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This thread has helped me sort out a story a good friend of mine shared with me several years ago.

Mike, you know Justin over at Tonto. He was hunting on The Blue, and caught a female lion. He thought that the dogs were after a tom, but when he got to them, they had an old female backed up to a bluff. He said that she squirted out a large stream of milky fluid, and he just always thought that she must have been in heat.
Over the next week he and the dogs caught 4 toms right in that area! All of these stories explain why they caught her first.

Good reading!

Benny I remember Justin talking about that.

You know I was thinking about him the other day, and remembering us setting there at that picnic table with him and Steve. Now here were the two guys that were lucky enough to hunt with two of the greatest lion hunters that ever lived when they were just young men. Steve hunted mostly with Dale Lee and Justin with Clell. Nobody ever could deny that Dale Lee was one of the greatest ever, but I recall when Steve looked at Justin and said you hunted with the best ever. Strong words from one of todays greats but that is just the way they felt about Clell Lee.

i personally have never experienced this or if i did I didnt realize it. I have trailed scrape lines where I thought I was trailing a tom but ended up catching a female, if the females were in heat I do not know.

A good friend of mine had one of the most interesting story which probably was caused by a feamle in heat. He was hunting dry ground trailing a lion(not sure if he knew the sex while trailing) and catches a nice tom bayed up on a bluff. His hunter kills it, a nice 140lbish tom. Well the dogs chew on it for a minute or two then go off trailing again starting from right where the lion was killed. The dogs get going pretty good and some of the younger dogs break off from the pack squalling in high speed. He goes to stop them stupid pups but before he catches up to them they tree a female. This is where the story gets interesting. He takes a few pictures them pulls the pups off and goes to find the rest of the pack. The rest of the pack had trailed off a 1/4 of a mile or so and when he catches up to them they have two mature toms bayed on a rock. Talk about a 1 of a kind picture 2 nice toms bayed on a rock together( i have seen the pictue its too cool). One of the toms was a little smaller than the one they killed and the other was smaller than that but full grown not a kick off.

Whats more interesting not an scratch on any of them, no fighting wounds! The different sizes of the toms kind of rules out the littermate idea. So what were three toms doing together at one point with a female and no fighting?????? Chasing a female in heat with all that testosterone and no fights? just a big coincidence that he happened to trail them the day they all were crosing paths?

Interesting to say the least

Big Mike,

I think they were more interested in who got first's than who was the toughest. LOL!


Well known Outfitter and lion hunter Dick Ray of Pagosa springs, Co had a wildlife sanctuary at his place. He had several tom lions and female or two around. He said for the most part the toms were very careful not to get into anything more than a breif little squirmish even when they females were yowling in heat. He felt that lions are such terminal fighters that usually there will be death or severe impairing injuries when they do fight and they can't risk this becasue injured they have a hard time bringing down prey animals.

The death fights I desribed earlier I beleive were the result of a dominant territorial tom trying to dis-place a marauding ALPHA SUPER TOM ( A ROGUE ADULT THAT HAS BECOME SO POWERFUL HE HAS NO REPECT FOR TERRITORY AND FEARS NOTHING) generally these battles end in the death of the territorial tom and then the ALPHA goes on the hunt and tries to track down every female and breed her and that usually means killing the kittens of the other tom to bring her back in heat and sow his genetics. In other words it can really mess up the soup in an established area and knock the lion population in the head for a few years. This is just one more of the reasons when i get a lead on one of these types I try like crazy to get him caught. Once in a great while I even succeed. LOL!

It's threads like this one that has me checking back here as often as I do. Kinda like checking a scratch line to see if that big tom has been thru.
Thanks guys

x2, great stories and lots of knowledge being passed around here. Thank ya, boys.

Chris
See what ya gone and done...!!

Guys that are sharin some pretty interesting info here got me scratcin what little hair I have left trying to make sence of why lions act like they do in some cases and what makes them do these things.
I was gettin to where I was seeing some sence in afew topics then this thread has tossed a whole new look at many of them
Big Mike, that's just plum interestin....some fella tellin me that from somewhere other than this post I'd have to wonder, but you've seen the proff.
That big tom I killed with a client this winter I am sure killed the kitten the female had returned to...he knew the female would come back into heat and the female I believe was checkin to see if possiably there was a kitten in that area alive that the tom did not kill, just speculatin.
I wish I had taken more time to search around where we found it and see if that was the only one.
She was in heat and with a west wind that the tom was moving into, I assume he could smell her real good from along way off, like I said he made a line as strait as an arrow right to where that dead kitten and her were at that mornin.
He never made a scrape the entire time I was on his track so he knew where he was goin.
Those two big toms in the study lived in each others back yard and we had 3 females collared all in the same area... two had kittens.
This was the first dead kitten I have found in a while and can not confirm a tom killed it but I am thinking he did.
Neither of those big lions had a mark on them either.
Mike, that lion I had trouble keepin the hounds on at the tree may be what you are discribin ...but not as bad yet as the big toms you talk of, but along that same nature....?
Great reading... I need to get some work done and not keep going back over the last thirty some years in my mind trying to make heads or tails of what happened on a hunt that could not be answered.

I to have seen killed kittens and always wondered if the dominant male whould kill his own

I was hunting the Bloody Basin area in central Arizona a few years ago, just working hounds. I know I said I wouldnt bore you any more but. The talk about toms killing kittens made me think of a hunt.
The first day just out of camp my old Scout dog threw his head up and tore off up a little drainage without opening. I knew Scout was smelling something good probably a kill. I took off after him on my little Mustang pony. A short ways up this little drainage my horse came to a quick stop. He snorted and balked at going through a patch of oak brush. I could hear Scout and my other hounds open way up this drainage. I got to looking in the brush and there was a kitten lion laying there dead. It was a tom kitten of about 50lbs. I got to looking at him and he had been bitten through the top of his head. His skull was crushed. It was obvious a lion had killed him. And I figured it wasnt his mom. I was in a tough spot to see tracks. just rock and granite.

So I got back my little horse and took off after the dogs. The drainage that I was in ran into a larger creek. I was really pooring it to my little Mustang trying to catch up. I could see a couple of my pups hesitate and bark at something in the creek bed. Then they ran to try to get back in the race. I came up to where they were barking, and couldnt believe it . Another dead kitten. I got down and took a quick look, and it was another tom kitten the same size as his brother. He had been biitten through the top of his head just like his brother.
Scout and my other male hounds were really pouring it on. I hunt two packs of hounds one pack my males and the females in the other. They went straight down the creek aways. Then out on the north side of the creek, and back down and were treed. When I got to the tree I could see it was a female lion. Well I wasnt wanting to kill any lions so I got my hounds off the tree. And started on up the canyon to make a loop around and avoid the back track of this female. We went up the canyon about 100 yards and the hounds just left me. They went out of this canyon going south and really moving. They went over into the next big canyon and treed again. When I got to this tree they had a big tom in it.
I can only guess if that tom was killing these kittens to bring the female back in heat. Or if the kittens being both toms, he killed them to thin out the future competion.

Chris,

Another good story I could almost hear old Scout cutting the breeze. I still hear his mother and father's voices in my dreams at times.

My guess would be this tom was not the sire of these kittens and he was doing his dirty work to get his seeds established in the area. Lions look like lions to us but to a lion they know each one they meet and remember them and their particular scent. although hunting pressure in some areas is a strong contrubuting factor to lion population density, infantile mortality usually caused by their own kind is the responsible for more deaths among lions than anything else. This is generally accomplished by an outside tom but also siblings often kill the weakest kitten as they begin to compete for food. this is the reason that so many 3 kitten litters are reduced to two kittens before they reach a year old.

I too am enjoying this thread. It's why I read this forum.

I got to thinking about my short time chasing cats and there are several occasions when I ended up with a male and female traveling together. The first time was quite a few years ago and we ended up with the tom in the tree and never did see the female. It was in a fresh snow so we knew the timing of both tracks and I guess it was just coincidence that the tom treed first. That same season a few months later in the same general area I ended up starting a female track and she found a tom along her travels(or he found her). That day I ended up with the tom cought first again, but I was quick to get to the tree and was just running one dog. As soon as I got to the tree, the dog up and left me. He went to trailing and had the female cought within a couple hundred yards. I left the tom and went to look at the other tree. Afther taking a few pics, I headed back to the tom to take some more pics. He was still in the tree and the dog would bark a few times at him and as soon as I'd quit watching him, he'd pull out and go back to the female. The dog was way more interested in the female than the tom.

Again this year I was trailing a good tom and we came to a spot where a female had come to meet the tom. They spent a little time together and both left on the same trail with the female following the tom. When they hit the ridgeline the female went right and the tom went left. You can only guess that the dogs went with the female. I assumed it was Murphy's Law, but this thread makes me think otherwise. We did end up getting the dogs off the female and lined out on the tom, but not without a lot of leg work and time.

Thanks again,
Scott

Scott
I've had the same outcome on alot of hunts, took awhile to put the pieces of that puzzle together and make some sence of it when I first realized it was happenin.
Also I think alot falls on if the tom is fallowing the female or the other way round.....the hounds are more likely to locate on the strongest scent..... that said though, if they jump and see the lion I think that is what will draw them to run it over a scent trail UNLESS the scent is stronger from a female in heat and they are locked on trailin that lion....
I believe alot falls on how far into her heat cycle the female lion is as to how strong or what difference there is in the scent to the hounds between her and the tom as well.
The tom can likely pick out far more than a hound when it comes to a female letting a tom know that she is looking to get bred.
Don't know that for fact but it is somethin I have believe.