Spring Finds

I have been hunting horns a little the last couple of weeks. I was watching a big bull, but I think someone else grabbed his horns before I could find them. I was a little bummed. I have picked up a few deer horns, but nothing to get me excited enough to get the camera out.

Punk and I went out to check on some bulls Saturday morning. We looked around a little, but didn't find any horns. They are still packing for the most part. We did find a pretty good Tom track. Instead of heading to town for Deen's dogs, we called Lyle, because I knew his boy has a kill tag. Lyle and Chai loaded up the dogs and headed out to meet us. The dogs couldn't pick up the track very well, as it was made Friday afternoon/night. Punk is a pretty good tracker, and kept on the track. After about three hours of losing and re-finding the track, Punk yelled up to me on the ledge above that he found the track in some snow on the north side of a ledge and thought the dogs could take it.

He was right, the dogs heard him yell, and came over. As soon as they hit the track the chase was on. Surprisingly, it only took one or two minutes, and the lion was pinned in a crack between a big rock and the ledge. Chai was able to get in and put some lead in the cat as we pulled the last hound off of the cat. Lyles dogs did real well to catch this cat on what was mostly a dry ground run. It was a great way to spend the day. After packing the cat out to the road, Chai noticed some drag marks crossing the road. We got to looking around, and found that he had just killed a cow elk that morning. No wonder it was a quick chase, he was so full that he didn't feel like a big run.