306 
FOREST AND STREAM 
JULY, 1917 
TRAILING A BLIND COUGAR 
WITH ONE EYE SHOT AWAY HE LEADS TRAPPER AND 
HOUND A LIVELY CHASE ACROSSjTWO MOUNTAINS 
R ETURNING recently from a round 
of my winter hunting and trapping 
camps, some eight to twenty miles 
back in the mountains from my home at 
McKenzie Bridge, Oregon, I came upon a 
mountain lion’s tracks in the snow. They 
looked to be about one day old, and lead 
back toward the lower camp I had just 
left. So I stopped by a hollow cedar tree 
and stowed the most of my load of furs, 
with my camera and the other para¬ 
phernalia I had in my pack sack, and took 
up the trail. 
From its track the lion was a medium 
sized one—the kind that usually gives the 
dogs the longest run. The lion took a 
straight course for the steep mountain side 
exposed to the sun. Along here the deer 
were most plentiful: due to the deep snow' 
they w T ere compelled to expose themselves 
there to feed. Besides being open to 
By H. G. HAYES 
tree with plenty of limbs—that made easy 
climbing, which lions usually prefer—it 
sprang up among the boughs. The dogs 
treed it in a flash. 
It was getting almost dark and raining 
very hard. I could hear the dogs at their 
treeing when I got within a mile, but 
when I finally came up to them I could 
see the lion but could not see the sights 
along my gun. I decided however, to 
shoot at once and take chances. For it 
was raining hard, I was soaked to the 
skin, and it was getting pitch dark rapidly. 
To stay until daylight, wet as I was, would 
have been foolish. Even with a fire, I 
could not keep dry. 
S O I chanced the shot, aiming at the 
lion’s head, which was most exposed 
and was the only part really visible. 
When the rifle cracked the lion sprang, with 
find the dogs. I came onto them in the 
timber about io o’clock, tired and hungry. 
I took up their back track at once, and 
soon found where they had been lying un¬ 
der a log for protection from the storm. 
I could track them no farther, and as there 
was no trace of the lion thereabouts, as I 
discovered after searching the surround¬ 
ings for the remainder of the day, I re¬ 
turned home feeling pretty blue. 
It kept snowing continually until it lay 
two feet deep in the woods. I had no 
way of telling whether the lion was alive 
or dead, or anything of its whereabouts. 
But I returned after a day’s rest to my 
camp nearest its scene of action, deter¬ 
mined to locate it if it was alive and had 
stirred or given any signs of its presence. 
I set about to hunt the entire country 
where I expected to find it, and as it had 
quit snowing I felt that I had more chances 
now. On the sixth day after I first came 
upon its rtacks, I found them again early 
in the morning near where I had jumped 
it before. As there was plenty of good 
fresh tracking snow, and I had the day 
for it, I felt almost sure of landing it this 
time. The tracks too were fresh and the 
hound—the only dog I had with me this 
trip, as the snow was too deep for the 
smaller ones—could scent the tracks well. 
I KNEW the chase would soon be on, and 
in fact we had followed the tracks for 
hardly half a mile when we came upon 
a large patch of blood on the snow. A 
little farther on we saw where the lion had 
killed a deer and dragged it down the 
mountain. The snow was red with blood, 
and following this trail about a hundred 
yards we came upon the body of a fine 
large deer, with ribs and flesh on one side 
and the heart and lungs eaten out. 
The hound was keen now, and anxious to 
get away, but as there were tracks of the 
lion leaving the carcass in all directions I 
held him in until I could determine the 
freshest. This I cautiously followed, 
keeping the hound close beside me, though 
he was whining continually to get away. 
Following down the steep mountain a 
few hundred yards, we found where the 
lion had been bedding under a small cliff. 
Further tracks showed it had started from 
this point on the run, and the hound 
showed by his anxiety to be ofi that we 
had jumped it. I motioned to the hound 
that he could go, and with his great lion¬ 
like voice he made the heavy forest roar 
as he bounded down the steep mountain 
side through the snow. He went with a 
vengeance and determination winch pre¬ 
saged death either to the lion or to him. 
The lion headed straight for the river, a 
swift mountain stream about thirty-five 
yards across and too deep and swift for man 
or horse to ford. But it swam directly 
across, and headed up toward a high, 
rough and heavily timbered mountain di¬ 
rectly across the valley. The dog without 
a moment’s hesitation plunged in and swam 
The Shot That Blinded Him is 
the sun, the slope was very steep and cliffy 
and there was very little snow left on it, 
except in spots in the openings. There 
was none at all under the trees, and this 
made the lion’s spoor difficult to trail. The 
dogs—a half English bloodhound and half 
Walker foxhound, and a Norwegian bear- 
hound—could only scent it occasionally. 
There was a heavy rain falling, and the 
spoor was old. 
But the dogs and myself had followed 
the trail barely a mile and a half, when 
suddenly the big hound scented the lion 
keenly, where it had turned back to meet 
us. The dogs were off like a flash. The 
lion ran back along the mountain side 
where we had been trailing it, through 
brushy thickets and over rocks and cliffs, 
for nearly two miles. Then, selecting a 
Plainly Visible, Between the Eyes 
a half fall rather than a jump, from the 
tree, and w r as off on a run down the moun¬ 
tain. The dogs were after it with a ven¬ 
geance, but in the dark it had the advantage 
and they had soon run it out of hearing. 
After a short while I was unable to find 
them or even to follow them any farther. 
So I turned off to one of my camps, which 
was luckily only some two or three miles 
distant, and got some tea and some warm 
supper. I went to bed rather discouraged, 
but determined to make a better job of it 
next day. 
During the night it turned colder and 
snowed again, until in the morning there 
was about eight inches of fresh snow. 
At daylight it was still snowing and blow¬ 
ing heavily. The chances looked against 
me, but I set out determined at least to 
