Dukats Journal of Hunting

It all started with a lion hunt, set up with my hunting buddy Layne Brandt.  He got a call and scheduled a lion hunt with fellow by the name of Roy Smith.  Roy lived out in Indiana and wanted to take a dry ground lion in the desert of Arizona. 

I normally hunt the weekends with local friends, but Layne and I planned a five day hunt to do our best to to get Roy a lion in the short time he had to make the hunt.

We started our hunt in the Santa Rita mountains where we spent three days.  Roy's brother Tim is from the area, and he joined us when he could.  We found bear tracks, some old lion sign, and one stinky old skunk, which the dogs tried to eat.  Luckily, I got them called off just before they killed it, but not quite soon enough.  With my eyes watering and nose burning, I hauled the dogs away, but they didn't have too many friends around the house for the next couple days.  I hiked poor Roy and Tim up, down, and  around a lot of mountain country until they decided it was time to give the horses a try. 

On day four, I decided to head south to Puerto Canyon to spend the day.  I loaded up five dogs, two horses, picked up Roy, and we hit the road.  We arrived at 6:30 and saddled up the horses, put the tracking collars on the dogs and swung into the saddle by 7:00 o'clock.  At 7:30, we hit our first good track not more than a mile from the truck.  The road wind through the bottom of the canyon, and the lion was headed west right into the canyon.  As we rode along following the dogs, we crossed his track several times.  When the lion finally  climbed out of the canyon and got away from the road, all the hounds lined out on the track.  They still weren't working the track like I thought they should be since it appeared to be a good fresh track.  A heavy dew had fallen overnight so everything was wet including the saddles from the trip in, and maybe that slowed them down. 

The dog's trailed on up a long ridge, still moving at a slow pace until they reached a small saddle where the track got cold.  Searching it out, the dogs began to circle and finally picked it up again at a 90 degree angle from where it was lost.  They worked hard on the track, right to the back of a rock bluff.  They weren't talking a lot, just working that rocky real estate, trying to find where the lion trailed out. 

I have a red dog and he goes by that name.  He's about six months old and has already been on three lions which is pretty good for such a young dog.  When I say he's been on three lions, I mean he was involved in getting three lions in the tree.  Anyhow, this red pup started trailing up and out of the canyon away from the big bluffs.  I figured the young dog was a'runnin trash, when just then I hear one of the old hounds honor his bark.  It's not long and all the dogs trail up and out of sight. 

Roy and I made our way up to a high point where we could watch the hounds work.  They trailed down into a canyon, headed back to where we turned the 90.  By then, I'm suspicious and thinking maybe the lion's looped around back to his own track.  We make our way down off the hill and drop into the canyon just behind the hounds which are still working the track.  I finally found a track in the sand that confirmed they were trailing a good tom and my red pup was working right along with the old hounds.  The problem was, the track was going the other way, and I've got to get out in front of them hounds and turn 'em around.  I worked my way around the pack and finally got them turned around and headed back up the canyon. 

I now know the red pup took the back trail and we need to return to the bluff.  We did and luckily the hounds picked up the track again headed south.  We started on this track at 7:30 and by now it's noon.  I'm hoping we have enough dog power to put this lion's hide on the fence(skinned).  The track leads us to a steep rocky hill with a solid rock bluff on top.  The only open ground without rocks was covered in thick brush and we watched the hounds work their way up to the top. 

I figured they would trail off the back side and keep going.  With five hounds seven hours into the fourth day of a five day hunt,  the I'm beginning to wonder how much more they can trail?  My hunter is really sore and tired between the walking, riding, and listening to my lion stories.  With these thoughts in my mind, we rode around the back side to see if they trailed off, but couldn't see or hear them.  We listened for a bit and then the wind picked up making it tougher to hear.  Finally, we rode around to where we last saw them working and stopped again to listen for baying hounds.  I could just barely make out some barking clear up on the top, maybe just around to the east side. 

We scratched and pawed our way up to the saddle and as far as the horses would take us.  From the small saddle we could hear the hounds a lot better and and I could now tell they had something caught up in the rocks.  Not knowing how long we would be, off came the saddles so the horse's would get a good break and up we headed for the very top.  We pulled our way up through a small crack around a big rock face.  Still below the action and with all the dogs between us and the lion, we could still not see him, but boy could we hear the tom and he didn't sound happy.  The dogs were fighting him tough and nail and I hoped we make it up before he started inflicting some damage.  We climbed one more ledge, les than ten feet separated us and the dogs from the biggest tom lion I ever saw.  

There was only one available ledge and the lion, the dogs, me and a hunter were now fighting for position on it.  In between dog's jumping and scraping, Roy made a clean kill shot with his pistol and the exciting part of the lion hunt came to an end.  We spent the next two hours getting the lion and the horses off the mountain and Roy's brother Tim meet us to take Roy and his trophy back to town.