Got a call yesterday from the grader operator in the next drainage over from me that he had spotted a cat track while plowing the road, he called at noon so I just got the general direction the cat was travelling which was South toward me then took a quick run up the drainage behind my house to see if he was a long walker or if he might have made a kill or holed up for the night in the next valley over. I didn't find a track up my drainage so I just left it at that since I knew where a pretty well used crossing was just up the hill. I sledded up the hill with the intention of checking my home drainage first and if that didn't pan out I would go and walk out the old track, luckily right where I expected the lion to cross I was greeted with a nice set of tracks coming down my sled tracks from the night before. I went back got the dogs and away we went.
The snow was super dry since it has been quite cold recently and below knee height so I left the misery slippers in the truck and after about ten minutes I realized I had made a good decision since the cat headed straight down across a steep creek drainage and straight up the other side. Snowshoes would have been useless on these steep slopes and I would have been packing them on my back. So right down into the guts of the draw and up the other side, a nice little warm up on this -12c morning. When I crested the other side I was drenched with sweat despite the cold but I could hear the dogs not too far up the valley which helped ease my aching legs and lungs. The dogs had a nice young tom treed low in a lodge pole pine and were telling him to come down if he dared.
The dogs talked with the lion for a while then he decided he'd had enough and vacated the premises with the dogs on his tail. Putting my gloves and jacket back on was rather uncomfortable since they had frozen into solid chunks of ice in the few minutes we were at the tree but I broke them up and followed after. The dogs treed the lion again at the valley bottom this time up a big fir. After some more photos I opened my thermos and had a nice cup of tea while the dogs carried on. The lion jumped from the fir into a dead snag then on into a cedar dumping snow all over the dogs and my tea. After a bit we left the lion up a tree, hopefully he'll leave my deer hunting area for another drainage. All in all a fun day and home by 3:00
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