OH, SHOOT! 



quarry. To begin with, the cougar is a night 

 feeder. He spends his days in meditation, 

 holed up under the rim in some convenient 

 cave where he can enjoy the scenery of the 

 canon, but at night he comes up, grabs himself 

 a deer, and has a party. He is an extravagant 

 diner, and he seldom eats more than the heart 

 and lungs of his prey. Sometimes he covers 

 his kill and returns the next night for a cold 

 snack, but not always. In nearly every 

 brushy draw that we explored we found the 

 remains of these midnight supper parties, and 

 Uncle Jim told us that a full-grown mountain 

 lion will destroy annually perhaps two hun- 

 dred deer, and not infrequently domestic 

 stock as well. It is for this reason that the 

 government and local cattlemen employ pro- 

 fessional hunters and there is no closed season 

 on cats. 



Our practice was to leave camp soon after 

 daylight and rim the main and the larger side 

 canons until afternoon, when the sun had had 

 time to dissipate the scent. Rarely indeed is 

 a lion brought to bay on the level top of the 

 plateau, for the dogs have to go over and rout 

 him out of his sun parlor, and almost invari- 

 ably he flees downward, not upward. It is 



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