Trailing a female lion in heat.

[Mike Leonard]

Brent another great story! thanks for sharing.

I recall one of the first times i ever had the female in heat curse nail me. I was hunting alone and was still pretty new to the game. i was driving a long stretch of forest road that was in some very lovely Ponderosa and pinion country. Lots of sanstone canyons and even some deeper cuts with aspens. there was several inches of new snow on the ground and tracks showed considerable game movement thru the night. I popped over a little knoll and started down thru a little cut and there it was a big old fresh tom lion track looking at me going from right to left. My heart leaped and I pulled over excited at the prospects of catching a nice tom. My hands shook a good deal as I buckled on tracking collars and got my back pack adjusted, leashes and six shooter strapped to me. I reached in the box and led old Black Jack a vetran black and tan male out to start the track. I led him over to the track and he went wild lunging on the leash and barking his head off. I unsnapped him and away he went like a shot. I turned back to the truck to get the other two younger dogs out and on it but out of the corner of my eye I saw something. it was old Jack and he was coming back on that track bawling every jump. What the heck?? I knew hounds would back track a lion track at times but not a red hot fresh one in the snow. I made a diver for him screaming but he slipped by me and down that back track he went like a speeding freight train. Cussing and yelling at him did not slow him even a little, and i didn't have a shock collar on him. I jerked the other two dogs out but kept them on the leash and took off after him hoping to catch him and turn him around. Fat chance he was a fast dog and he made it over the rim of a canyon and down he went off the side. As i trudged along looking at Jack's tracks right on top of those big pug marks of the tom going the other way i was pretty down and out and Jack was not my favorite at that moment. Well i heard Jack make a slight loss in the bottom and then really light up, and in just a minute he was hammering a tree. What the heck? I stayed on his track and made my way to the bottom. then I saw it the tracks of a female lion mixed in with the tom and places in the snow where they had rolled and wrestled about. at first i thought they had been fighting becasue there was some hair and a little blood on the snow but when I got to the tree the nice female lion looked no worse for wear.

Evidently they had been in that canyon having a love fest and the old tom figured enough was enough and he headed off to get some rest, and that is when i cut his track. the scent of the female all over him must have been so enticing it turned old Jack around and sent him down the back track to the place where she laid up, and then he treed her.

Now here is the kicker. I drug those dogs out of the canyon and back to the truck and probably 3-4 hours had passed and the snow was melting fast and the bare ground already shopwed thru the tom's tracks. I decided to load the dogs and cut some other roads further to the east and see if i could cut him again away from this place and get him. I made about a mile and sure enough I cut him again but it didn't look any fresher. I got Jack out again and pointed the track out to him and let him go and he didn't go 30 feet and he spun around and here he came again going back the other way. I grabbed him this time and I never did get that tom that day. that female scent must be mighty strong stuff at times.

[chilcotin hillbilly]

thanks to you guys i get some good reading with my coffee in the morning. No news papers in this neck of the woods.
Clients aften wonder why I sex the cat in the tree, I tell to make sure we are catching the cat we turned out on. They can't seem to understand how that is possible it could be a female. I just tell them stranger things have happened. If you don't follow the track the whole way and cut across to the tree you never know what can happen in between leaving the track and the tree.

[papa]

Brent and Mike...u guys need to quit working and just tell stories on this forum...I never get tired of reading ur accounts of life on the track of big cats...appreciate ur willingness to share ur experiences.

[Brent Sinclair]

Doug
I learned the hard way a couple years ago..... no matter what "ALWAYS" sex the lion you got in the tree...
I had a big tom treed and was lookin him in the eye on a steep slope at less that 30 feet.
The gal that was huntin with me had the action open and was loading a round into the rifle, I said hold on till I get these hounds tied and then shoot him right in the chest.
We had been hunting hard with little snow and alot of wind, she was excited to finally get a big tom caught and was ready to take the lion after all the hard huntin and it was the last 2 hours of daylight on day 10..!!!!

Why I do not know but that big lion decided to jump as I was tryin to catch the last hound....I hollered don't shoot and was fighting to keep my footing trying to turn hounds loose that were lunging at the end of their leashes...
I assured her the lion would'nt go far with 5 hounds on his tail and sure enough we could hear them treein about 200 yards down the ridge.
I was gatherin hounds and tellin her as soon as I tell you go ahead and shoot him as he may try to jump again.
I had 3 hounds tied and was trippin over brush hurrying to get the other two gathered up and the first shot was in the lion.... when the cat hit the ground I had a hound in each hand by it's collar tryin my best to hold them till I knew it was dead, I looked over and was expecting to be a 160 lb class tom , but instead it had shriveled up into a 90 lb female!!!!!!!
Lookin back I do believe that tom was lookin for the female as there was not misteakin she was in heat.
Luck had it that we got him treed before he got to her.
When he jumped out he ran right past where she had been bedded up under a big fir and those hounds ran right into her.
Hard lesson especialy with a client, but I was able to redeem myself this past season and get her husband that same big tom.

[MKT]

This is why I have stayed with this site for sooo long!! You guys should get together and write a book!! That way these stories would never be lost.

[kiwi]

Thanks for sharing these experiences, enjoying this thread immensely

[Chris Todd]

Brent and Mike, great stories. Brent I love the the story about leopard hunting. I have sold a few hounds to one outfit in South Africa that guides leopard hunts. But I have never been lucky enough to do it myself. In that story you talked about finding where a tom had been breeding a female. I have treed a couple females that were tore up pretty bad during the breeding process. One female I treed had long claw marks down both sides. Where I believe a tom had marked her up during breeding. Some injuries you see on lions you can chalk you to fighting or injuries recieved taking down game. I treed a real large tom a few years ago that recieved some real serious injuries taking down a large mulie buck. He had a large punture wound in his chest. And a huge scar on his head,taking out one of his eyes.

[Brent Sinclair]

Chris
I consider myself myself pretty fortuniate to have been able to travel, guide and hunt all the places I have over the years.
It's had it's price but the memories are forever.
The first trip I made to Africa several years back we were on the edge of the Kalahari right on the Botswana border.
At that time they were doing most of the leopard hunting there with Bushman trackers who would trot for hours out in front of the Land Cruiser fallowing a track until the he stopped dead in mid stride and end up in the back of that Cruiser faster than you could ever imagine...you best be gettin ready cause you were about to deal with a leopard and he may be wantin in the back of the Crusier with you and the tracker.
Amazing ability they had to fallow the track through all that sand and grass for miles at times.
I always wanted to adopt one and bring him back here but I did't think he'd make it in the cold.
The first hound hunt I made was to Zimbabwe in 2005, and I have taken clients back several times since.
If you ever get the opportunity you should go, who did you sell hounds to over there?
If I were you I'd get on the phone and set something up with them to go over, I have personally never killed a leopard, no real desire to at this point, taking clients over and running the hounds is what it's all about to me.
I've seen some real torn up spots where a big male and female have been spendin some time together...they have to get clawed up with the amount of hair I have seen in some of these places ....I can't see how not.
In all the years, I have never seen a female lion that I could say was hurt or clawed up from a tom during breeding, I have caught a few toms with some real big holes in them though.
I've seen more froze ears and tails on female lions than I have scars from breeding.

[Mike Leonard]

Brent that is interesting about how fast those bushman can trail a leopard in front of that hunting car.

My good freind Johnny Vivier P.H. told me the same thing, and in his usual jovial and twinkling South African accent he said when you see those trackers break and run for the rear you better get that 12 gauge Benelli in you hands quick because spots will jump in that car with you and in about 3 seconds you will look like you have been run thru a salad shooter. LOL!

I have found several toms over the years killed by other toms in fights the largest was a 175 pound tom cat that had two punctures in the top of his skull. Game and Fish took him in a weighed him and skinned him and looked him over and he was in prime condition. The tom that killed him was a real whopper. The other tom I found had been in a huge battle and it appeared he was making a break for it and was trying to jump up a wash bank about 15 feet high and the other tom nailed him and they tore out huge sagebrush from the top and they clung and then toppled back into the sand wash and he too was killed with a head bite.

A friend and I got on a big tom early one morning and we knew from his track he had been on a kill with a female that night. when we killed him he had a big tear in his upper lip and was marked up pretty good. We couldn't imagine a female of maybe 100 pounds tearing this big Boone and Crockett toad up but that is what it appeared like until later after dragging him up out of a canyon we crossed the tracks of another big tom and he was bleeding. We got him too and he was really scratched up but no big rips or tears like the other one.

[007pennpal]

Great stories guys. Thanks.
Here's one I to this day haven't figured out. I was bow hunting near Granit, Oregon and was eating at the only cafe when these two guys came in asking if anyone had a lion tag. I had one but didn't fess up. They go on to say they arrowed, without dogs, three lions and had only two tags. As there story goes the two were together and saw a lion. One guy shot it and it ran off. They couldn't find it so they split up and each found a lion and shot and killed it. Then, they found the original lion dead from the first arrow. Total, three dead lions. Two large toms and a female. They did get a guy to offer to tag a lion and off we all went up the hill to see if the story was true. I saw the three dead lions. The female looked as if she was shredded all down her back, even if only skin deep. These were old scars not fresh breeding marks. Both males looked normal. This was in September and it was hot.

[Chris Todd]

Brent, I sold 2-hounds to Jan of Shumba Safaries in South Africa. He e-mailed me just a couple days ago asking for training advise for some pups. I told him about Big Game Houndsman and to look up Mike Leonards pup starting method.
Mike I have never found a tom dead from fighting with another tom,but I have treed a couple that were tore up pretty bad.

[Mike Leonard]

A matriarchal ( dominant adult) female will protect her home range if other non-related female lions wander in and try to set up housekeeping. Usually these fights are a lot of paw and beller and not real fight to the death type deals. ( Lions especially lions with young can't risk getting bad hurt where they can't hunt over silly disputes. So they yowl, and hiss and bluff until one backs down and then the other one will wait till the loser tries to depart and then chases her and give her a good spurring up and down the sides to make sure she remembers to stay away. Usually when they leave they are throwing rocks and dirt and getting out of there as quick as they can.

[colobbcat]

This is a great thread and got me thinking of something that happened last year. I have a place I hunt with two posts on two points about a mile apart, well last year over a 9 day time frame we caught the same short tail three times off of these two posts. Until I read this thread I just chalked it up to luck or her having a small home range, but now that I read this I think maybe she was checking those posts looking for a tom. Like Chris mentioned in his first post, it seemed like the dogs could move that track really well for being on the long end of it in poor conditions. I mention this because I believe that maybe cats as well as lion put off that aroma that allows the dogs to move that track really well...

NC

[Mike Leonard]

Neal,

That is a great observation!

On bobs I have pure de hell trailing the toms when they are breeding heavy and traveling together. the dogs at times act like they have lost their minds. they will pull off a good looking tom cat track and end up on a sow cat even if she is a small one during these times and it's just nuts!

[Unreal_tk]

Mike that is interesting to know, this winter I had something similar happen I believe. Found a good tom bobcat track, dogs took it well for a long time. Finally the track died off, and until now I had thought maybe they just got tired and quit but the sound of the race went from screaming, to a slow cold trail to dead. I never did investigate it, the track was 5 miles long... in deep snow.