4 year quest for lion and a bonus wolf

ken brown

New member
After seeing the pictures and reading the stories from other members I decided I had to share mine. I am sorry how long this is but I wanted you to know all the details.
It started 4 years ago with a goal of shooting a mountain lion. I searched the web and found an outfitter I thought would be good and headed to Idaho. This is when it all started. The plane landed and all of my gear did not. After figuring all of this out I got a rental car and headed for the outfiters home. Upon arriving I found that a major snow storm had hit and knocked out power every where. Oh ya I should mention that I am UNCLE MURPHY's favorite nephew. The next morning I borrowed warm clothes and a gun from the outfitter and to the mountain we went. An hour up the mountain on sleds we cut a track. We looked it over and turned the dogs out. It wasn't long and they had the cat treed. After a short hike to the tree I was staring at my first mountain lion ever. We must of stood under it for 30 plus minutes talking about the cat. The outfitter said he would guess it to be a 125# male and that their were bigger ones out there but it was up to me. Seeings how it was only a couple hours into my first lion hunt I decided to pass and try for a bigger one. Well we never cut another track the rest of the week.
I'm not going to bore you with details of the next 2 years but they were with the same outfitter and UNCLE MURPHY was always there. We ran tracks but never treed any cats. We experienced blizzerds and rain, vehicle break downs and just about everything else in between.

Fast forward to January of 2011. I started going after wolves. Now my line of work allows me a lot of time to hunt as long as I keep things going in the right direction. So hunt wolves I did. I spent 6 weeks in all over a 2 1/2 month period hunting in Ontario. I had trail cam pics of multiple wolves and had a couple of oportunities at them but never got to squeeze the trigger due to ole UNCLE MURPHY standing over my shoulder.

After my bad luck with the original outfitter I decided to try a different one. So in December I headed back to Idaho for another lion hunt with the possibility of a wolf. We were hunting in the northern part in the Lo Lo National forest. The first day of the hunt we didn't cut any lion tracks but seen a BUNCH of wolf tracks. While heading back to camp on sleds we came across a fairly fresh moose kill with wolf sign all around. Once back at camp I pulled out my winchester 30-06 and touched one off just to make sure it was still on. I threw on my snow camo grabbed my echo hd and headed back towards the moose kill. I set up laying in the snow about 100 yards from it down wind. I gave it about 30 minutes for everything to settle down and started howling. I did this for maybe a minute or two. Then I heard 2 howl back a ways away off to the left of me so I howled again for a bit. This time I had 1 answer from my right a good distance away. So I tried it again but this time I heard nothing. I tried calling a couple more times and got nothing back. One thing I learned hunting those 6 weeks in Ontario is if you get them to answer back then they don't, their probably coming towrds you. So I sat quiet and waited. As I sat there looking towards the moose kill I caught movement out of the right corner of my eye like 15 yards away. Man I tell you I jumped and spun around only to see a black squirrel running in the snow. Alright I said to myself calm your but down cuz your never going to pull a shot off acting this way. So.... I again continued to look in the direction of the moose kill while keeping an eye to my side. All at once there it was. A wolf running towards me. It stopped and looked behind it. I thought sweet there is going to be more. I clicked the safety off. It began running towards me and stopped looking behind it once again but I did not see anything else coming. It turned and began running at me again. I had it in the scope but kept watching behind it hoping a black one would be coming. This time the wolf stopped and looked directly at me. Oh oh. He must see me. Hes going to bolt... I put the cross hair on its chest ,figured it to be 130 yards and squeezed the trigger. The wolf dropped and never moved. Cool I just shot my first wolf. The wolf weighed 93# and was a female.

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Day 3 we cut a lion track and it was big. We turned out the first dog and with in seconds it opened. So we turned out the other 2 dogs and waited. Well it couldn't of been 30 minutes or so and it appeared according to the gps that the dogs had the cat treed. The guide looked at me and kind of laughed and said get ready because the cat was treed 3000 feet straight up. We shed our heavy layers and headed off. It was basically all rock with about 2 feet of snow. All we could do was crawl on our hands and knees cuz it was sooo steep. We would crawl up 10 or 15 feet and slide backwards 2 or 3. This went on the whole way. It took us 3 hours to get to the tree. As we got close you could hear the dogs going nuts. We crawled in real quiet. We knew this cat had to be ready to bail especially being there for 3 hours. Once at the tree we could see the cat and it was huge. The only problem was that it was so thick and we couldn't find an opening to take the shot. We kept moving around the tree and finally found a small hole. The only problem was we were directly under the cat. I had a 5 inch hole that was exposing the cats chest between its front shoulders. The guide asked if I could do this and I was positive I could. The only thing I had to miss was a small and I mean small twig. The guide was urging me to take the shot because he knew this cat wasn't going to stick around.I calmed myself down took a breath ,aimed and squeezed the trigger on my 30-30. The cat reared back and jumped right at us. Needless to say we were a## holes and elbows trying to get out of the way. The cat hit the ground running and the dogs took chase. I thought I had missed the cat but didn't know how. We gathered our selves and started running after the dogs when we seen blood. What we had just crawled up we were now running down. It was a short run when we caught up to the dogs and the cat VERY MUCH alive. The guide yelled to get in here and kill this cat. When I got there the cat was bayed on the ground and had just bit one of the dogs. It's mouth was wide open and it was clawing at the dogs. I ran right in to about 15 feet aimed and when a dog cleared I shot killing the cat. What the heck had just happened???? I was in total shock. I just killed a trophy cat that had taken 4 years to get. I was truely blessed. Our attention then turned to the dogs. All were good except the one that got bit. He was bleeding but not bad. As I sat on the ground where I had shot holding the dog he was still barking at the cat. What drive... The first shot I had hit that very SMALL twig on that tree and the bullet must of fragmented and it hit the cat in the leg. The cat weighed 162# and was a male and measured 8 foot exactly.

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I am not very computer savy so the pics will be put on later today by Displayed Name..

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Sweet story only thing that would be nice is a few more breaks in your story. Got hard to read about half way. Congrats on the lion and wolf bet it was a sweet hunt.
 
Great story Ken!Always thought uncle Murphy should be aunt Murphy cause she can be a beotch for sure but way to go,never give up!
 
Congratulations!!!!!!!!

Great story!!!!!!!!!

Felt like I was there with you except for the climb up the mountain.You had to make that climb without me.
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Congratulations, thanks for sharing! Make sure you keep uncle Murphy with you. I don't like him hanging out with me. Lol.
 
Great hunt recap Ken, really enjoyed them. Ok fellas check out these trophies.
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I'm sure Ken wouldn't mind if someone else took these pics and inserted them into the story for him. Maybe a few breaks too.
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Ryan thanks for the help. As I said I am not computer savy nor am I a writer. Thanks for all the comments. Just so you all know I am 6'1" and 195 pounds. It was truely awesome.
 
This has been something I have been working at for a while. I am definately going to have both full mounted in a scene. Probably won't ever happen again. What the H. Beans and rice for a while in order to pay for it all can't be that bad. Right? I can't wait to get them done. It probably won't be till November or so. I will for sure be sharing when they are done.
 
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