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Some times worth it some times not. Tell us about the worse tree you have had to walk to. Weather it was the terrain that made it hard, weather conditions or even animal encounters.Let's hear em.!

the one that sticks in my mind was when i was about 15 . my buddy and i were going to a tree as my dad stayed at the truck , which he is pretty good at. it was around 3 in the morning and winter was in full swing. we were up where shit creek meets coal cr. above powers . there is a pond above the road and it overflows into a colvert that goes below the road. as we were going to the tree we crossed that creek . the sound of a roaring creek was below us. coal cr. the brush was second to none , huckel berry , sowallow ect. i was in front and my next step was almost my last. i walked right off a bluff . as i was falling i was thinking i was going to land in the creek we had already crossed . it took forever to hit the ground , when i did i kept hitting and flipping . finnally came to a stop. as i layed there i could barely here my buddy asking if i was ok . i couldnt answer , all the oxygen in the world around me but none could make it into my lungs. finnally i started to get my breathe back and started to do a check list. my tail bone hurt very bad , my hands were bleeding from protecting my head as i was tumbleing. lost my light , hat , and broke the wooden grip on my pistol. as my eyes started to focus in the dark i reallized i was on a bluff right next to a waterfall. if i would have went another 5ft i wouldnt be wrighting this story. i made it back up to my buddy by climbing a windfall fir tree that was leaning against the bluff. as long as i have been going to trees there have only been 2 that i quit and gave up ,this was one of them. the other was because of bluffs in the dark also. wet bluffs with moss on them is no joke.

jc

Jc, those bluffs scare the hell out of me as well at night. I haven't had any bad falls yet but some unexpected drops that were farther than I thought.

My worse one was.... I was on my snowmobile, started the track on the east side of the river... dogs tore out like no buddies business and crossed the river to the west side.... (on ice) I wasn't about to go across that ice alone, so there was a road I knew that was above the dogs. I circled back and got above em, I was hand turning the sled around, and went to start it... ill be damn and the pull cord got stuck. I was sitting there above the dogs mechanicing on it before it got dark, got that fixed and went down to the dogs and rounded them up, climbed back out of the hole. Got on the sled, ran great until the last couple miles from the truck.... coolant was low(I had to undo a coolant line to get into the pull cord case) luckily I was able to get to the truck but man those last couple miles were slow.

That last story reminded me of another.

I was out hunting with my good sled(first trip out since I fixed it after the wreck). It was a fresh snow on a good base, awesome snow for a sled and hunting. I leave the dogs in the trailer at a central point to go back and get em so I can cover more country in less time. Anyways I cut a fresh cat track, it looked red hot to me. I go get the dogs and come back.... turn out my two girls, and my older pup... 15 mins later had a cat in the tree. I load up, get on my way out.... and I hear a weid noise from my motor (not good im saying in my head) I look for the problem, couldn't find it... I keep going and I hit a iced up pick up rut and flip my sled.... when I got it back up proper the damn thing wouldn't start... so I unload the dogs, get my gun, cat and pack. I start walking out to the truck, on my way out I call my sister and have her come meet me at my truck so I can go pull the sled to my trailer so I can work on it at home. Almost to the truck, here comes my sis up the road with the truck. I can only imagine the picture she could of took with a mountain man with 3 hounds and a cat coming down the road.

Man you Oregon guys are full of sketchy stories. makes me wanna come on up even more

There's a couple events that come to mind while thinking about this.....

The first one that comes to mind was quite a few years ago before I even owned hounds. I was out with a couple friends, one of which owned a black and tan. Well, we cut a lion track and dumped Copper out on it at daylight and bid him fair well. This was before he had tracking collars. We lit out behind him and it wasn't too long before he made a loss. We caught up to him and figured it out for him. He was off again. We fell in behind him and we noticed the temp dropping throughout the hike. Along about 1 or 2 in the afternoon we were out of hearing range of the dog and several coulees from the truck. We called out to a friend and asked if he would come around from another drainage and pick us up. When he got to the drainage we told him to meet us in, we had already crossed it and were on the ridge heading into the next. We knew he had gotten there because we saw his hound come blowing past us on the track. He proceeded on into the next coulee and 'bout that time our friend showed up. We got his hound gathered up and started hiking back to our friends truck witout Copper, who was still out of hearing range. As we hiked back it got cold enough to start freezing the gloves on my hands. I'd take them off and switch with out with the friend that came to pick us up. He'd thaw mine out and I'd freeze his, so we'd switch and do it again, and again and again. By the time we got to his truck it was on to dark and then some. We didn't pack a lunch or any food. We ended up finding some old gummy worms under his back seat and shared what there was. Boy they were the best thing I'd ever tasted. The thermometer in his truck told us that it was -10 outside.

A couple years ago I was up one of the drainages near my house and cut a bobcat track heading uphill. I'd read on here that a track heading uphill out of the bottom ground was done hunting and going up to layup and digest his meal.....wrong. As soon as I dumped the hounds, they headed up the hill and swung back and crossed heading into the bottom again up the road(which I failed to check). They went into the willows in the river bottom and got the cat up and running and he lit out across the river and up the other side. Now any of you all familiar with the East Rosebud drainage understand when I say up, I mean UP! I happened to have my son(8 yrs) and another youth about 13 or so. We crossed the river and lit in behind the dogs. They were putting some effort into the chase, but I'm afraid they weren't gaining a whole lot on the cat. They just kept going and going and going. As we followed up the coulee that they had went up we ran into a frozen waterfall and I wasn't comfortable taking my son up or the other kid for that matter. We retreated back down to the truck and called out for my brother in law, Rylie, to come help me hike in. I took the kids back home and met Rylie and his buddy Matt back at the spot where I dropped the dogs. I had intermittent signal from my collars and they were treed. The wind was gusting down the river bottom, but it would let up from time to time and we could hear them locked down treeing. This was about 3 in the afternoon. We decided to drive around to see what it would be like to come in from the West Rosebud side because we knew it was too late to head in this afternoon and it was no country to be in after dark. Well, we decided to head in at daylight the next morning from the East Rosebud side and follow the track in. We lit out the following morning, all three of us and my border collie in tow. The last signal from the dogs was 2000' of elevation above the spot where I'd dumped the dogs. As we hiked in, Rylie's two hounds excaped from his truck and listening to my dogs barking treed, they came along to see what they had caught. Well, about this point is where everything fell apart. We were about 400 yards from the tree when Rylie's dogs broke from us and went to the tree. Within a couple minutes we could hear his dogs get to the tree and start treeing along with my dogs. We were thinking "I'm gonna shoot this cat out and scratch my dogs good". My dogs were treed for almost 20 hours and we had fresh dogs there to keep everything organized. WRONG!!! Within a couple minutes of Rylie's dogs being at the tree and us within hearing range of the dogs, the cat decided he'd had enough. He bailed and we could hear the race take off. Out hearts about fell out our butts. We were within 200 yards of them and just that fast they were gone. Keep in mind that we are 2000' above the trucks and several hours into this hike. The area was burnt in '96 so there was a ton of downfall along with 6' tall new lodgepoles poking up through it. At this elevation we were in several feet of snow also. As we gathered out breath and tried to figure out what to do, we heard the dogs drop off the mountain. I had one collar set on longer intervols so it was still alive so we could only track one dog, therefor we assumed all the dogs were together. My pup had come to us and we had him gathered up so we were thinking that 2 worn out dogs and 2 fresh dogs would put the whippin on this cat soon. We decided to hike back down and find the dogs at the river bottom. We hiked back down and as soon as we hit the bottom, we crossed the cat track and 3 hound tracks right on it. About that time we could hear them above us and up the drainage a ways. I got signal on my one collar that was still going and the dogs were 1500' above us again. This time it was a much more pleasant walk into them, as my dogs quit the race and were laid up. I had to hike all the way into them to get them, they would not come to me. Rylies dogs came to me also but I could only find one of my dogs. As we hiked back out again, I was short one of my hounds and had not gotten to see a cat yet. We got back to the trucks shortly after dark and had climbed about 3500' and decended the same inside of 10 hours. We were whipped. I went back later that night after the wind had died down to see if I could find my missing hound. I hollared for him and he barked back, from somewhere near the original tree. I went back the following day and got the same response. That evening I went back and hollered again for him and he barked back from the same spot. I decided to set there all night and hike in to him come daylight. Several hours later, I couldn't just set there any longer so I hollared again, this time he barked back from somewhere closer to me. This raised my spirits considerably. I set back and went to reading again, waiting for daylight. About an hour later I cought something moving outside the truck window. It was my hound, with no collars on. I'm assuming that he was hung on a limb or something and had to shrink up enough for them to slip off before he could come out. It cost me several hundred dollars in collars, but I was glad to pay it to get the dog back. If I could figure out how to post a map from the Garmin I would, but I'm yet to figure out how to do it.

Those are the 2 that I remember the most.....

Scott