I took Cosa to the vet saturday for x-rays. Her pelvis is broke in three places. She is retired for life and may not be able to deliver pups. When I woke up sunday, I was in a bad mood, so about 9:30 I collared up her mate Blue, their daughter Zia, and their grandson Iceman. We went for a walk out behind my house. When we left, I told Zia - "I don't want any crap from you today, lets kill a lion for mom", she can be a little trashy. Well about 10:30 we hit a 3 day old track. It was melted out and drifted and blown in with fresh snow from early that morning. I couldn't tell what direction it was heading, so I just trusted in the dogs. About 1/2 mile into it, I came to where it headed down a slope and I could see the snow piled to the front of the track and I knew we were on the right end of it. We unraveled thursdays' night time activities and then fridays'. We found where it had missed a kill friday. Then we came to saturday nights track, but it was already melting out fast and on the steep ground it was gone. There was only a slight disturbance in the mud of what was left of the track. Blue was going track for track and Zia was a little in front. We had slowed down and I was only 100 yds behind now. Blue worked up the finger ridge we were on and Zia cut accross canyon. She struck on the other side and trailed into a deep and steep slot canyon. As soon as she got out of sight I heard her strike like she caught wind of it, then a little silence and then she trailed into view at full bawl. She was trailing from right to left across from me on the bare slickrock. The way she was going I knew she had made a jump. About 200 yds further she was treed and the other two fell in right behind her. I still had not got a very good look at the track and was surprised to see a big old Tom up the tree! He was only 6 feet off the ground and he was pissed! It was a little nerve wracking getting the hounds tied back with him that close. I wasn't too comfortable turning my back on him 3 times at that range. When I pulled the trigger, the muzzle of my pistol was only 4 feet from his chest. On impact he litterally flew out of the tree. He measured 7 feet 9 inches from tip of nose to tip of tail and the skull green scores 15 1/8 inches.
Not a bad note to end Cosa's career on. It's time for the young ones to step up to the plate.
