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Wild Life where it doesn't belong.
Ten or so years ago I had my first encounter with a Mountain Lion. It had been seen by a couple of my neighbors sharpening it'd claws on a pine tree in their backyard, then I got a call from my friend one nite that it was at his place watching him plant his crop's(He had two aircraft landing lights on his tractor). I went over with my Sendero in 25-06 to see if I could find it. My friend said it was lying in a shallow ditch at the edge of his field so I pulled up within about 250 yards and put my pickups head lights on the end of the ditch and got out. I got set-up and started using my binoculars and it wasn't long till I spotted the cat.... looking right back at me! I don't know how many of you have seen a pair of lion eye's thru a pair of Nikon 10x50s at night in headlight's but for me it was quite the diaper filling experience. I've been hunting since I could walk and never had buckfever, but I'll tell you I was shaking like Barney Fife with Parkinsons! By the time I got myself back together the cat was gone, but I still remember those pulsating electric green eye's the size of softball's! Two weeks later the cat came back, I could here the cattle in the pasture raising hell and this awful woman-like screeching over the cow's so I knew what it was. It was 5am the sun not quite up and I had to get to work all I had with me was my Sig in 45acp but it would have to do. I decided to make a long circle around the cat and cow's and come in from behind which entailed about a 1/4 mile walk thru waist high soybeans. I know I can here you guy's already, I've also been known to chase black cow's in a cornfield at night, no Mensa members in the family tree,go figure. Anyway by the time I made it to the cow's all comotion had ceased but the cow's were bunched up at the fence and staring into the field.... behind me. As I turned around I saw the soybeans moving , in the same row I had just stepped out of, and coming on a dead run! No place to go, no sympathy from the cow's, they looked at me like so much fresh hamburger, about damn time I'm sure they were thinking. All I could do was square up to the threat click off the safety and shoot when it got to the fence. The last 20 feet it put on a burst of speed and fairly flew into the pasture , the 2 shot's I fired fell far behind the critter it was moving so fast. As it went by me I really started cussin, it was my wife's golden retriever! She got out of her yard and tracked me down, the one and only time she ever did that! She hated gun's forevermore. This story is true but the most interesting thing is this didn't happen in Montana or anywhere out west. This was in IOWA! The ditch I mentioned was on a GOLF COURSE my friend owned! We never saw that cat again but it would come by late at nite about every ten day's or so the rest of that year, I tracked it thru the snow a few times but no joy. We have had a sighting or two every couple of years since then tho. According to biologists these are young cats driven out by older cat's and they are looking for their own home ranges, they tend to follow river system's since they hold game and IMO the farther east they go ,the more human activity they come in contact with. These cat's are not shy! They seem to have learned that the living is pretty easy around us folk's. The coyotes here never go hungry, our landscape is dotted with hog confinement buildings which house 2 or 3 thousand pig's each. I've found pig parts a half mile from one of these dragged there by yotes. It won't be long and the cat's will be here to stay if they aren't already. Anyway,for me, lesson learned I try to never leave the house without a rifle. Shorty.[/i]
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