Lions, culverts and wolves

[finch]

Lion in Culvert

Fellas, I thought some of you might find this interesting, though I’m not sure what can be done about it. I got my leg busted mid-December with two 7-month old pups that needed training, so I had a friend, Derek, drive them up to Jim Harrell’s place in Montana.

The first morning out, Jim’s dogs treed a pair of lions, though they saw only one at first. Here’s two short video clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvWA4UBprf8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JppTjcRtvY

You won’t have trouble picking out Jim’s hounds. They have that classic Cameron look. Mine are the all-blues who just look bewildered.

Both lions were encouraged to jump out of the tree and Jim’s hounds chased one into a culvert. Jim had Derek position the two pups at one end of the culvert while Jim chased the lion out from the other end. Derek is trying to hold back the pups with one hand while trying to shoot video with the other. It gets a little shaky. He’s also worried about that second lion being in the culvert, though it wasn’t. Here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvQzluG4IsQ

Now here’s the deal. After that lion got chased out, he took refuge in yet another culvert. Here’s a picture of him in there.

Jim says he thinks that this lion has made a practice of using culverts, probably sleeping in them too, in order to protect itself from wolves; especially a pack of wolves.

Crawling into a culvert with a lion in it has got to be like feeding yourself into a meatgrinder. But Jim’s dogs are plenty game and his Jenny dog got herself clawed/chewed up some when the lion hid in the first culvert. I am happy to report that she has since healed up and is back out hunting.

My question is, what do you do to discourage your hounds from following a lion into a culvert/mineshaft or adit?

[cohoundsman]

I am not sure there is anything you can do other than be there the moment they figure out the lion is there and get a hold of them. It's like dogs who climb tree's, they are just trying to get closer to chew on the critter a little. The grit of a good hound is something that is almost uncontrolable.