A weeks worth of excitement and upset

[COOSEFAN]

The hunt started out with my buddy Craig bringing his two boys (Tyler and Tanner) down for their first Coues hunt and I was helping a friend in the neighboring unit so we camped together. Opening day was uneventful for me in my unit but it was the opposite for Craig and his boys, here is Craig's story as he writes it......

 

 

 

 

Tyler harvested his first Coues Deer! We started out our day by hiking up the highest mountain possible. If it wasn't for the boys caring me up the mountain, we would not have made it. We started glassing for several minutes before I spotted a nice two point buck walking away from us. I told Tanner I spotted a nice two point buck and I asked him if he wanted to shoot the deer. With it being opening day, Tanner said he would like to wait for a three point or bigger.

 

I turned and asked Tyler if he would like to shoot the deer. Tyler said this is my first chance to take a Coues deer and I would love to harvest that deer as my first Coues! We got up and walked about 300 hundred yards along the mountain side, when Tanner said, "there he is, in the bottom by the tall yellow grass". Tyler and I took our packs off and hurried down the mountain about 30 yard to get set up for a shot. The Coues disappeared by hind some trees for a long time. Finally, Tyler spotted the Coues walking up the anther side of the mountain.

 

We moved along side of the mountain about 20 yards. I range the deer at 230 yards. I told Tyler he is 230 yards away, and he could take the shot when he was ready, the deer would not stop walking, so I made a grunting noise to stop the Coues. He stopped and the next thing I heard was the loud bang. The Couse ran about 20 yards when it hit the ground running!

 

Tyler and I jump and yelled in excitemement. What a great shot he made, hitting the deer in the perfect spot. Oh, and did I mention he was 230 yards away!

 

 

 

 

 

 

My friend and i returned back to camp that night and was happy to see Tylers success, but unfortunately my friend received bad news from home and had to drive all the way back to CA after just driving here the day before! So now that I was left without a tag in my unit I was able to hunt with Craig and his boys for the next few days. On Saturday evening, after hiking up into a remote canyon, Craig threw down his tripod and 15's as fast as he could.....he always does this to try and get a jump on me and that is the only reason he glasses up critters before I do Anyways, this time was no different, I'm still messing with my tripod when Craig says he sees a deer......then...NO, IT'S A LION!!! Craig was excited and I asked him if he had a tag.....I DON'T! WHOOHOOOOO......I DO!!! Tanner handed me his rifle as Craig ranged the Lion at 265 yards straight across from us, I swung my Jim White head over, slid the shooting sticks under the rear of the gun and soon had a broadside lion staring at me through the scope! I had shot Tanners rifle before which is a youth sized .243 and has a seriously stiff trigger pull. I have been shooting my new rifle a bunch lately and it's set at 2 1/4 lbs. so you can imagine what happened as I slowly squeezed the trigger on this gun.......nothing! I pulled off, checked the safety and then remembered I'm not shooting my gun! I settled back in, lined the cross hair on the lions back and in line with the back of the front leg and began applying pressure.....still applying pressure.....pulling harder.....BOOM....WHOP!!! Craig yelled "he's hit", the Lion rolled into a tree and was growling and screaming and you could here all heck breakin' loose! A split second later Craig yelled he had a second Lion moving uphill and I kept asking if it was hurt as I stayed on the tree where I figured my Lion was at. Craig said the other Lion was just slowly walking uphill and away and was not hurt but just then my Lion rolled out and stood broadside, I was on him fast and asked Craig if that was the one I shot because I couldn't believe it was just standing there, Craig said he sees blood on this one so I started applying pressure again....and as the gun finally went off the Lion had just jumped forward for a clean miss At this point we could see the Lion for only a second as he took long jumps down the mountain in into the bottom. With very little light remaining, Craig and I crossed the canyon and got to where the shot was, I couldn't see much sign in the grass so we took off on the trial hoping to find a dead Lion but soon ran out of light.

That night I called my bro-n-law and he dropped what he was doing, grabbed his dogs and met me before light the following morning. We took the dogs around the trail and up to where the first shot happened and that's where I realized I had indeed hit the Lion and it was a body hit. There was a rock that had chunks of hair, skin and even deer hair with chunks of partially digested meat from the pass through, so I knew it was a gut shot but there was very little blood. The dogs did an amazing job picking up the track at each spot where the Lion had landed as he made his quick decent down the mountian. We would find small drops of blood every 50 yards or so which verified we were still on the track, I even found this chunck of stuff about 100 yards from the hit!

 

 

 

With the grass being so tall, a 14 hour old track, jumped, wounded and running Lion and with the heat and 20 mph winds....the dogs had their work cut out for them to say the least! After almost a full mile of hot and cold trailing with very little blood we came to a big parking lot for the AZ Trail and the Lion walked across it which is a bad thing when trailing a Lion, for some reason the scent doesn't hold well on roads and this was a freakin' well used parking lot!!! My bro knew it was a bad deal when we noticed the dogs heading towards this area but we pulled them around and started doing loops for the remainder of the morning and never picked the track back up. Most people think Lion hunting with dogs is a "cake walk" and takes no skill.......that couldn't be further from the truth.....even with a wounded lion it's still very tough depending on the conditions and severity of the wound and this kitty was obviously not wanting to lay down and die anytime soon. I'm very bummed out about it but at least feel like I did all I could do. I have to give a huge thank you to Jimmy, my bro-n-law for coming to help me and to his dogs that amazed me at how well they trailed and how far they were able to take the track...I owe ya one big time bro!!!

 

The next couple of days were spent helping Tanner find the buck he wanted. The grass made it difficult to locate bedded bucks but we did find a few great bucks and put on long stalks but ended up not filling the tag. We even found another Lion but it was running up over a distant hill so no effort was given on my part for that one I've got to give Tyler and Tanner credit though, those boys did a fantastic job and always stayed positive and vigilant when the going was tough! Craig's done a great job with them and they're definitely turning into killin' machines.......but we really need to get some trigger jobs done on their rifles Well thats my story, not really a happy ending for me, but at least now I get to head up to Kaibab where a big ol' flop ear is gonna die in a little more than a week!!! Thanks for reading this long story, JIM>

[azcouesandelk]

Tell Tyler big congrats on his first coues!

 

To bad about the lion, hopfeully you will redeem yourself on your kaibab hunt

[SilentButDeadly]

Whatever, Mr. I'll just post the future winning photo of the 'Spirit of Coue's hunting' and not even mention anything about how awesome it is. Seriously, that one wins.

 

too bad about the cat.

 

T

[GameHauler]

Sorry you didn't recover the lion Jim

but maybe he won't be killing anymore Deer.

 

I say that with mixed emotions

 

I know you did everything you could.

 

Big YAHOO to Tyler

Nice first Coues

[Coues Sniper]

Atta kid Tyler, awesome work!

 

Whatever, Mr. I'll just post the future winning photo of the 'Spirit of Coue's hunting' and not even mention anything about how awesome it is. Seriously, that one wins.

+1

[COOSEFAN]

Thanks about the pic! I couldn't help but imagine what a "trophy photo" would have looked like on that hill at that moment with the sunset and backdrop, that would have been awesome!

 

I'm sure Tyler will see everyone's posts, thanks for the reply's! JIM>

[ultramag]

Jim that first picture is incredible as with all the others. congrats to the hunters

[willhunt4coues]

Congrats to the boy for a great deer. To bad you didn't find the lion. Thanks for sharing

[AZantlerhead]

Trully an awesome hunt, Don't you love a whole week hunting, I know I do. Memories not soon forgotton. Congrats on the buck!!! Thanks 4 shareing.

[jldeerslayer]

wow great job on the buck. to bad about the ol gato

[wildcat]

congrats to Tyler! Too bad Tanner didn't get one as well, he's got a sweet name though.

 

-Tanner

[Hunterdan]

Jim, Great Pics as always. Sorry to hear about the Cat. As you can see by all the stories there are plenty of them out there so go get another one! Good luck on the bab. Cannot wait to see the pics.

[curmudgen]

That is one beautiful photo. And now the curmudgeonly comment: Lion tags ain't that expensive. Jack

[tommat]

1st pic.....winner, hands down!

[hunter4life]

Great pictures as always!! Congratulations to the young hunter on his buck. That is definitely too bad about the lion, because you ended up losing some good meat. I think as far as wild game in North America it is hard to beat mountain lion meat in the taste category.