By Mike Arnold
My Guide, and former Saddle-Bronc rider, Shay Wyman looked straight at me and spoke two truths, “Once you’ve hunted cats here, you never return to do it again!” and “I’m not going to church this; the weather this week is going to be really shitty!” Regarding the latter pronouncement, he predicted -10o F with a 65mph wind blowing straight from the arctic circle. The last sentence proved prescient when after my hunt for a Wyoming Mountain Lion, a major winter storm chased me from my cabin near Laramie all the way back to Denver.
The day before Shay’s reflections on the likelihood of me coming back to the Laramie Mountains to hunt Cougars as well as the possibility of freezing to death on this first trip, I had driven north from Denver to meet him at the West Laramie Fly Shop. After introductions, and the purchase of a license that gave me the right to hunt a ‘Cat’, we headed 27 miles to my cabin at Woods Landing. As we travelled, we moved from the lowlands to the foothills, and then into the midst of the Laramie Mountains. Likewise, we went from dry and cold to snow and really cold. After dropping off my bags, and changing into my wool camo-clothing, we headed to a nearby area so that Shay could try me out on his open-sighted .243 Winchester bolt-action rifle, and his 45 Long Colt revolver. After my first shot with each, Shay pronounced me ‘fit’ with both firearms. However, with both, I requested additional shots with the unfamiliar sights and holds.
About the firearm used on my search for a Mountain Lion, this would be a first for me. I always used my own rifle on hunts for big-game animals, but months earlier when I told Shay that I was going to bring my 7mm Remington Magnum, and asked his advice on bullet weights, etc., he asked me to rethink my plan. He voiced extreme concern that such a caliber, and the accompanying speed and weight of the bullets would do very little internal damage when used on a ‘soft’ animal like a Puma, located at distances measured in feet rather than yards. Though the cat would obviously succumb from a well-placed .284 caliber bullet, the minimal damage would provide a real risk that, before dying, the tom would come out of the tree into the middle of the dogs that had sent the trophy male up the tree in the first place. Shay explained that he wanted his clients to use a lighter caliber rifle, a large handgun cartridge, or even a bow-and-arrow. All these options would be much more likely to yield a dead cat in or falling from the tree; such an outcome would protect his valuable, tracking hounds. So, here I was shooting someone else’s rifle and revolver, and hoping that I would be at least as proficient with them as with my own, well-worn 7mm. I did, however, place one restriction on the firearms; I have never been that great with handguns, and so I would use the rifle or not take the shot. Shay was perfectly content to go along with a client that knew his limitations, and so I would be using a .243 for the first time since hunting Texas whitetail deer as a boy of 9. My obvious unspoken question was whether something that had a lot more capacity for inflicting harm on the hunter, than a small Texas deer, would be impressed by such a light caliber.
Later that afternoon found us driving the snow-covered National Forest trails near my cabin. This foray had several goals. First, it provided an opportunity for me to become familiarized with the 4-wheeler that would be my ‘horse’ for this hunt. Second, Shay wanted to look for lion sign. We would then check these areas for fresh tracks early the next morning when he had his dogs. We found numerous lion tracks crossing the trail, including one set that crossed back-and-forth at different times, with the later tracks placed in the paw prints laid down earlier. When I asked “why?” Shay answered that, like any cat, Mountain Lions preferred to keep their feet dry and clean and so would often walk along previously blazed trails. Our last, goal was to find a Christmas tree for Shay’s significant-other. The hunt for this tree was almost as much fun as looking for the lion tracks, and accomplished successfully when Shay located a beautifully shaped fir.
The next morning felt significantly chilly to the guy from Athens, Georgia. Luckily, I had followed the advice given before my hunt and bundled my body in wool clothing that would keep its capacity to warm even when wet from snow and ice. Protected from the elements as much as possible, we unloaded the three dogs, put them into the box on the back of Shay’s 4-wheeler and once again headed into the snowy environs of the National Forest. It was comical to see the dogs with their heads stuck out of the holes cut into the back of their box, bobbing up-and-down as Shay bounced over the forest track. In addition to Shay, his dogs and me, this morning we also had the help of one of Shay’s frequent hunting partners, Francis Clark. This proved to be very fortuitous because while travelling the trails, it was Francis who spotted a large lion track placed exactly in the trail left by a small herd of elk. In fact, like the lion paw prints found the previous day by Shay, this cat was apparently using the elk-packed snow to keep his paws clean and dry. But the freshness of the lion sign lying on top of that of the elk herd indicated the likelihood that the cat was hunting the elk, rather than merely using their trail as a convenient highway. The decision was an easy one for the Guides, with the release of the dogs onto smoking-hot (metaphorically, that is) tracks.
Now, to explain the rest of this story, I need to point out that yours truly, though having followed a strict exercise regimen – involving a lot of running – was a flatlander of many years. So, the dogs and Francis outdistanced me easily, with Shay playing the role of babysitter for the client who was trying not to bring up a lung as he lumbered through the high-altitude snow cover. The distance between us slowly receded as the cat tired, but even so, Francis and the dogs had the cat treed long before Shay and I reached them. This was my first-ever hunt with dogs. What I understood intellectually was that it allowed a level of selectivity that I desired; we would be able to judge the gender and size of the cat before deciding shoot-or-don’t-shoot. What I had no idea of was how wonderful it would be to listen to the music of the hounds growing louder as we trudged toward the quarry. Even in my physically challenged state, I found the sound incredibly beautiful, if extremely nerve-wracking.
A final push through low-hanging branches provided us access into a glade that contained the baying hounds and the distant shape of the first Mountain Lion I had ever seen in the wild. Perched in a pine approximately 50 feet above the ground, the Cougar was concentrating on the hounds and the hunters nearby. I looked at Francis and Shay, and asked “Is that my cat?” Shay responded with, “We’ll see. I want to make certain it’s a mature male.” I expected him to follow this with some serious quality time with his binoculars, but instead, he started climbing the tree located next to the one containing the lion. I was amazed at how fast he scaled to the cat’s height, but Francis acted like this was nothing new, so I tried to act as if I was calm and collected. To try and hide my extreme anxiety at being so close to an animal I thought I would probably never see, let alone take as a trophy, I asked Francis, “Do you think it is a mature male?” His answer was succinct and to-the-point: “If I had travelled all the way from Georgia to Wyoming to get a Mountain Lion, this son-of-a-bitch would already be dead on the ground.” OK, one constituent cast their vote…
To my horror, as Shay was retreating down his tree to give his verdict, the cat started sliding down his as well. Following quickly after Francis’ shout of “He’s coming out!” was 1) Shay yelling, “He’s a good one!”, 2) the lion launching itself in an arc from an elevation of about 30 feet and 3) one of the heaviest thumps I’ve ever heard. You read that something ‘shook the ground’, well I’m here to say that the big cat did just that. As the cougar poised himself for his leap, Francis was untying the dogs from the trees where he had tethered them to let the cat settle and hopefully keep him from jumping out of the tree before we could get a shot. That having failed, I looked at Shay and almost cried, “Have we lost him?!” As Francis once again jogged off with the pack, Shay assured me that cats tire quickly, and that we would catch back up with our trophy.
I wasn’t certain that Shay was going to be accurate in his confident prediction, not because he wasn’t an expert, but rather because whether the cat tired quickly or not, I was still finding way-too-little oxygen in my surroundings. I should have trusted Shay and Francis and their dogs. We had not gone more than another 200-yds when we once again heard the ‘treed’ howl from the hounds. Another 100-yds and we rounded a copse of pines and there was the cat, this time standing about 20 feet off the ground on a slanted snag. With no trophy judgement needed, Shay handed me the .243 and I stepped forward to rest my left hand that clutched the forend against the side of a tree. I slipped off the safety, aimed the front bead just behind the shoulder of the slightly quartering-away animal and was squeezing the trigger when Shay let out a sharp “No!” I glanced at his hand as he raised the rear sight, and breathed a quick sigh of relief that I hadn’t finished the trigger squeeze. Who knows where that shot would have gone! Once again, this time burying the bead into the V of the back leaf, I focused on the cat’s off-shoulder. I was surprised when the gun barked, and with the minimal recoil was able to see the cat sag at the shot.
My shot was immediately followed by Francis’ exclamation of “Beautiful shot!” But, never trusting my hunting/shooting skills, I chambered another round. As I did so, the lion took two steps further up the dead tree. Shay answered my near-frantic “Do I shoot again?!”, with “No! Let him go down.” Shay’s words were barely out when the cat sagged and rolled down the snag, being dead when he hit the snow.
As Francis pulled the dogs away from the cat, Shay and I stepped forward, and I dropped to my knees in the snow beside the trophy male. I was speechless at his bulk, his thick coat, and the hugeness of his paws. I spent the time for Francis and Shay to secure their hounds once again to a tree stroking the big cat’s fur, pulling back his lips to look at his formidable canines and generally breathing in the adventure of my – according to Shay, at least – only time to hunt Mountain Lions in the Laramie Mountains of Wyoming. I hadn’t frozen to death, but instead had seen the fruition of yet another hunt for a uniquely Western North American species. The West always captivates me, its breathtaking vistas that continue to the horizon, its physically challenging landscape, even its often-bleak aspect. This wonderful animal would always bring me back to the region I most loved, to a time of incredible joy, and in a sometimes-hackneyed phrase, to the fulfilment of a dream.