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| Sunday 12/27/98 |
The Chase is on! Ron took out two of his six experienced dogs, Bo and Bear. Bo was the dog that was chasing a cat in '97 when the cat turned on him bit through his shoulder blade, back and legs, then crushed his skull. The dog survived and was now chasing my lion.
View a video of the dogs starting the chase (120k)
Ron and I listened for the dogs but the occassional bark from Bo soon grew silent. The cat was probably further than we thought and Ron was a little uneasy since the snow was really coming down at this point. At times it was nearly a white out.
Of course the cat headed straight up the mountain and the dogs followed - which meant we followed the dogs. I felt that I went into this hunt in pretty good shape - like last year. But after slipping and sliding my way up that mountain I found my legs burning out. Unlike an elk or goat hunt, with dogs out in a snowstorm, you need to keep after them. The fear is that the snow would cover over the dogs tracks and you could lose the dogs. So we kept pushing it further up the mountains, across steep, slippery side hills till we started to hear the dogs. By their excited barking they had the tom treed.
As we got closer the dogs were visible but no cat. Bo and Bear were howling at the cat so we knew it was there. The blood was really pumping now.
As we got closer to the back side of the tree, we saw the cat about 30 feet up the tree. It was an awesome Tom and we knew immediately that this was no ordinary cat.
Continued - Click here
