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Here’s a story for you, it’s even tied in to bobcat hunting. My dad bought a dairy farm back in the late ’70’s when I was about 15 and I got my first coon hounds not long after that. I was young and dumb, but I made up for it with a lot of hunting drive.

One night, I came in from hunting about 2 AM and as I was putting the hounds away a couple walker dogs came in the yard. I read the name on the collar, they belonged to Richard Maus. Richard lived about 2 miles away as the crow flies so I loaded up his dogs and hauled them to his farm.

Richard lived at the end of a long driveway back along a creek and when I got there he was just getting home from coon hunting. He had a little rat terrier with him that was covered in blood. Of course I asked him what happened. He was hunting in the Dismal Creek bottoms, between his place and where we lived. His dogs treed a big old coon and left the tree. Coon hides back then were bringing up to $50 and more. Money was tight, you just didn’t leave those coons there. That old rat terrier always went along with Richard if he was hunting anywhere close to home so Richard shot the coon out and that terrier jumped on it. The coon was more mad than hurt, pretty soon it was dragging the little dog off through the brush. Richard helped him get loose and he jumped right back on that coon again. It took them a while but they finally got that coon killed!

I started hunting with Richard after that and he taught me a lot about stacking up hides for the fur buyer. Once in a while he would talk about bobcat hunting and how he used to spend his winters in Montana. In his younger days, before he got tied down with a farm and a family, Richard worked for the Osakis Silo Company during the summer. He would coon hunt all fall, and then after deer hunting he would move to Montana for the winter. He did this every year.

I think this would have been in the late ‘50’s or early ‘60’s? Richard and Bob Johnson would rent a house in Sommers, just south of Kalispell on Flathead Lake, for $50 a month. The only income they had was hunting bobcats. Furs weren’t worth much back then, sometimes they had to sell their last bobcat to pay the rent. Richard hunted all over the Northwest corner of Montana, Whitefish, Seely Lake, Condon, and over by Kila, all the way out to Troy. I’m just going by memory so don’t be too hard on me if I got the spelling messed up.

Of course, I just had to try bobcat hunting, so I dragged him out a few times. It wasn’t too hard to do. I can tell you some good story’s about our hunts, LATER (don't you just HATE that ).

Shame on you for leaving us hanging!

CJC

Minnesota is not exactly a cat hunter’s paradise. Short seasons and poor snow during most of that season makes it tough to make a cat dog. My hats off to you guys that tough it out up here. At least now days we have a few cats to run. Back in the early ‘80’s, with the high fur prices, bobcats were hard to come by. They are disgustingly easy to trap and we had lots of trappers in them days.

Richard and I made a few hunts in different parts of the state looking for cat tracks and never had any luck. We decided to make a trip and spend a few days hunting up near the BWCA wilderness in the far north eastern part of Minnesota. This area gets lots of snow and not much in the way of human traffic in the winter.

It was late in the season, after Christmas when we loaded up Richards pickup and headed out. A neighbor (I can’t recall his name anymore) went along to cook. We loaded a couple snowmobiles in the back of the truck along with the dog box. We had Richard’s stock trailer rigged up with a wood stove and a couple bunks inside. Of course, we stretched a canvas over the top of it to keep the cold out. We must have been a sight rolling down the road.

We drove way back in on the Echo Trail that splits two wilderness areas and made camp at Lake Jeanette. The weather had turned cold so we cut plenty of wood. We had a couple feet of good fresh soft snow. About the only way to get a cat going in this country is to drive the back roads looking for tracks, you need to have fresh snow.

That night the temperature dropped fast. We decided to pull the battery out of the truck and bring it inside to keep it somewhat warm. We were a long ways from nowhere, there was no one coming to help you if something bad happened. A dead battery would not be good. We kept the fire going hot in that little wood stove, but your feet would get numb if your had them on the floor very long even with your boots on. The middle bunks weren’t too uncomfortable to sleep in until the fire got low, then the one closest to the stove had to get up and fill it up. This happened 3 or 4 times a night. The top bunk, up near to roof was downright hot.

Next morning we were up early and had breakfast. When we were done cooking we put our Coleman stove under the oil pan of the truck and let it warm up some. We put the battery back in and the truck started right up.

We didn’t have anything but coon dogs along. The only one that had ever run a cat before was Mike, Richards old walker dog. He had made the trip to Montana when he was just a pup. Mike was old and just about deaf by the time we made this hunt. I had Mack, my Finley River bred dog that later made a good jump dog on bobcats, but that was all ahead of him yet.

We drove all over that country and only found one old cat track. The next night was even colder if that was possible. Later the next day we made the trip to “town” for gas. Buyck wasn’t much more than a gas station and general store on the nearest blacktop road. In the store the locals were saying it had gotten down to 48 below zero that night!

After that we decided to get the snowmobiles out and try checking up some of those creeks for tracks. We drove a long way back in on one creek and found nothing but some open water under the snow, hard as that was to believe. We stopped to talk things over. It was getting late, the sun goes down early this far north in January. The temperature was on it’s way back down, time to head back and call it a day.

We pulled the cord on one of the sleds and the recoil fell apart! Spent the next half hour fixing that sled as the light went away and the cold came back with a vengeance. I’ve never trusted snowmobiles since then. That night, back at camp, we decided to make a trip to Montana next year. By that time, Montana had decided they didn’t want any non-resident bobcat hunters around, but you could still buy a non-resident lion license for $100 and hunt anywhere in the state.

Hey RB, thanks for the stories. I really enjoy reading about another's adventures.

Tom.

Riverbottom,

Cold is just as bad as the Bad Briars and a hellofa lot more dangerous!

You all have to be DAMN dedicated to hunt anything in the Winter up your way!

Great Story, keep the tales of your adventures coming, especially the hary Hare Tales!

C. John Clay
Dads Dogboy

Thanks guys. I'll try to dig up some old pictures this weekend for the next part of this story.

C.J. I hunt in the cold all the time and think nothing of it. It's only the hot weather that slows me down!

Last winter I was out one day, it was well below zero which is no big deal, but the wind was blowing hard which makes it a big deal. I drove back on the Rainbow Trail, then drove back in on a tote road we had been keeping open. Then I took a side road, one of those where the brush scrapes down both sides of your truck. I wanted to get back in out of the wind. This trail hadn't been driven on and the snow was kind of deep. I had to make a couple runs at it to get in where I wanted to turn loose. It wasn't until after I cut the dogs loose and the cold started to sink in that the thought crossed my mind, "Maybe it isn't such a good idea to drive way back in here in this weather, alone, with no cell phone and no one knows where I am...". Then the dogs jumped one and the thought left and never came back. If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tuff

Riverbottom wrote: If your gonna be dumb, you gotta be tuff

Very well put!

Now, on with the next adventure.

Richard and I hunted hard that next fall, I think it was ‘83. We sold our fur before Christmas and left for Montana the day after Christmas. Richard’s brother-in-law, Dale went with us. I had my walker dog, Mack and a good young female out of him named Ivory. Richard had a black & tan named Jake and Dale had a young bluetick. None of these dogs had ever run a lion or even a bobcat before, but they had many coons knocked out to them. Jake was the kind of dog that you could sic him on a track and he would take it.

It was cold when we left Minnesota. We drove all the way out near Livingston and then stopped at some friends of Richard’s. These were horse people, Richard also raised Appaloosas’ . We spent one day hunting down towards the park. Didn’t find any lion tracks, but we saw hundreds of elk. Once, we stopped on the road as a big herd came running right at us. They split up and crossed the road on both sides of the truck. They were mostly cows and calves with a few young bulls. There was a late season elk hunt on and the big ones didn’t hang around by the roads. Later we stopped in at a check station and saw a guy with horses pull in with a huge bull he had taken.

From there we made the long drive up to Kalispell (Montana is a huge state). We stayed with Richard’s old cat hunting partner, Bob Johnson in Woods Bay on the north west end of Flathead Lake. Bob was a Minnesota native also, but when Richard headed back to Minnesota Bob stayed behind. He was a forester and worked for the US Forest Service in north west Montana.

Bob told us how he used to spend a lot of time working in the field when he was younger and he always brought a dog along. When he would cut a fresh cat track it was time for lunch break. Now that’s the kind of job I could handle! Bob showed us a Wolverine rug from one of those nasty critters he had caught with his hounds years back. He had given up hunting with hounds by the time we made this hunt (I didn’t think you could just quit like that?)

It was hard not to like that country. Nice, easy mountains covered with timber, none of that straight up and down stuff like down in the Bighorns. Over on this side of the divide the weather was much milder than we were used to. It got up in the 30’s and 40’s every day we were there. We had good fresh snow when we started, but the south slopes were starting to show through by the time we left. I can still see those valleys filled with low clouds in the mornings and the tree covered ridges rising above them.

The first morning we hunted that country we cut a good lion track right away! It was still some time before daylight so we checked some more roads, then came back at first light. We got out Richards Black & Tan and my dog, Mack and started walking that track. Our plan was to keep the dogs on a lead until they acted like they wanted to go on the track and then turn them loose.

We followed that track up close to the top of that ridge and then turned those two dogs loose. Richard’s dog started trailing right away and trailed out of hearing, up and over that ridge. About that time, Mack opened two or three times on the ground off to our left about 50 yards and then treed! I had heard that long bawl locate many times on coon and I was hearing it now. Oooooowwwwwwwwaaaaahhhh. It sounded like just another pop up coon.

About then the black dog came trailing back over to our side of the ridge and trailed right up and fell treed with Mack! We looked up that tree and saw a nice big lion. This just seemed too easy. Richard figured the cat was a female so we had no desire to shoot it. We quickly decided to go back to the truck and get the two young dogs we had left behind. Dale and I set out while Richard stayed behind with the dogs.

Going back down wasn’t any big deal but on the way back up, leading two dogs and walking up hill through the snow, Dale and I started to wear down a little. We were a couple of flatlanders and the elevation was starting to get to us.

Just as we came into the tree I saw the lion go around and around the trunk of the tree, then it jumped! I can still see that big cat flying through the air and landing in a cloud of snow like it happened yesterday. We turned all the dogs loose, it took them a minute to find where the cat had hit the ground and then the race was on. They ran that cat hard, like a deer chase for about a half mile along that ridge and treed again.
Richard was fresh from waiting on us so he set off for the tree while Dale and I followed behind. I wasn’t moving too fast anymore, I just couldn’t seem to get enough air. Dale was worse off than me. He was white as a sheet and I kept having to wait up for him. Luckily for us, we didn’t have far to go. When we got to the tree, the lion was sprawled out up there with her head and legs hanging over the branches. I knew how she felt!

We treed three more lions before we made the long trip back to Minnesota. On the way home we stopped in the middle of North Dakota for gas. When I stepped out of the truck a bitter cold, 15 below zero wind hit me. It was damn tough not to turn right around and head back west. A few years later, Richard did just that. He moved out by Livingston and never looked back.

Here's Ivory, Mack and Richard's black & tan treed on a lion. All we had for a camera was a polariod so the quality isn't the greatest.

Great, great story's.

Ahh Riverbottom,

We knew from your original Post that there was more to you than rabbit hare!

Cat hair is so hard to get out of your system.

A Houndsman comes through in your writings no matter what game you are after!

Another great Tale, please keep them coming!

CJC

wow stumbled on to this post by accident, I cant imagine $50 a month rent in Somers now its more like $600/$700 if not more these days. Woods bay is just down the road

Wow. We found another outdoor writer. Mike Leonard, look out. Your writing reminds me very much of the type stories I have read in FUR FISH GAME. You should try submitting one to them. I love it. That "back a few years" feeling is really great.

My daughter is named Kila. I'm sure you know where that is Doogie? That name must have affected her brain somehow, all she thinks about is horses and hounds

Good stuff man! I like that ole country up there and I made a lot of tracks around Flathead, Seely Lake, Linberg Lake and Whitefish. My sis ter still has a cabin on Flathead, and my uncle had a cabin on Lindberg Lake. Stayed in Colombia Falls, Kalispell and Polson a lot. Mighty good country but as these old bones get older that old cold deep snow isn't as appealing as it use to be. Heck we have had enough down here to this year to make mud deep enough when it warms up to bog a snipe. Must be that global warming stuff old Al Gore warned us about. LOL!

yeah I know where that is, I was up there on Rodgers Lake a few weeks back fishing for Grayling. She sounds like she'd fit in good there, least with the women I know from Kila lol

you should come visit then Mike, cause the snows not cold or deep this year, its raining at the moment