Things got more interesting as I worked along the top road. There was a soft yowling coming from around the bend and though I figured it was some sort of cat, it was nothing I had heard in the wild before. I put on my sneaky face and tried to figure out what I was dealing with. As I moved past the trees emanating the sound, I found deer tracks and some impressive claw marks on the road. I tried to catch some audio but by that point I figured I was under 80 yards from a mountain lion and it seemed unwise to have two hands on a cellphone for very long. Interestingly - back home with the volume cranked 100% I can barely hear one little call but Oak growls/barks every time I play it.
I had a mountain lion tag and have heard good things about the meat so while I knelt in front of this little stand of trees, I was trying to figure out how to get around them to the cat hiding behind. But I was playing outside my league and that cat cued me in that this was a 3-D game by dropping out of the tree with an impressive thump. Turns out I was less than 50 yards away and didn't have a clue. Even though I had just walked the road to the left of the picture, he was also smart enough to hug the trees and go back over my trail so I never saw or heard him again. So I likely messed up the closest I will ever get to a lion and know about it (unless I am getting eaten)...
After giving the nerves a little time to settle, I worked around the trees and found the remains of a doe hidden back in the brush. My current theory is that the mom and pups from the start of the post killed this doe a few days earlier. Then this guy came along about four hours before me and chased off the family. I have no real experience to back this up but maybe he was yowling because he thought I was the mom coming back to reclaim her kill. The camera catching these cats was just a little too far up the road to catch the fatal chase but the road is a proving a surprisingly fruitful spot to catch bears, bobcats, lions, and big bull elk.
The rest of the hunt couldn't compare with that excitement and I never saw a deer (maybe the 5 lions had some impact). In my desperation I started climbing hills in the national forest in the search for new angles to look down on the property or maybe a bear that didnt give a sh*% that lions were about. Also on the wish list were some larch cones as the property appears to be lacking any of the beautiful yellow pines (even the cones eluded me).
Blue is lion, red is Jeremy's deer, and black was the buck that got away. Sadly, there will be no elk hunting posts this year as it was clear that the family units had cleared out by early September. There are a few monster bulls wandering about but its going to be 15 years before I draw that tag... On the plus side, a local said they were typically still around in October so maybe next year!
