'09 Lion Season

[sheimer]

Season opened here in Montana on the 1st of December and we went out on Tues and Wed. We treed a small tom on the first day. All but one dog made the tree. Yesterday we cut a nice tom track and treed a few hours later. It was a very nice tom in my opinion. We had a friend along who decided to harvest it. He was the largest that I've seen in our area. I am excited about how well the dogs are doing. My older dog struck the cat from the box yesterday. My yearling that "Whoflungdung" hooked me up with last year is such a nice tree dog and even picked up a loss on the first cat. She's got a bawl that just sucks the other dogs right to her. My pup from Ken Duncan made both trees and the first one he followed the track the whole way. It was probably a solid three miles. You could here him down it the coulee just striking away. I didn't really ask him to on account of his age, but didn't discourage it either and he just took the track and away he went. Yesterday I walked him within a couple hundred yards of the tree and he picked up the track on his own and ran to the tree. He doesn't tree much yet, but once the cat hit the ground he tried ripping the ears plumb off it and was baying like a champion.

I'll get some pics off the video and post some on here when I get a chance.

thanks,
Scott

[BuckNAze]

Good story, sounds like you got some good prospects coming up! Hurry up and get those videos and pics up.

[sheimer]

I guess I should share the whole story instead of just the good highlights.....


We started off on Tuesday morning walking up a coulee with the dogs out in front of us just freecast looking around. It was snowing so we expected to really find nothing, just more or less exercising the dogs. Well within a few minutes a good old fashon trash race was under way. We had 6 dogs loose and one on a leash. Well you guessed it, there were 6 of 'em runnin deer. Thanks to tri-tronics and a little luck, we got it shut down within a half hour. I nearly got run over twice by deer. The Garmin told me where to be to catch them on the way by. Well, we loaded up the dogs and headed out because it had dumped 3-4" of snow since daylight and it was onto 9AM by now. About 200 yards from where we were parked a small tom crossed. Guess we flushed him out of his hiding hole with all the dogs and yelling that had been going on. We dumped the dogs and the race was on! Knowing that we would tree within 10 or 15 minutes I let my little pup out to go to the tree. We treed about 2 hours later with only my brother-in-law's old female and my friend Billy's older male. My old dog was dinking around about 200 yards from the tree when we got there and he followed us to the tree. In about 45 minutes we heard my pup coming and I went and followed him to the tree. We started a fire to warm up with and the garmin said that my female was coming, so we hung out until she got there and she brought Billy's other dog with her. I was trying to get her to see the cat in the tree and was holding her head so she would look up(this was her first lion tree) and asked Rylie to throw a stick up to get the dog to look. He did allright, he hit the cat square in the ribs and out he came. The race was on once again. The cat ran down the hill a few hundred yards and did a 180 and the dogs didn't. They were all looking in the trees for him and he slipped out the back door. Well my little female found the sign and off they went. They got hung up in a rimrock coulee when the cat crossed the coulee on a tree streched over the coulee. I got there and got a few dogs across and they went up the hill about a hundred yards and the cat was already in the tree. Ol' Ike would have been proud from that point on. We had left all our leashes at the truck so we just walked down the hill and started callin and the dogs just fell in behind us and we all walked back pleasantly to the truck.

Sorry about no pics, we left the camera with the leashes in the truck!


I'll add day two later.....

Scott

[sheimer]

Day two......

The day started out with just me and Billy. He had two dogs and I had my three. We cut the track just shortly after daylight and we took our time. I got my pup out and showed him the track and let him sniff around. He opened up and goofed around a while. During this time, my old dog was striking from the box for the first time ever. I was awfully proud of that. I put up the pup and got my yearling female out and started her. Then we started Billy's young dog. We then dumped the two old dogs. The track started right into a big rock slide so the going was rough right off the bat. The dogs worked through it great and we had ringside seats as they went up the hill and then started to parallel around it. We just sat at the truck listening. We could pick out each dog as they opened. They soon were out of hearing range and we started to hike up the valley that they were headed into. On the Garmin we could see that they were crossing the Stillwater river. They were just at the head of what is known as the "gorge". It's full of big old boulders and rough water with 100' cliffs on each side. I don't really know how, but three of the dogs made it across and one of Billy's didn't. WE tried to help by getting it to the first rock thinking that it would get the hint, but he didn't and fell in. We got him fished out but he was frozen. We hustled back to the trucks and put him in on medium high. Buy the time we got done with that melee the other three were treed back down the river but up the other side a ways. We drove back down river a ways and crossed on a bridge. We left the truck running with the wet dog in it and started hiking in. I took my pup along on the walk for some exercise and mabey he'd make it to the tree. Well, we got within a couple hundred yards and the pup took off on the track and we met him at the tree. When we finally got there we looked up, way up, and saw the largest cat of my hunting career. The friend that was along decided that he would harvest it. We got the dogs back and he dropped it out. We were on a nasty steep hillside and the cat rolled a couple hundred yards. The dogs were on him and so was the pup. We could here him above the others quite well. He did very well.

Here are a few pics:


This is where we treed at



This is my pup on the kill



This is my yearling female



This is my friend Billy's dog "Shane"



This is Mr. Tom

[twist]

Scott, does Shane know Bill named his dog after him heard it was a good lion congrats. Sounds like that old half Nance black and tan is doin real well later Andy

[pat_kemp]

nice job and good pics

[sheimer]

Thanks guys, The dogs are doing soooooo much better than I expected. We had a chance to get out today and managed to get another put up. The dogs had to really work for this one. We turned out late today and there was an inch or so of snow in the track. It was nice to watch on the Garmin and see how when they got hung up which dog got them going again. Each and every dog took a turn. I was proud of all of them.

I'll get some pics up later.

Scott

[Cole H Willams]

did you get a lion already

[sheimer]

nope, just have a hound training permit.

[Cole H Willams]

You going to get a tag

[sheimer]

Here are the pics from the last cat.


kittykitty


Sugar


Todd


Cole, I probably won't get a tag. Once you shoot one, the work and money start to flow freely and I've got plenty of work to do and not nearly enough money to throw around.

Scot