Missing lion

[chancemarquette]

About three weeks ago i ran a lion that often frequents a large canyon, almost always cut his tracks on the main road beside the canyon. every time accept for this one he lost the dogs on the side of the canyon which are huge cliffs, well this time we went all the way down in the bottom of canyon and the dogs bayed him on the side of the cliffs because he got himself in a situation where even he couldnt go up any farther. It was a good adult tom and we left him on the cliff to run another day. accept now his track is no where to be found, and only me and one other guy hunt the area. I was jus wonderin if anybody had any opinions on what might of happend to him, could he have scared so bad he found new territory ?

[Ike]

A buggered tom lion will often come out on the move after dogs have wooled him around and travel a long distance. In the places I hunt, I'll sometimes not cut the same tom for weeks or months at a time before he pops out again. A large dominate tom lion may well pick up and move on to conquer new land and never come back, if there is a good female lion population and prey in other areas. I always did figure that a super tom could live anywhere he wants to, cause he can.............that is right up until he crosses a road with fresh snow and lays up close enough to get caught!

ike

[chancemarquette]

thanks ike that was the good solid answer i was lookin for. As for the female lion. I do belive we cut a smaller lions track in the area only about 3.5'' wide, Almost looked like they were traveling together, could this be a female? i have been cutting that track often, i dont believe he would allow a young tom to be in his presence maybe im wrong?

[Ike]

A guy will often find lion tracks along the same path and assume those two lions are running together, which is not always the case. Let me give you an example:

A couple years back I took my grown son lion hunting because I'd caught and released one of those super tom lions. I'd killed my share of toms and figured it would be great for him to take that one.

Our first trip out was in the dirt and we treed about a three year old tom. We walked in and shot some photos and my son told me he'd shot bigger lions so we walked away. Our next trip we had some snow and three lions had crossed in the same path going the same direction. One track was a bitch lion, another was probably that three year old that we had released, and the third track was that super tom sized track that we had come for, so we cut my best four dogs down the tracks.

After they had gone, we drove on down the road for about three miles to make sure those lions hadn't crossed again. Low and behold, a female size track crossed from left to right so we sat there waiting for a couple hours. Well, you've probably guess the ending by now all four of those dogs were on that female lion track, so I caught them all up when they crossed.

Now yo gotta know I was pissed and drove back down there to straighten that miss out and kill the big lion. I was gonna walk down the tracks and find where the bitch left those two tom lion tracks, start it and finish what I'd started. It was afternoon and my son talked me out of sending dogs down a track that they probably wouldn't finish that day.

So what was going on there? Had the three year old crossed and the old tom trailing him up to fight and kill him? Were those two toms together? Had the old tom crossed and the younger tom following him out of curiosity? Who knows!

I know another couple guys that started a deal like that, with a female and two tom lions, one of which was a super tom. They were out all night after their dogs and never caught up with any of those lions. I guess it's puzzles like that that keep alot of us in the sport.....................

keep'em treed,
ike

[Mike Leonard]

Excellent advice Ike! I also concur with the super tom theory, they don't get worried about much they just do what they want and where they want. Nice thing about that is they can pop up just about anywhere as well.