This story will probably turn out long but I need you all to know the back story of this hunt to understand this wasn't a walk up and whack one. Two years ago my buddy and taxi, Bryan Travis, told me he was going mt lion hunting. I said, man that would be great and one day I'll go. He said come with me, he would call the outfitter and ask if he wanted another hunter. The outfitter, Trapper (cool name) said sure, usually if there is one cat in the area there is more. That didn't sound right to me and still didn't till yesterday. That was Sept of 2007.
We wait all fall for snow. You see, this hunt is different, you don't plan a date and go, you can but it is prefered you wait for snow to start to fall and Trapper to have the guides lined out. He will then call and say head this way, we hunt in the morning. By doing this and being flexible, he will let you keep coming back till you shoot one. So, I had to be packed and stuff sitting there waiting for the call, which sat it did for MONTHS. Everything is planned, I just have 2 dates I can't go everything else is open. In March Trapper calls, great but the only problem is they were the 2 days I maybe couldn't go. I had work meetings in Houston and normally that isn't a problem to miss them with advance notice. My boss is a good guy and is willing to do stuff like that, provided we work hard and keep the heat off of him from HQ. The issue this time is we had upper management coming down. Back to the call from Trapper, It was a late Sunday night and the meetings were Tues morning at 8 am. I tried to call the boss at 1am but he said he saw the caller ID and knew what I wanted but wasn't answering. So I took a shot and left but packed my businees stuff, just in case. My boss called me at 8am Monday morning and said you can't miss the meetings, it would have been fine except the visitors coming down. We were 20 miles east of Roswell NM at that point. Bryan then dropped me off at the Roswell Airport and I got a 1 way ticket to Houston.
Moving on to the fall of 2008. Trapper said we really needed 2 hunters because after I left Bryan the year before they left another big cat on the top of the mountain and that should have been mine. I made a post on here asking if anyone wanted to go. I had a couple interested but the ByronF contacts me. After talking he calls Trapper and decides to go as well. I didn't know much about Byron but have since been on a couple hunts with him and he quickly went from an aquaintence to a good friend that I enjoy hunting with and look forward to more hunts with. Byron and I buy tags and wait. The Call- never tought it would come but it did and he and I head that way. Byron flies from San Antonio, rents a car in El Paso (I think) and drives the rest of the way. He beats me there by hours as it's a 9 hour drive for me. I get there late and everone is in bed so I try to sneak in and catch some sleep. Morning comes early. Trapper comes in the door and says lets get going, Byron and I load up and start down the road. A few things you should know, Bryan(my buddy) has been friends with Trapper for years and has helped him guide for years. Bryan's pictures of his mt lion had Trapper, Tom(the guide) and Bryan there with the cat at the tree it was shot. So I think Trapper is walking us up the mountains. Trapper came in with oxygen, I thought, Bryan never told me, were screwed, he can't get up and down the hills. Little did I know he stayed in the truck and the guides took us up the mountain. Trapper has battled health problems and wasn't having his best year but this year, wow what a difference. We caught cat tracks early and ByronF were keyed up to say the least. Heck, I even think we were picking out what mounts we wanted. We dump the dogs and they are off. Right down the trail maybe 300 yds an off duty Game Warden that has a hunter, cut us off and dumped his dogs on the same track in front of us basicly cutting us off from the track we were already on. Before you ask, yes, there is a code of ethics and this crossed the line. So we pulled our dogs off. Later that day we cut the track again. The GW started with 5 dogs and was down to 1 still with the cat. One dog, they say, will never pin down a cat by themselves. So the GW said to turn ours out, that then makes it our cat. Our dogs bay up the cat in about 45 mins so Tom and I start up the hill. Trapper and ByronF sit down in the truck and watch the whole thing unfold from down low. I'm probably 200yds away and the gw's hunter catches up and shoots the cat off of our dogs. He felt like it was ok since his one dog was there. Either way, the whole scenerio was bad and shouldn't have happened.
The next day it heats up and the snow melts so Byron and I head home empty handed.
This year Byron and I start our planning. I'm ready to go but not packed because, what's the hurry. The past 2 years it has been early spring before the call.
Early last week Trapper call and said, come on. I can't because of work. I said I can't go before Dec 4th. He called Dec 4th and said it's time. I load up and head 9 hours west. I leave my house at 12:58pm on Friday, drive straight through and get there at 9pm their time. As I'm driving in the snow isn't quite what I expected but it's flipping cold. I get there and unpack. The cabin is freezing and I don't have a sleeping bag between the deer leases and bear hunting I don't have any at the house but rather spread out over North America. I go to bed and quickly start freezing, thankfully Trapper put a spare sleeping bag in there, that saved me. I get up at 3:45am and fix coffee and breakfast. Trapper comes and gets me and we start down the road. I try the live hunt thread like I said but can't get a signal. No problem, I'll get one when we get up on top and do updates that way, we ended up staying down low and never did get a signal. After 10mins of driving Tom comes over the radio and says he located a decent track. Right afterwards Trapper and I find one. Trapper said it's a pretty good track and calls Tom to bring the dogs. We turn the dogs loose and they are off. We listen to them for about a half hour and they have him treed. Boy, the heart is pumping now. I'm excited to say the least. They are on the next ridge over so we drop down and then start up to where they where. When we get there it's a small cat, but hey, it's a cat and treed. That's progress from the last 2 years. Tom goes off walking and found the big track we started on. It seems the dogs started on that one then crossed this one and it was hotter so they pulled off the other one. Tom and I drug the dogs down the next ridge and started them back on the big cat tracks they started. We stand there and rest for a bit and before long we can't hear the dogs, Dang! So we start that way and after about 200 yds we start to hear them and Tom turns and looks at me and said I think they are treed. He pulls out his GPS that he uses to track the dogs and it shows they ARE treed. We head that way, not too bad just another ridgeline over, again. The whole "next ridge over" is getting old as we are starting to rack up the distance now. It wouldn't be so bad just to walk but the ankle to mid calf deep snow is cumbersome and draining.
We get to the next cat and can just see the dogs at first. Then he comes into view I get thinking, this is it. We get up by him and take a good look. Tom said he's a good cat, not huge but good and it was up to me. After everything to date, there wasn't a choice for me. You know what they say, One cat in the pack is better than two on ethe next ridge over. We tie up a few of the dogs, take a few pics and get ready. Tom runs the video camera and we get the shot on camera but not much after because the cat started down and his exit was going to be towards us. I guess Tom went for is pistol because the camera started waving all over. Now to update you, the cat was in the tree about 20-30ft up, my shot was from 4yds. The shot was perfet and apiece of his lung came out of the hole in the bottom of his chest. He dropped down two branches and was now about 8 ft above us when he fell out of the tree and was dead when he hit the ground. The dogs drug him down the hill a bit but we got down there quick. The cat is everything I wanted and after 3 years of bad luck I finally had him. We had 5 different cats on top and I got the biggest out of them, I guess they do group up after all. I think it may be that it the better hunting area for them so they tend to concentrate there.
We got finished up and back at camp at 12 pm. The gw stopped by and tagged him then I loaded up and headed back thinking all the excitement was over.
Somewhere around Aspermont, I hit a hog going 70. Now I had the cruise set at 70 and hit the brakes when I saw it so I'm sure I decelerated some. I hit him solidly enough it punted him down the road and out of the view of my high beams. It actually wouldn't have been a bad golf shot, he went straight down the center and at the end of the lights started to draw just a little. Maybe with the extra roll from the draw he may have been pin high but I didn't stop to look. Minor damage so I finished the drive. I pulled back into my house at 1:32a, 37 hours after I left, exhausted but happy.
My next trip out there will be to run the camera for Byron if we can get it coordinated, I hope so I'm ready.
Thanks for hanging with me. Enjoy the pictures, I'll get the video done in the next few days.
We wait all fall for snow. You see, this hunt is different, you don't plan a date and go, you can but it is prefered you wait for snow to start to fall and Trapper to have the guides lined out. He will then call and say head this way, we hunt in the morning. By doing this and being flexible, he will let you keep coming back till you shoot one. So, I had to be packed and stuff sitting there waiting for the call, which sat it did for MONTHS. Everything is planned, I just have 2 dates I can't go everything else is open. In March Trapper calls, great but the only problem is they were the 2 days I maybe couldn't go. I had work meetings in Houston and normally that isn't a problem to miss them with advance notice. My boss is a good guy and is willing to do stuff like that, provided we work hard and keep the heat off of him from HQ. The issue this time is we had upper management coming down. Back to the call from Trapper, It was a late Sunday night and the meetings were Tues morning at 8 am. I tried to call the boss at 1am but he said he saw the caller ID and knew what I wanted but wasn't answering. So I took a shot and left but packed my businees stuff, just in case. My boss called me at 8am Monday morning and said you can't miss the meetings, it would have been fine except the visitors coming down. We were 20 miles east of Roswell NM at that point. Bryan then dropped me off at the Roswell Airport and I got a 1 way ticket to Houston.
Moving on to the fall of 2008. Trapper said we really needed 2 hunters because after I left Bryan the year before they left another big cat on the top of the mountain and that should have been mine. I made a post on here asking if anyone wanted to go. I had a couple interested but the ByronF contacts me. After talking he calls Trapper and decides to go as well. I didn't know much about Byron but have since been on a couple hunts with him and he quickly went from an aquaintence to a good friend that I enjoy hunting with and look forward to more hunts with. Byron and I buy tags and wait. The Call- never tought it would come but it did and he and I head that way. Byron flies from San Antonio, rents a car in El Paso (I think) and drives the rest of the way. He beats me there by hours as it's a 9 hour drive for me. I get there late and everone is in bed so I try to sneak in and catch some sleep. Morning comes early. Trapper comes in the door and says lets get going, Byron and I load up and start down the road. A few things you should know, Bryan(my buddy) has been friends with Trapper for years and has helped him guide for years. Bryan's pictures of his mt lion had Trapper, Tom(the guide) and Bryan there with the cat at the tree it was shot. So I think Trapper is walking us up the mountains. Trapper came in with oxygen, I thought, Bryan never told me, were screwed, he can't get up and down the hills. Little did I know he stayed in the truck and the guides took us up the mountain. Trapper has battled health problems and wasn't having his best year but this year, wow what a difference. We caught cat tracks early and ByronF were keyed up to say the least. Heck, I even think we were picking out what mounts we wanted. We dump the dogs and they are off. Right down the trail maybe 300 yds an off duty Game Warden that has a hunter, cut us off and dumped his dogs on the same track in front of us basicly cutting us off from the track we were already on. Before you ask, yes, there is a code of ethics and this crossed the line. So we pulled our dogs off. Later that day we cut the track again. The GW started with 5 dogs and was down to 1 still with the cat. One dog, they say, will never pin down a cat by themselves. So the GW said to turn ours out, that then makes it our cat. Our dogs bay up the cat in about 45 mins so Tom and I start up the hill. Trapper and ByronF sit down in the truck and watch the whole thing unfold from down low. I'm probably 200yds away and the gw's hunter catches up and shoots the cat off of our dogs. He felt like it was ok since his one dog was there. Either way, the whole scenerio was bad and shouldn't have happened.
The next day it heats up and the snow melts so Byron and I head home empty handed.
This year Byron and I start our planning. I'm ready to go but not packed because, what's the hurry. The past 2 years it has been early spring before the call.
Early last week Trapper call and said, come on. I can't because of work. I said I can't go before Dec 4th. He called Dec 4th and said it's time. I load up and head 9 hours west. I leave my house at 12:58pm on Friday, drive straight through and get there at 9pm their time. As I'm driving in the snow isn't quite what I expected but it's flipping cold. I get there and unpack. The cabin is freezing and I don't have a sleeping bag between the deer leases and bear hunting I don't have any at the house but rather spread out over North America. I go to bed and quickly start freezing, thankfully Trapper put a spare sleeping bag in there, that saved me. I get up at 3:45am and fix coffee and breakfast. Trapper comes and gets me and we start down the road. I try the live hunt thread like I said but can't get a signal. No problem, I'll get one when we get up on top and do updates that way, we ended up staying down low and never did get a signal. After 10mins of driving Tom comes over the radio and says he located a decent track. Right afterwards Trapper and I find one. Trapper said it's a pretty good track and calls Tom to bring the dogs. We turn the dogs loose and they are off. We listen to them for about a half hour and they have him treed. Boy, the heart is pumping now. I'm excited to say the least. They are on the next ridge over so we drop down and then start up to where they where. When we get there it's a small cat, but hey, it's a cat and treed. That's progress from the last 2 years. Tom goes off walking and found the big track we started on. It seems the dogs started on that one then crossed this one and it was hotter so they pulled off the other one. Tom and I drug the dogs down the next ridge and started them back on the big cat tracks they started. We stand there and rest for a bit and before long we can't hear the dogs, Dang! So we start that way and after about 200 yds we start to hear them and Tom turns and looks at me and said I think they are treed. He pulls out his GPS that he uses to track the dogs and it shows they ARE treed. We head that way, not too bad just another ridgeline over, again. The whole "next ridge over" is getting old as we are starting to rack up the distance now. It wouldn't be so bad just to walk but the ankle to mid calf deep snow is cumbersome and draining.
We get to the next cat and can just see the dogs at first. Then he comes into view I get thinking, this is it. We get up by him and take a good look. Tom said he's a good cat, not huge but good and it was up to me. After everything to date, there wasn't a choice for me. You know what they say, One cat in the pack is better than two on ethe next ridge over. We tie up a few of the dogs, take a few pics and get ready. Tom runs the video camera and we get the shot on camera but not much after because the cat started down and his exit was going to be towards us. I guess Tom went for is pistol because the camera started waving all over. Now to update you, the cat was in the tree about 20-30ft up, my shot was from 4yds. The shot was perfet and apiece of his lung came out of the hole in the bottom of his chest. He dropped down two branches and was now about 8 ft above us when he fell out of the tree and was dead when he hit the ground. The dogs drug him down the hill a bit but we got down there quick. The cat is everything I wanted and after 3 years of bad luck I finally had him. We had 5 different cats on top and I got the biggest out of them, I guess they do group up after all. I think it may be that it the better hunting area for them so they tend to concentrate there.
We got finished up and back at camp at 12 pm. The gw stopped by and tagged him then I loaded up and headed back thinking all the excitement was over.
Somewhere around Aspermont, I hit a hog going 70. Now I had the cruise set at 70 and hit the brakes when I saw it so I'm sure I decelerated some. I hit him solidly enough it punted him down the road and out of the view of my high beams. It actually wouldn't have been a bad golf shot, he went straight down the center and at the end of the lights started to draw just a little. Maybe with the extra roll from the draw he may have been pin high but I didn't stop to look. Minor damage so I finished the drive. I pulled back into my house at 1:32a, 37 hours after I left, exhausted but happy.
My next trip out there will be to run the camera for Byron if we can get it coordinated, I hope so I'm ready.
Thanks for hanging with me. Enjoy the pictures, I'll get the video done in the next few days.
Long is an understatement, cut to the pics. 
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