# Boulder/Plateau Mountain Lion.



## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

I was successful yesterday on my cougar hunt. I will add to this post once I get my heart rate down to an acceptable level.

What an adrenaline rush!

Lion backstrap for dinner. We are gonna give it a go and cook it very thoroughly.
































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## CPAjeff (Dec 20, 2014)

Congrats man - love the pics!


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Mountain lion backstrap with mac n cheese.

I have heard it tastes like pork and that was the deal. Very good. Played it safe and cooked it to an internal temp of 185. Would probably be better if cooked to 165 - 170 ish but was playing it safe.








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## taxidermist (Sep 11, 2007)

Congrats!! and glad you tried the back strap. It's good stuff. Just one bad thing to say..........Where is the pic of the dogs that put the Lion up the tree??


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## Kevin D (Sep 15, 2007)

taxidermist said:


> Congrats!! and glad you tried the back strap. It's good stuff. Just one bad thing to say..........Where is the pic of the dogs that put the Lion up the tree??


Yup. I look back on my years as a houndsman and the first year or two there were lots of pictures of lions in trees. From then on however, nearly all of my photos are of dogs treeing. I guess after a while the novelty of seeing a lion in a tree wears off, but watching a young pup fire on his first lion is an event to remember.

Congrats on the cat.


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

taxidermist said:


> Congrats!! and glad you tried the back strap. It's good stuff. Just one bad thing to say..........Where is the pic of the dogs that put the Lion up the tree??


Ive been trying to figure out how to load some videos for my story post. Let me see if I can figure out how to attach a video. I have tons of video of my heroes of the hunt.

For my part, this was the easiest hunt I've had. The hounds that came with me were absolutely amazing to watch do their thing.

There is a huge freshly downed pinetree under the tree my cats in and all the dogs are under the tree doing their thing but I couldnt them in the pics because of the cover.

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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Testhttps://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/5a5cd0ed9f301/20180113_110746_2_001_001.mp4

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## Natural Born Killer (Oct 29, 2015)

Awesome, what a thrill

why such a big gun ?

Ruger mark II pistol 22 long rifle is all I (WE) have ever used on cats,
shoot em in the chest cavity, no damage to the hide, they don't jump tree and the fall out dead in a few minutes ( a lot easier to carry than a rifle) 

Bear medicine: Ruger redhawk 44 mag, has never let us down,


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Natural Born Killer said:


> Awesome, what a thrill
> 
> why such a big gun ?
> 
> ...


Its a old mossberg model 800A in 308 win. A sentimental gun for me and its what I had. It actually did great on him. Hit him right in the chest and he fell out immediately and was dead once he hit the ground. Didnt blow him up at all. No exit hole.

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## Natural Born Killer (Oct 29, 2015)

FAIR ENOUGH THAT EXPLAINS IT, 
I have all of my father's & Grandfather's, guns,
They hang on the wall in the trophy room, or sit in the safes, Some day I will use one of 
them on some critter,


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Hunting mountain lions behind hounds was unlike anything I have ever done. Watching and listening to the dogs work is just plain magical and I understand completely now how being a hounds man is so addicting. 

I left my house at around 115 am on Saturday and headed down to the Boulder Mountains. My buddy Matt had invited two of his hounds man friends who brought 8 dogs with them bringing our total to 13 hounds for the hunt. 

Once we arrived at our spot we split up, Matt and I went in one direction and they went the other. The snow was pretty fresh from the storms that rolled through earlier in the week. We drove around for about an hour when we got a call on the radio that a Tom track had been cut! We flipped around and headed in their direction. Once we arrived, we took a look at the track and quickly decided that it was a very good Tom. Originally our plan with that many dogs was to turn a few out on a track and continue on looking for additional tracks while keeping an eye on the loose ones on the GPS. However, once we saw the size of this track we turned out all 13 dogs because this was likely my lion. 

Once the hounds were on the track we got back in the trucks and drove down the mountain and started a fire in a good spot to listen to the hounds and track their progress via GPS. It didn't take long and the hounds were all circled up in one area which meant the lion was in the tree. So, off we went back up the mountain. Once we got almost to the dogs they had broken off and were on the move again (lion jumped) so we stopped and watched their progress on the GPS some more and listened to the change of pitch in their bark to tell us the lion was caught again. A few minutes later we watched as most of the hounds tracked the lion right across the road in front of us. There was still a couple dogs lingering behind so we decided to get our packs on and head off to try and figure out just where the lion had gone. We had made it about 50 yards down from the road and Matt looks back at me and yells "Jake did you bring your gun? This is a big cat!!" I took a few more steps and asked where he was. Matt pointed at him and I looked up to see my first mountain lion in the wild. Turns out the lion had somehow been circling around and was doing his best to confuse the dogs and get away. Must not have been his first rodeo with hounds haha. It was Matts red hound Boone that ended up treeing him for the final time by himself. Matt was very proud of Boone and so was I.  Looking at the lion you could tell he was completely exhausted at this point and had no intention of jumping again. 

Now this is where the hunt completely changed from every other hunt I have ever been on. I quickly pulled my gun off my shoulder and shouted "I have a good shot right here are you guys ready?!" Matt turned around quickly "No, No! We are gonna hang out for a while and take pictures and videos." What? Ok? Turned out to be the coolest part. Staring in awe at the top predator on the mountain and having him stare right back at me was absolutely amazing and intimidating at the same time. All the time Matt could see how anxious I was to kill him and kept telling me not to stress if he jumps because the dogs will just tree him again in 100 yards or so and that was my lion. This helped chill me out and I settled in for pictures and videos of the lion and dogs for what seemed like 30 minutes or so. 

Once they started chaining up the dogs I knew my time was very close. I took careful aim and put one right in his chest as he looked down at me. It was a perfect shot and he was dead once he hit the ground. 

It was an absolutely amazing experience and one I will never forget. I then spent the rest of the day thanking my new friends for taking me down and letting me watch their hounds work their magic. For my part this was the easiest hunt I have had. I was more of a shooter than a hunter as the dogs do all the work. Without the dogs I had absolutely zero chance of killing what I can say is easily the most impressive and majestic animal I have ever laid eyes on yet alone been able to take home with me. 

It took awhile to convince the wife but she has agreed to let me have Packout do a life size mount of him!!


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## Natural Born Killer (Oct 29, 2015)

AWESOME CHOICE,
I just picked up a buck that packout finished this afternoon, and droped off another one

" SPECTACULAR LIKE ALWAYS"


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## plottrunner (Apr 3, 2008)

Awesome job on a nice lion... Reading your account of the hunt made me chuckle. I got out of hound hunting in 2007 and prior to that, we used Wildlife Materials radio collars that ran on the 217 bandwidth. There was no sitting around looking at a gps reader, one of us had to try to keep up with the dogs with a radio to direct the others into the tree. If the dogs got out of earshot, we had to use a tracker with a big handheld antenna and hope that we weren't getting signal bounce and going the wrong direction. For the guys in the trucks, it wasn't bad but for the guy trying to keep up with the dogs (usually me lol) it made for a long day but your'e right, it was an absolute rush seeing the dogs outsmart mr tom cat... Once again, congrats.


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

plottrunner said:


> Awesome job on a nice lion... Reading your account of the hunt made me chuckle. I got out of hound hunting in 2007 and prior to that, we used Wildlife Materials radio collars that ran on the 217 bandwidth. There was no sitting around looking at a gps reader, one of us had to try to keep up with the dogs with a radio to direct the others into the tree. If the dogs got out of earshot, we had to use a tracker with a big handheld antenna and hope that we weren't getting signal bounce and going the wrong direction. For the guys in the trucks, it wasn't bad but for the guy trying to keep up with the dogs (usually me lol) it made for a long day but your'e right, it was an absolute rush seeing the dogs outsmart mr tom cat... Once again, congrats.


I drew this tag with zero points! I had worked hard to get in shape for it - jogging for a couple miles 3 times a week.

These hunts are marathons I was told. Most people I talked with said its an awesome experience but the hardest thing you will ever do physically. Be prepared to follow the hounds for miles across nasty terrain. OK, Im in, and will be ready I replied!!

Lion trees, and I kill him 100 yards from the truck. The terrain was very mild for those 100 yards.

Not sure where I had the most luck but I'll take it!!!!

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## Kevin D (Sep 15, 2007)

Plottrunners post stirred some memories.....

When I first got into hound hunting telemetry dog tracking systems were just coming on to the market and were still a bit of a novelty item. I hunted several years with no tracking collars at all. It wasn't until about 1990 when I finally broke down and bought a set. In the days before tracking collars, once you dumped on a track you had to bust ass to stay within hearing distance of the dogs. If you weren't able to keep up you had to track out the dogs on foot. This made for some long, miserable, exhausting days wondering if, when, and where your dogs were going to turn up.

As well as tracking and treeing, one of the skills your dogs had to have was how to be found on races gone bad. Some dogs would backtrack out to where they were dumped loose, others would seek out the first humans they contacted and attach themselves to them, others would just set out for home and show up in their kennel a week later. Others, usually young dogs, wouldn't show up at all.

Dog tracking systems revolutionized the sport of hound hunting and allowed it to become more popular. They have taken a lot of the stress, worry, and physical demands out trying to keep up with a pack of big game hounds. But at the same time, much of the dynamics of the race is lost by the hound hunter watching the GPS screen instead of being up on the hill watching the dogs work through a tough track.

One of my pet peeves is the reliance of today's hunters on modern technology. State of the art optics, trail cams, range finders, and long range rifles have made much of the hunting skills required to be successful in days past now obsolete. But here's where I become a bit of a hypocrite, would I go back to the days of running my dogs without the latest GPS dog tracking system?? *HELL NO!!!*


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Interesting to hear Kevin and Plotrunners history with how hunting with hounds used to be. I imagine that would have been very challenging. Good stuff guys. Thanks. 

I'm going to try and draw a spring bear tag to chase with hounds next.


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

Got him home today. Cant say enough good things about packout. I'll let the pics talk!






























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## CPAjeff (Dec 20, 2014)

Man, that’s awesome! Great job packout!


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## wyoming2utah (Sep 12, 2007)

Kevin D said:


> Yup. I look back on my years as a houndsman and the first year or two there were lots of pictures of lions in trees. From then on however, nearly all of my photos are of dogs treeing. I guess after a while the novelty of seeing a lion in a tree wears off, but watching a young pup fire on his first lion is an event to remember.
> 
> Congrats on the cat.


I know this might make some hound lovers mad, but I love the pics of the lions tearing the piss out of the dogs!

No offense, but hound dogs annoy the crap out of me!


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## 35whelen (Jul 3, 2012)

Congratulations! That’s a big cat


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## goofy elk (Dec 16, 2007)

Good read.
Nice cat.
Brings back memorys of chasing, catching, and harvesting lions on Boulder!

Did any of you ever know Phillips?
The Gov trapper down there?
Just wondering if he is sill around,
Been quite a few years.


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## shaner (Nov 30, 2007)

3, 
Congrats and cool story. Thanks for sharing.
What caliber do you use on a cat?


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## 3arabians (Dec 9, 2014)

shaner said:


> 3,
> Congrats and cool story. Thanks for sharing.
> What caliber do you use on a cat?


Thanks! I think generally people like to use smaller calibers like a 223 on cats. However, I used a 308 win and it worked great.

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