BigGameHoundsmen.com

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That was Different all right!!!
Did that guy wound the animal on purpose or what ??

One of the most memorable nights cat hunting, was with Old Dog.

We had treed a cat close to the road and let it go and was running another one. It was clear sky's and a full moon. With the Comet Hail Bob shinning bright. Looking at the top of the ridge where the dogs were running, there was a gun site looking notch. The dogs made it thru the bluffs and crossed over the ridge thru the notch.
Skip said, were do we go now ? I looked up just as a shooting star, streaked across the sky going (what looked like) thru the notch! I replied, That way!!
We did and found the dogs treed.

Long ago, Tom Barnett & I were bobcat hunting at night. We rounded a corner & down the road was several eyes in the road, thinking cattle, as we got closer realized it was three cougar. We drove to within 50 feet of those cougars & stopped. Two stood & one was lying on a mound of dirt pushed up for loading heavy equipment, all of a sudden all three bolted into the brush. Very careful got my best dog & lead her to exact spot those cats entered the brush, she screamed out of there & Tom dumped the box pack. Next half hour we listened to a good race, then arrived at the tree to find a 17&1/2 lb. bobcat in the tree.
As we began walking back to the rig scratching our heads, half way back those hounds started working a tough track. They spent about an hour making a big circle, that lead them back to the exact spot we had park the rig & first saw those cougars. Still having a tough time with that track, we were thinking of pulling the dogs. About them one dog found the track on the south side of the road, things got better and soon treed a cougar.
Back to the rig and heading down the road, Tom remembered we had hung that bobcat in a bush, retrieved the bob headed down the road got about 50 yards a cougar bolts across the road in front of us. Dogs made short work of treeing that one.
Thing is in those days we seldom treed a cougar or saw any cougar sign, so, guess that hunt was truely different. Al

We had got a rare snow in the desert down here so I threw some dogs in the buggy and took off to look for a track... we got to a saddle and there was a truck backed down off the road that looked like it was stuck.. I drove on down next to it noticed a guy bent down through the drivers side window getting something out of the seat.. I hollered and asked him if needed any help.. but no answer so I hollered again still no answer.. so I got out and walked up to him and thats when I noticed his feet were off the ground and I looked in the cab and seen that he was dead.. kinda spooky.. I had to drive up to the top and call 911 and hang around for a while until the police showed up... it looked like he had got stuck the night before and had a heart attack trying to get out...

Cowboyvon, did you have a hard time explaining the bullet hole? Remind me not to cut in on your favorite hunting territory. I guess that is why they call you Cowboyvon. Lol Just kidding. Wow some wild stories on here.

This one is cool to me, but certainly not going to compete with some of these amazing stories. It is probably my favorite hunting memory, so I guess I am just putting it here for myself. My apologies.

This was thirty some years ago. I had been struggling with this bobcat hunting thing for many many months and had only treed one or two. We got four or five inches of snow in the coast range so I headed up there with my culls. I found a nice track but it was going into a bowl where no one would turn a dog loose because it was rimmed with sheer bluffs. But I was pretty used to never catching anything so what difference does it make? I can either not catch a cat here, or go some where else and not catch one. So I turned my dogs on the track, and set out with them as best I could.

I had an excellent cold tracking dog, but this track was not cold, they took off on it pretty quickly. They made a arch of maybe 3/4 mile and came up treed. Now I felt elated at the sound of them treed, but I had been to an empty tree or two. So I tried to pretend that I did not believe them, even though I did. I couldn't take any more heart break from my dogs, so I just broke my own heart right there before starting into that empty tree.

Ray Mears had coached me to stay with the bobcat track, so I did that. I followed the cat track. He also had told me that a male cat will pee sometimes under heavy pressure. He said if you follow that cat track, you will learn stuff like that. He said, now, if that male cat pees, you will find him treed shortly there after.

So I am following the cat track, and the dog tracks are staying with it pretty good. I am getting closer and closer to what would have been a disappointment, but could not possibly disappoint me, because I already went through the disappointment back when they started treeing. And now I am within maybe a hundred yards from the treeing dogs. And I mean, they are telling it! And there it is: yellow snow at the cat track! And all I hear is Ray's words echoing "if that male cat pees, you will find him treed shortly there after." "if that male cat pees, you will find him treed shortly there after." "if that male cat pees, you will find him treed shortly there after." Ok, you get the idea. I don't know how to do echo on a computer.

But Ray cant be right all the time, can he?

So I close in on the dogs. And this is Re-production (re-prod). And the trees have never been thinned. I could walk under them, but above was a solid ceiling that did not even allow light to get through all those evergreen branches woven so tightly together. The young tree trunks were all were exactly the same diameter, except for two of them were bigger for some reason. One of the big ones was where the dogs were treeing like crazy. But there was not a chance of me ever seeing up into that tree to prove my dogs wrong. Circle points. At least they could break a tie with that.

But no, I had to know. The other bigger tree was maybe twenty five yards away. I had my single shot .22 rifle. The two of us decided we were going to climb that other tree and see what we could see. I couldn't even get that rifle through all that brush, because I needed both hands to climb with. So I tied a couple leashes to it and snapped that to my belt. As I got higher, the trees were heavy with snow and I was getting dumped on. Finally I get to the tops of the smaller trees, and they are all exactly the same height except for the two bigger ones, The one I was on, and, that's right, the one that nice big tom cat was on! We both were clinging to our trees, both poking out above the rolling white sea of snow covered hemlock, and both with snow on our heads and shoulders.

It remains one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Those hemlocks bend over on the very top, and they just looked like whitecaps out on this white ocean that went on and on, and the sky was deep blue. And that has to be the most beautiful animal I ever saw framed in right in the middle of all that.

I still kick myself for not climbing down out of there and doing what ever I had to do to go find a camera some where and come back. I comfort myself only with the thought that the picture would have surely changed by the time I got back there.

Beautiful story David !!!

Good story Daivd... a guy should never leave the house without a gun, camera and a knife..

This guy wasn't hunting ...those that are they never find the bodies..

Well it's raining and my pick-up is in the shop so I'm Bored too Skip!! But I'm not letting you out of the Cage!!
What do you think of that Coyote pup now ? You got to following him right back to the Cage!! Good job Willie And Blue!!!

That reminds me of the time in Seward when you wanted to take the short cut thru "Dangerous Passage"!!! I knew then you were a little "Off".

lol I have been thru there many times in bigger boats than the one I had that day.but the tide was real low and running hard and my fishing partner that day was sceerd of it lmao I told him that they named it that way because ,,,well it can be dangerous at times. maybe that's why he talked me out of it??? brad that was by far the best times I have had while living in Alaska!!!