The oldest I have caught to date and probably for a long time was a few years ago and it was 4 days old. A friend was out checking his traps on the outskirts of town, had the lion run across the road in front of him on the morning of the 8th. We were out of town and got home on the 11th and were greeted by his message telling us about it (when,where). We met up with him on the 12th and went to the track. There were no roads to use to shorten the track up that we thought would be worth the time and gas, so we turned loose around 10 o'clock a.m. thinking we were wasting our time. We had 100% snow cover and it was the first day in a week it had gotten over freezing. Needless to say the dogs took the track at a pretty slow pace until they got onto the sunny side of the mountain. After reaching the sunny side they picked up their pace a bit and really started moving out on the track. They took it down through the head of the valley (that had a road in it that I would have loved to know he crossed before I started hiking)on the other side of the small mountain range we turned loose and up over the next mountain range and treed it right before dark. In total according to the gps they trailed the cat for 21.6 miles (it felt like 100). It wound up being a big old tom with half of his skull crushed weighing 176 pounds measuring 7' 8" tip of the tail to in between the ears. We got lucky, the conditions were perfect and the dogs were feeling better than usual is all I can think of as a reason for why we caught him.
