wake the scent up by pawing and licking on it. A couple other hounds showed up and they thrashed their tails and tried to move it but they did n't do any good and I didn't encourage or discourage them. They went to each rock and low bush smelling and down along the sides of the rocks to try to get a little from the shady side of the rock where the lion steps. No good but they tried and I rode on. I was thinking just how low lion scent lays on the ground and in around rocks as they move. Only on very fresh or jumped lions do you get much airborne scent where a dog can really drift it. If they are drifting much off the track you can bet it is very hot scent. Well about 500 yards further on I came around a bend and all 5 dogs noses shot up in the air and they strained way up high smelling. I audibally said OSO! meaning bear in Spainish. Sure enough a big old bear had been in there that night and had wandered thru the oak right near the rocks. His tracks were plain and fresh the young dogs whined and wanted to go but I scolded them and said we couldn't be bothering this bear because he wouldn't take kindly to it. But they kept even rearing up on the rocks picking up his scent as it wafted around in that canyon . Light airy and high is the scent of the bear. Enticing but not as long lasting as the low heavy scent of the El Gato.

Scent is so interesing!

[Big Horn Posse]

Good post Mike..... I have seen mine do the same thing a few times....I loved watching the dogs pick apart scents. Sounds like you had a great day.

[Ike]

I was thinking just how low lion scent lays on the ground and in around rocks as they move. Only on very fresh or jumpped lions do you get much airborne scent where a dog can really drift it. If they are drifting much off the track you can bet it is very hot scent.

Good post Mike, and lion scent and how it lays has often been a topic between Labrum and I when we talk about hounds. I've about always thought an old lion track trails better than an old bear, which has always baffled me. Likewise, I've always wondered how a hound could blow up on the box on an old lion trail that they can hardly move. Over time I've come to believe those hounds aren't rigging lion tracks but either body scent from the brush or urine from a scratch.

Last spring Labrum and I were out rigging for bears and drove around the north loop of Tabby Mountain. The habitat zone was quaken aspen with low brush that had had recent moisture, as there were puddles now and then in the road. As we drove upon one of those puddles, that pack of dogs of mine blew up like there was a bear standing off the road, and there on the shoulder of that road was a female lion track in the mud.

Well Labrum got all excited and wanted to run that lion thinking it was a "hot track." It was nearly noon and I figured that lion had most likely crossed in the night and the track would run slow if at all--plus we were bear hunting! He talked me into dumping three of my old hounds and it took them several minutes to sort out the track and start to walk down it. Yes, walk down it!

I dumped the rest of those hounds and we had six dogs barking down a track that sounded like they were baying a bear, only problem was I could walk faster than they could trail. We let them pick for less than a mile and I cut them off in the truck and called them in.........Labrum bout chit cause I pulled those dogs off a track that they had rigged and could move.

My point in telling this story is to show that the lion track was no where near "hot" yet the track in the mud gave the illusion that lion had just crossed. So what were those hounds rigging on? Had that female urinated near the road? Was it the track scent those dogs were hitting on? was it lion scent in that mud hole? Or was it the body scent from that lion traveling through the under brush? I've seen that same pack of hounds do the same thing during late morning hours on dry ground in august.

And it really doesn't matter which or what scent sets those hounds off, as the only thing that matters to me is they let us know that lion had crossed. If you ever get all that stuff figured out Mike, then please write a book and publish it so the rest of us poor slobs can understand............


ike

[Mike Leonard]

LoL! Me get it figured out? I doubt that Dennis but I love trying.

You are right on that female lion they were rigging body scent left along there.


Now then yo! just let out a real pearl of wisdom and I am not going disclose it but I wonder who will pick it up from your post and tell us about it because it is SOLID GOLD!

[R Severe]

I sure enjoy post's like this. Trying to equate what you guys find in your country to our's is the tough part for me. So many things to effect scent.
Good stuff.

[Ike]

The aging of tracks has always been a rough one for me unless a person has some reference or mechanical device, weather or indicator that pretty much firms up when that animal crossed. I've also caught bobcats that really stink and others with less smell, and I'm sure the same is true with lions and bears. So if different animals give off different amounts of scent, and the weather conditions impact it differently from one moment to the next how does a person ever figure it out? and really know much of anything for sure!

Before I turned my ankle last weekend, a hunter and i were out bear hunting one morning this spring. It had started sprinkling just after daylight and continued to do so all morning. We should have quit and gone home, but chose to stay.

Around 1:30 that afternoon we shut down to have a sandwich before heading to town. While eating, a guy came by and asked if we were bear hunting, then told us he'd had a bear run across the road in front of him at 7:00 AM that morning. So I said take us to the track.

We parked below the track and sure enough that young man had a running bear track that had crossed the road. The track had been sprinkled and rained in for five hours and the weather had blown over, and the conditions were some wind and sun shine. That track looked days old because of the weather and rain.

Well, I went back to the truck and jerked both doors open on my dog box, and those hounds went on a run to the track, opened on the run and left behind the bear. Four hours later we caught up with those hounds and they were still cold trailing that bear, the track was still under the rain and we could keep up with the dogs. Those dogs were dry and the hunter and I elected to call those hounds off that track because it was moving slow and the scent appeared to be getting thinner all the time. I figured best of that bear scent had evaporated with the moisture and without any water for the hounds I said that's enough....... That track was in the shale in places that had little or no vegetation.

Now granted they could have jumped that bear in the next mile or two and I probably should have let them continue, but finishing tracks just doesn't mean as much to me as they once did. A successful hunt to me these days finding a track, getting the dogs some exercise and getting them all back before dark.......

But back to the scent thing. I've had tracks on bears at daylight that looked much better and they wouldn't run worth a crap..........

ike

[Big Mike]

Ive also always wondered why bear tracks dont seem to last as long. Spring bear tracks seem to last longer and my dogs will cold trail them much like a lion track. One spring the dogs stuck a track and we started to cold trail it. My mule could walk faster than the dogs could trail. I would have swore I was cold trailing a lion. After a mile of cold trailing I finally found a track and it was a great big ol boar bear. Conditions I guess

Another time Me a a buddy were lion hunting in march. We were abgout 5 miles into a wilderness area when the dogs stuck a track. The dogs blew out and moved the track fast. They trailed out of the canyon. We just kept riding up the bottom since there was no way to get a mule out of the canyon where we were. We rode about another 3/4 mile up the canyon and could here the dogs trailing back into the canyon ahead of us. They trailed up to a huge bluffy boulder pile. As we were riding up towards them two red tick dogs come up to us. Me and my buddy look at each other a little puzzled because we didnt take any redticks that day. I catch one of the dogs and recognize the name of another lion hunter that lives on the other side of the mountain from us. We catch up to our dogs are they are just trailing around a little in the boulder pile. Bout that time we hear the other hunter whooping for his dogs. He rides down to us and we visit for awhile. Turns out he trailed the lion 3 days earlier and killed it in the bluff where our dogs were stalled. He had lost a couple of dogs and was back looking for them. The lion had a kill and had walk all over the country.

The point of all this is our dogs could really move a track that was 3 days old and dead to boot!!

I always figure that most of us(me included) mis-age the tracks we see and they are ussually fresher than we think. But this instance made me wonder. The more I try to figure out scent the less i think I know. Now i age tracks like this: either they can smell it or they cant and quit trying to figure out why gives me a headache thinking to much

[Mike Leonard]

Good stuff coming out here I guys I love it!

Still waiting for that little tip that Ike hid in his first post on this that can really make your day of hunting more successful. LOL!

[3bigelk]

Most of you gentleman have forgot more about hounds that I will ever know! I am 6 years into this crazy sport and love the fact that my dogs teach me new stuff all the time. I live in Idaho so we are limited on running lions in Spring/Summer conditions other that the ones we pick up bear hunting.

However, we do get weeks of dry/bare ground running every winter when the storms don't come. I used to think these conditions were impossible, then I met some gentleman that showed me what catching lions was all about! After a year of letting my female beat her head against that frozen ground I began to catch more and more lions. The thing is it wasn't everytime out like when you have a fresh snow. It was obvious that the conditions were dictating when and were the lions would be caught but I couldn't figure out why some tracks would take hours to move a mile and some would be like a bear race with the dogs noses in the air screaming across the mountain??

I am not going to profess to have figured this out yet, but my dogs gave me a piece of the puzzle this winter since I had more time to spend with them. I am sure there are dogs out there that are better than my two so this may not hold true to everyones dogs. But when it comes to running my dogs alone or with someone else's it seems to hold true that in these Idaho mountains a guy is better off starting a track that is or will be on dry ground at 9-10 o'clock in the morning when the hillside has had a chance to warm up. We have tried or waited until 12-1 pm but it is becoming apparent that the scent releases best for the dogs between 9-12 in the morning. We experemented with this theory this winter and had the best luck we have ever had catching lions on bare ground. I believe a sunny day is better than a cloudy day and if it warms up enough to make the soil soft on top the dogs will end up running it faster than a snow track! However, by mid day/afternoon we better have moved it across severe south facings. It is just plain crazy trying to figure something out that your dogs know and you, as the superior being can't.

The long and short of it, my first year hound hunting my dogs caught 12 lions. We would not even consider turning out unless we had new snow. This year with the same dogs, we caught 12 of 43 lions on races that had 85%+ bare ground. We did run out of daylight on 2 races, but man I sure do appreciate those fine gentleman such as your guys teaching me that you just have to give the dogs a chance and most importantly .....learn from them!

[oswald]

dont know what the tip is unless it is to take the dogs off a track if it doesnt seem to be getting better the further they go?

[Ike]

In my opinion, an open ground tom lion track is always about two things: time and distance. Now I'm talking about a lock-down pack of hounds that have ran together down those lion trackss in similar conditions for years, and not young dogs on the learning curve. And by time I'm talking about how much time that hound has until the trailing conditions grow worse or are gone; by distance I mean is that tom lion in catching distance from that hound when he starts the track or twenty or thirty miles away.

In my experience, late fall and late winter or early spring provides a trail hound the best chance to run down a traveling tom who has put lots of miles between them. I've watched my hounds move and stay on the same track for as much as twenty-five hours before jumping the lion and putting it in the tree. Those type of events usually happen to me when the trailing conditions are best. Likewise, I've watched those same hounds cold trail a tom lion or old boar from daylight til dark (and often throughout most of the night) without ever making a jump or tree.

Hopefully we all watch, listen and learn from what we see in the field with our dogs. But claiming to know or assuming a person is gonna know the outcome of one of those trails is much like forecasting the weather or your future--pretty damn tough.

With the technology each of us have available these days, we are probably more able to gather our own information, and to share it with others. In my opinion, these boards allow us to visit or view what others struggle with or succeed at in the hound dog world. Some of us run in the swamps, the heavily timbered region of the north, while others in the high mountains, the rim rock country of the West or the desert country of the southwest. And with the mobility we have, many of us have had the opportunity to visit other habitats and listen to the hounds trail and catch in distance lands.

But I've heard it said many times before that about the time you have it all figured out your azz is probably about to fall off.............

ike

[Big Horn Posse]

Ike,
I have to say that last post is probably the best you have posted. Very good read, very insightful, and very true.

[Huntintony]

Great post guys.. I love it... I have to say the tip Mikes alluding to is to pull dogs off the track or is it to never hunt with a buddy because they always influence you in to doing things you really dont want to or shouldnt be doing...

Come on Mike, lets have it..

[Ike]

I guess it's kind of funny that I chose two stories to illustrate a point where I pulled dogs off a track that was still moving. But a little history on some of the things that have pushed or moved me in that direction......

Years back, I can remember starting old tom track after old tom track for an outfitter's client that weren't catchable in my eyes--not then or now. Some of those tracks were melted out and frozen during hard winter months and could have been days (if not a week) old. Two many times I watched my hounds pound all day into places that I could not retrieve them for days, and that crap has been over for a long time now.

The hunt to me is about those dogs and me, not the catch or the kill or whether a client takes home a trophy that he never really earned or worked for. There was a time that finishing a track was what it was all about for me, but now days I'll stop a hunt in a heartbeat if those hounds are in danger from a road, or if they are running dry in an arid climate where they can't cool down or get a drink. But to each his own............

And I'll let Mike respond to the point he made about the pearl of wisdom I dropped in the earlier post........

ike

[AZDOGMAN]

This is an honest question ike as i am not 100% sold on the lion rigging deal. In mikes first post the title basicly meant that bear scent stayed in the air and lion scent held tight to the ground. If this is the case how do the dogs rig lion tracks expecialy old ones. Like i said i am not trying to start anything it is an honest question. I love these posts, i think everyone learns a little or opens his mind to new ideas about scent reading these posts. Here is my conyribution th the post. Last year i was in thelower desert country of az and we cut a track on sunday of a female lion that someone had dumped out on already so we asumed that they chased it on saturday. I was roading my dogs down the same road on tuesday and my peggy dog struck a track and started moving it good. I followed the track (that she was actualy going backwards on) up to the road right were we cut it on sunday. I ran her down and grabbed her up. That track was at least 3 days old . The next day we cut a big tom track on top of our drag so we knew it was night old. We let the dogs down and we could barely move it and never got it going. So i agree that many factors come into play if a hound can move a 3 day old female track one day and struggle badly with a night old tom.