How far will a lion travel in one night.

[Chris Todd]

How far will a lion travel in one night. That is a question that will probably never be answered. But for three days this past week me and my hounds tried to answer it.
Day one we were out before the sun. I was headed for a good crossing I knew of. It was getting up to 80 every day. And I knew if we were to have a good chance at catching a lion we needed to get an early start. The hounds knew where we were headed and got out in front of me. When they reached the rim I was headed for Duke struck. Scout ran to him put his nose down. And let out a long corse bawl. I knew we had struck a lion trail. Well the race was on . I had 5-hounds with me that could really move on a night old lion track.
I was riding a Mustang gelding that I was just breaking in to the lion hunting. He had been on about 5-rides. And this was super rough country. So the hounds left me. They went down a long Ridge line and then up over the biggest mountain in the country. I was way behind but thought I would find the hounds treed on the other side of this mountain. So I wasn't to worried. When I finally topped this mountain. No hounds. I was barely getting a reading out of a couple collars on the garmin. Almost 2-miles out.
The hounds went on and on. I slowly gained on them. It was getting hot and I knew there was no water on the route they had taken. In following the hounds I had found several scratches. And knew this lion was out marking his territory. And knew it may take awhile to overtake him. At about 2 in the afternoon I caught up with the hounds. They had trailed out onto a dirt road. And going up that dirt road was this lions track. I got to counting miles on a map. And we had gone 9-miles as the crow flies.
I gave up at that point and took my hounds to some water. I was sure I knew where that lion was headed.
Day two and I was headed about 6-miles to the east. As I got to the area I thought this lion was headed for. Molly gave out a loud long bawl and a quick chop. I knew we had found what we were looking for. The only problem was that they could barely move this track. I got to looking and this tom was walking down the road . He would walk off the road in places. And scratch under a cedar. The hounds couldn't move this track very well. And I gave up around noon. It was obvious to me I was now on a two day old track. So in one night this tom had traveled 15-miles as the crow flies and was still going.
So on day three I took a guess at where I thought he was going. Another good crossing 6to7 miles to the southwest. Well I guessed right. The hounds struck him good and early. I thought well maybe we will catch up to him today. No such luck. This was another tough track. And i didnt think we had gained on him at all. His track this time took me straight west out into some low desert country. And by noon the hounds had had it with the temperature around 85.
So adding up all the distance this lion had traveled. He had gone 26-miles as the crow flies. That's not including all the ups and downs. And twists and turns. Well that's lion hunting. And tomorrow is another day.
How far will a lion travel in one night? I dont know. All I do know is that it can be an awful long distance.

[1bludawg]

Chris ,I'm not a lion hunter but have treed some over the years.
I think when they get into kind of a dog trot and are traveling and not hunting they can and do cover many miles. 10 to 20 miles in a night maybe ,maybe more .
I've always heard an old tom will make about a 40 to 50 mile circuit while hunting his territory .
I know that sometimes when they make a kill on one of these ranches it'll be 2 weeks or thereabouts when they come in again .
Some of the lion studies they've done in several states should give a guy some solid evidence of how much real estate they cover.
Speaking of which they did a study about 80 miles south of me in the Tiller area some years back . The study lasted several years and many cougar were tagged and collared.The funny thing is when the study was completed they wouldn't release their findings to the public. My educated guess is they don't want people to know how many deer and elk that lion kill on a regular basis .As you probably know we lost our right to hunt cougar with hounds !

[1bludawg]

In Oregon.

[pegleg]

I don't know sometimes it seems they won't leave a tight area and others they just line out and go. I ve been repeatedly schooled by a couple female's that I originally thought were a single cat. But having followed them as much as I have it has shown me they really cover ground. Alot of lions don't seem to leave a kill very far these girls don't have a problem with it. They seem to enjoy tramping all over the country every night. I thought maybe it was for water but why travel further? Or maybe looking for a mate but the toms come right into them. Then one day while I was sweating and swearing down in the low country it dawned on me. This female had left a kill , water , shade and cooler temps and a breeze to come down and wonder around then go back up the mtn. Now this probably all happened at night . but why? I don't know maybe they get cabin fever or just bored. Either way I did a days riding to end up in the same area I started. I could have saved Alot of time just by circling around the bluffs first but it was a good track and the dogs took it easily enough. Might be each cat can be different in its behavior by choice. I know that these cats are seemingly very random in their travels. I've been keeping track of every kill and track. And there's no sense of rythm to when they come back to a area. I assume they're related as there's areas they both use and their behavior is similar. One spent a good deal of time down in the brush along the river eating goats and deer in the hot part of the year. While the other hunted high . but even though I've had the dogs trailing so fast I was sure they tree soon many times they keep making us look bad. If it wasnt for the idiot toms we have no problem catching we d probably look real bad. It makes me think female's know their range better then most toms

[dwalton]

As 1bluedog mention a study was done south of us a few years back. I heard from a man that worked on it that they treed a young tom and collared him. The next day they went to find him and could not locate him. So they went up in a plane the second day after collaring him and located him 76 air miles to the south of the capture site. I think a lion can cover a lot of miles if he wants to, if you are a day behind it can be pretty hard to close the gap if he is traveling out of the country. Dewey

[david]

Dewey posted as I was writing this, and much of it was answered by him, but since it is written, I will go ahead and post:

I am not a lion hunter, but I was glad to see this topic because I have often wondered about this. Like, when a black hills lion shows up in Illinois, or Maryland how long did it take him to get there?

I don't know how many miles a traveling lion can cover per hour. But I have felt that they could cover more ground than a human.

A human marathon runner can cover 26 miles in 4 hours and 20 minutes.

Average human walking speed is around 3 miles per hour. If a human can cover 30 miles in ten hours of walking...

My answer to the question of how far a lion can walk in a night is: as far as he wants to.

I enjoyed reading the story along with the question. Southwest lion hunting is an art and a science I appreciate from afar, And I know I don't have enough life left to gain proficiency at it.

Thank you for the story of the quest. Let us know when you catch up with him.

[pegleg]

I think its probably best figured by how far can a dog trot. Dogs tend to be random in speed but when they have been hunted some and gained experience they can trot a horse into the ground. I think traveling lions have a fear they shift into that probably isn't as quick as a dogs movement's but a longer stride and determination. I've seen a few lions do it when let go they arent frantic but are making sure they get gone. I've trailed cats it just seemed you had to be gaining on but your not. Maybe its like a good gaited horse that just keeps going and going.

[pegleg]

Snow country hunters might be better at answering this question. I'm not the best lion tracker by far and for all I know I miss clues or bedding spots that would give better time frames

[tman308]

On the dry ground my hounds gps collars have logged 23 miles in one day of trailing a Tom who was just traveling his territory. As far as snow in my experience they don't have as big of an area. I'm guessing because game is concentrated on the winter range. The longest snow trail I've had was 12 miles on gps. I Free cast and ride mules while chasing. Thoes two-day-old tracks in the snow I can catch up to those by the second day. With the same situation on dry ground unless they make a kill you just stay too far behind to ever make any gain on them. Just my experience

[dhostetler]

The longest I trailed a snow lion was 17.5 GPS miles a young tom on an overnight track.

[Mike Leonard]

Great subject Chris!

Since the advent of the Garmin GPS collars many have a better idea how far they and their hounds have traveled on a hunt, but even then at times it is not possible to chart the entire course. Hounds many times on making a loss make a lot of tracks in a very small area trying get it lined out again.

Established adult female lions set themselves up in or develop a matriarchal range. This could be within a part of their mother's range or it could be in another area close by given good habitat and prey. Even though some of these ranges may seem small in actual square miles they may only use certain parts of this range most of the time but they know it all very well. You can wear a hound and a horse out within a portion of this range when a female goes to making a lot of tracks or when she has been choused a number of times before. You may run her out of her area but not often and if you do she won't usually go very far.

Toms that are adult and of breeding age seldom these days due to harvest and hunting pressure stay set up in what one could really call a home territory. Sure he may travel in distinct crossing patterns but he likely takes in many of the females matriarchal ranges. If he is dominant he may breed more of the females but once those females are settled or are with kittens he will branch out for new business and this can extend his ranges much further. Also toms are much more likely to change country with game migrations then are the resident females.

So what would click in a tom to make him get up one evening and just step into a swinging trot and start making a lot of miles? We know if they have been treed or harassed they might quite an area for good and make a ton of miles hence the study lions that have been radio tracked by airplanes going vast distances. But what in a normal range of situations might trigger these big moves?

I would be interested to hear some opinions on this.

[duck duck goose]

Hey Mike,

That's a good question to think about. I'm not much of a lion hunter yet, but I am working on it, but I would venture a guess that when a lion decides it's time to put some miles on it would have to deal with food, sex, or the season. I can see lions at least in the south here having specific winter and summer ranges. Kinda like packing up the kids to go to the cottage for the summer. When the time is right, they might just head for greener pastures.

Things like pressure from humans, temperature, migration of food sources like elk might be the triggering factor to make them decide it's time to make a move. But, with that being said, I think lions are pretty intelligent creatures and they may just want a change in scenery like people get the itch to go on vacation every now and again. Call me crazy but I think they might just decide one morning that they want to go check out another area, so off they go.

[david]

I spent about three hours driving through the black hills last winter and cut three different lion tracks in that short time.

Black hills lions are showing up in multiple states as Far East as the east coast. The generic game biologist explanation is that these are males that have reached maturity and are driven out.

Maybe about the third time they get a face full of claws and teeth from different toms in different kingdoms, they just say "see ya! Wouldn't wanna be ya!" And they just head out for parts unknown.

I am sure that is not the only reason a lion decides to cover many miles in one night. But it is a reason I have read whenever people are explaining a Rapid City lion on the Des Moines River.

[justahunter]

I trailed a female that I had Treed the day before for 8 hours before treeing it . the track was only 8 hours old . I have no idea how many miles it was but I know the dogs never stopped steady trailing at a half run speed . I have also ran lion that would not stop and bay or tree just walk like a walking bear it only stopped to fight off a dog when one would grab it .

[Mike Leonard]

justahunter,

those are perfect examples of lions that have been run and either were jumped a bunch or got slick away a number of times.

The walking fighting lion can really make a mess of things for unlike a bear who misses many more times when he stops and makes a charge a big tom lion almost never misses. If you don't have enough dogs and pressure on him he will just burn one down stay on him and kill him and walk off, and maybe come back and eat all of him but the neck and head that night. I have seen it and it is ugly.

Years back I got on a big old spoiled tom that had killed several nice hounds for some of the local hunters. I hade about 8 hounds with me that day but several of them were pretty young and this was their first face to face visit with a bad lion.
When we picked it up it was a running track and the hounds just piled to it and I figured we would be looking up a tree very soon.

No such luck in about an hour they were bayed in a series of low bluffs and they would just roar for awhile and then get quiet and then you would hear them move and they would blow up again and then repeat the process.

It took me awhile to work my way up there and I came across some of the ground they had fought over and it was covered with blood. I stayed after them and finally drew within sight of the battle and I saw this tom a really good big one right in the middle of the circle of dogs and he was up on about a 2 foot boulder and they were baying at him. Presently he would lock on to a certain dog and then bang! He would launch himself at the hound and they would go down in a pile and then all the other hounds would jump on him and soon he would leap free and run to another high spot or rock and set down and repeat the process.

I slipped in quiet and close as I could and I could see hide hanging on some dogs and lots of bleeding. I tried to get a shot at him on the ground but the hounds were pressing around him so that I was afraid the 30-30 I was using might slip thru and kill one of the dog. When I finally worked right up to them they had crossed a lot of ground in this fight , charge and run type of situation, but I could see the tom was getting winded and that really worried me. Because once he knew he was not going to run again he would just go in and stay on one regardless of the other dogs in a death battle.
Well I got up to about 40 feet and the tom saw me and at the same moment the hounds noted my presence and doubled up on their courage and really went after him. Well he broke and ran to a nearby pine and went up about 10 feet to the first good limb. I moved in close and as I did he just sank down on that limb put his eyes on me and flattened those earls and that tails was jerking and twitching. I had seen it before and I knew this was a lion that meant business so be careful! I got my camera out and snapped a few photos and as I shoved it back in my coat I looked up just in time to see him launch himself straight at me off that limb. Instinctively I guess I fell to the side on the slope and the lion brushed against me as he went by, and the hounds were on him again. He made a short run, and the hounds were all over him and he went up another pine about 60 yards away. This time I didn't waste anytime getting that old 30 to smoking! first shot thru the lungs made him stiffen and the second lifted him off the limb and he hit the ground and still he tried to make a run but the hounds held him down till he died. Holy smokes you talk about a mess! I had dogs tore up some acting like they were going into shock and a dead later weighed tom of 176 pounds to deal with. I got lucky and another fellow who I knew was in the area working and I got him to come help me and we got the dogs and the lion back down to the truck and trailer.

It was a pretty hefty vet bill but they all made it thru. And that old tom still stares down at me from his life-sized mount on my wall and reminds me just how bad a spoiled lion can be.