OUTDOOR PASTIMES OF AN
AMERICAN HUNTER
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[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1908, by P.A. Juley, New York._
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OUTDOOR PASTIMES
OF AN
AMERICAN HUNTER
BY
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
ILLUSTRATED
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1908
COPYRIGHT, 1893, 1895, 1897, 1904, BY
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE
MACMILLAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1905, 1907, 1908, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
_All rights reserved_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION TO SECOND EDITION
Chapters XII and XIII relate to experiences that occurred since the
first edition of this volume was published. The photographs in Chapter
XII were taken by Dr. Alexander Lambert; those in Chapter XIII by Mrs.
Herbert Wadsworth and Mr. Clinedinst.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
THE WHITE HOUSE, January 1, 1908.
TO
JOHN BURROUGHS
Dear Oom John:—Every lover of outdoor life must feel a sense of
affectionate obligation to you. Your writings appeal to all who care for
the life of the woods and the fields, whether their tastes keep them in
the homely, pleasant farm country or lead them into the wilderness. It
is a good thing for our people that you should have lived; and surely no
man can wish to have more said of him.
I wish to express my hearty appreciation of your warfare against the
sham nature-writers—those whom you have called “the yellow journalists
of the woods.” From the days of Æsop to the days of Reinecke Fuchs, and
from the days of Reinecke Fuchs to the present time, there has been a
distinct and attractive place in literature for those who write avowed
fiction in which the heroes are animals with human or semi-human
attributes. This fiction serves a useful purpose in many ways, even in
the way of encouraging people to take the right view of outdoor life and
outdoor creatures; but it is unpardonable for any observer of nature to
write fiction and then publish it as truth, and he who exposes and wars
against such action is entitled to respect and support. You in your own
person have illustrated what can be done by the lover of nature who has
trained himself to keen observation, who describes accurately what is
thus observed, and who, finally, possesses the additional gift of
writing with charm and interest.
You were with me on one of the trips described in this volume, and I
trust that to look over it will recall the pleasant days we spent
together.
Your friend,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
THE WHITE HOUSE, October 2, 1905.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
WITH THE COUGAR HOUNDS 1
CHAPTER II
A COLORADO BEAR HUNT 68
CHAPTER III
WOLF-COURSING 100
CHAPTER IV
HUNTING IN THE CATTLE COUNTRY; THE PRONGBUCK 133
CHAPTER V
A SHOT AT A MOUNTAIN SHEEP 181
CHAPTER VI
THE WHITETAIL DEER 193
CHAPTER VII
THE MULE-DEER OR ROCKY MOUNTAIN BLACKTAIL 224
CHAPTER VIII
THE WAPITI OR ROUND-HORNED ELK 256
CHAPTER IX
WILDERNESS RESERVES; THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 287
CHAPTER X
BOOKS ON BIG GAME 318
CHAPTER XI
AT HOME 339
CHAPTER XII
IN THE LOUISIANA CANEBRAKES 360
CHAPTER XIII
SMALL COUNTRY NEIGHBORS 391
* * * * *
⁂ Seven of these Chapters have been recently written;
the others have been revised and added to since they
originally appeared in the publications of the Boone and
Crockett Club and in Mr. Caspar Whitney’s “Deer Family.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
THEODORE ROOSEVELT _Frontispiece_
_Photogravure from a photograph._
FACING PAGE
GOFF AND THE PACK 5
TURK AND A BOBCAT IN TOP OF A PINYON 12
BOBCAT IN PINYON 16
STARTING FOR A HUNT 33
THE FIRST COUGAR KILLED 37
AFTER THE FIGHT 44
COUGAR IN A TREE 50
BARKING TREED 63
STARTING FOR CAMP 68
AT DINNER 74
THE PACK STRIKES THE FRESH BEAR TRAIL 77
DEATH OF THE BIG BEAR 83
STEWART AND THE BOBCAT 86
THE PACK BAYING THE BEAR 88
A DOILY BEAR 91
THE BIG BEAR 94
STARTING TOWARD THE WOLF GROUNDS 101
GREYHOUNDS RESTING AFTER A RUN 104
AT THE TAIL OF THE CHUCK WAGON 108
THE BIG D COW PONY 112
ABERNETHY AND COYOTE 116
ABERNETHY RETURNS FROM THE HUNT 125
BONY MOORE AND THE COYOTE 129
ON THE LITTLE MISSOURI 138
CAMPING ON THE ANTELOPE GROUNDS 156
RANCH WAGON RETURNING FROM HUNT 182
ELKHORN RANCH 216
THE RANCH HOUSE 238
THE RANCH VERANDA 248
THE PACK TRAIN 264
TROPHIES OF A SUCCESSFUL HUNT 277
TROPHIES IN THE WHITE HOUSE DINING-ROOM 284
ANTELOPE IN THE STREETS OF GARDINER 294
BLACKTAIL DEER ON PARADE GROUND 299
ELK IN SNOW 304
OOM JOHN 309
BEARS AND TOURISTS 311
GRIZZLY BEAR AND COOK 314
THE BEAR AND THE CHAMBERMAID 316
THE NORTH ROOM AT SAGAMORE HILL 324
RENOWN 341
HIS FIRST BUCK 343
ALGONQUIN AND SKIP 344
PETER RABBIT 346
THE GUINEA PIGS 348
FAMILY FRIENDS 350
JOSIAH 354
BLEISTEIN JUMPING 356
THE BEAR HUNTERS 366
LISTENING FOR THE PACK 376
AUDREY TAKES THE BARS 396
THE STONE WALL 402
ROSWELL BEHAVES LIKE A GENTLEMAN 414
ROSWELL FIGHTS FOR HIS HEAD 418
* * * * *
⁂ The cuts for Chapter I are from photographs taken by
Philip B. Stewart; those in Chapter II, from photographs
taken by Dr. Alexander Lambert and Philip B. Stewart;
those in Chapter III, from photographs taken by Dr.
Lambert and Sloan Simpson; those in Chapter IX were
obtained through Major Pitcher; most of the others are
from photographs taken by me or by members of my family.
OUTDOOR PASTIMES OF
AN AMERICAN HUNTER
CHAPTER I
WITH THE COUGAR HOUNDS
In January, 1901, I started on a five weeks’ cougar hunt from Meeker in
Northwest Colorado. My companions were Mr. Philip B. Stewart and Dr.
Gerald Webb, of Colorado Springs; Stewart was the captain of the
victorious Yale nine of ’86. We reached Meeker on January 11th, after a
forty mile drive from the railroad, through the bitter winter weather;
it was eighteen degrees below zero when we started. At Meeker we met
John B. Goff, the hunter, and left town the next morning on horseback
for his ranch, our hunting beginning that same afternoon, when after a
brisk run our dogs treed a bobcat. After a fortnight Stewart and Webb
returned, Goff and I staying out three weeks longer. We did not have to
camp out, thanks to the warm-hearted hospitality of the proprietor and
manager of the Keystone Ranch, and of the Mathes Brothers and Judge
Foreman, both of whose ranches I also visited. The five weeks were spent
hunting north of the White River, most of the time in the neighborhood
of Coyote Basin and Colorow Mountain. In midwinter, hunting on horseback
in the Rockies is apt to be cold work, but we were too warmly clad to
mind the weather. We wore heavy flannels, jackets lined with sheepskin,
caps which drew down entirely over our ears, and on our feet heavy
ordinary socks, german socks, and overshoes. Galloping through the brush
and among the spikes of the dead cedars, meant that now and then one got
snagged; I found tough overalls better than trousers; and most of the
time I did not need the jacket, wearing my old buckskin shirt, which is
to my mind a particularly useful and comfortable garment.
It is a high, dry country, where the winters are usually very cold, but
the snow not under ordinary circumstances very deep. It is wild and
broken in character, the hills and low mountains rising in sheer slopes,
broken by cliffs and riven by deeply cut and gloomy gorges and ravines.
The sage-brush grows everywhere upon the flats and hillsides. Large open
groves of pinyon and cedar are scattered over the peaks, ridges, and
table-lands. Tall spruces cluster in the cold ravines. Cottonwoods grow
along the stream courses, and there are occasional patches of scrub-oak
and quaking asp. The entire country is taken up with cattle ranges
wherever it is possible to get a sufficient water-supply, natural or
artificial. Some thirty miles to the east and north the mountains rise
higher, the evergreen forest becomes continuous, the snow lies deep all
through the winter, and such Northern animals as the wolverene, lucivee,
and snowshoe rabbit are found. This high country is the summer home of
the Colorado elk, now woefully diminished in numbers, and of the
Colorado blacktail deer, which are still very plentiful, but which,
unless better protected, will follow the elk in the next few decades. I
am happy to say that there are now signs to show that the State is
waking up to the need of protecting both elk and deer; the few remaining
mountain sheep in Colorado are so successfully protected that they are
said to be increasing in numbers. In winter both elk and deer come down
to the lower country, through a part of which I made my hunting trip. We
did not come across any elk, but I have never, even in the old days,
seen blacktail more abundant than they were in this region. The bucks
had not lost their antlers, and were generally, but not always, found in
small troops by themselves; the does, yearlings, and fawns—now almost
yearlings themselves—went in bands. They seemed tame, and we often
passed close to them before they took alarm. Of course at that season it
was against the law to kill them; and even had this not been so none of
our party would have dreamed of molesting them.
Flocks of Alaskan long-spurs and of rosy finches flitted around the
ranch buildings; but at that season there was not very much small bird
life.
The midwinter mountain landscape was very beautiful, whether under the
brilliant blue sky of the day, or the starlight or glorious moonlight of
the night, or when under the dying sun the snowy peaks, and the light
clouds above, kindled into flame, and sank again to gold and amber and
sombre purple. After the snow-storms the trees, almost hidden beneath
the light, feathery masses, gave a new and strange look to the
mountains, as if they were giant masses of frosted silver. Even the
storms had a beauty of their own. The keen, cold air, the wonderful
scenery, and the interest and excitement of the sport, made our veins
thrill and beat with buoyant life.
In cougar hunting the success of the hunter depends absolutely upon his
hounds. As hounds that are not perfectly trained are worse than useless,
this means that success depends absolutely upon the man who trains and
hunts the hounds. Goff was one of the best hunters with whom I have ever
been out, and he had trained his pack to a point of perfection for its
special work which I have never known another such pack to reach. With
the exception of one new hound, which he had just purchased, and of a
puppy, which was being trained, not one of the pack would look at a deer
even when they were all as keen as mustard, were not on a trail, and
when the deer got up but fifty yards or so from them. By the end of the
hunt both the new hound and the puppy were entirely trustworthy; of
course, Goff can only keep up his pack by continually including new or
young dogs with the veterans. As cougar are only plentiful where deer
are infinitely more plentiful, the first requisite for a good cougar
hound is that it shall leave its natural prey, the deer, entirely alone.
Goff’s pack ran only bear, cougar, and bobcat. Under no circumstances
were they ever permitted to follow elk, deer, antelope or, of course,
rabbit. Nor were they allowed to follow a wolf unless it was wounded;
for in such a rough country they would at once run out of sight and
hearing, and moreover if they did overtake the wolf they would be so
scattered as to come up singly and probably be overcome one after
another. Being bold dogs they were always especially eager after wolf
and coyote, and when they came across the trail of either, though they
would not follow it, they would usually challenge loudly. If the
circumstances were such that they could overtake the wolf in a body, it
could make no effective fight against them, no matter how large and
powerful. On the one or two occasions when this had occurred, the pack
had throttled “Isegrim” without getting a scratch.
[Illustration:
GOFF AND THE PACK
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
As the dogs did all the work, we naturally became extremely interested
in them, and rapidly grew to know the voice, peculiarities, and special
abilities of each. There were eight hounds and four fighting dogs. The
hounds were of the ordinary Eastern type, used from the Adirondacks to
the Mississippi and the Gulf in the chase of deer and fox. Six of them
were black and tan and two were mottled. They differed widely in size
and voice. The biggest, and, on the whole, the most useful, was Jim, a
very fast, powerful, and true dog with a great voice. When the animal
was treed or bayed, Jim was especially useful because he never stopped
barking; and we could only find the hounds, when at bay, by listening
for the sound of their voices. Among the cliffs and precipices the pack
usually ran out of sight and hearing if the chase lasted any length of
time. Their business was to bring the quarry to bay, or put it up a
tree, and then to stay with it and make a noise until the hunters came
up. During this hunt there were two or three occasions when they had a
cougar up a tree for at least three hours before we arrived, and on
several occasions Goff had known them to keep a cougar up a tree
overnight and to be still barking around the tree when the hunters at
last found them the following morning. Jim always did his share of the
killing, being a formidable fighter, though too wary to take hold until
one of the professional fighting dogs had seized. He was a great bully
with the other dogs, robbing them of their food, and yielding only to
Turk. He possessed great endurance, and very stout feet.
On the whole the most useful dog next to Jim was old Boxer. Age had made
Boxer slow, and in addition to this, the first cougar we tackled bit him
through one hind leg, so that for the remainder of the trip he went on
three legs, or, as Goff put it, “packed one leg”; but this seemed not to
interfere with his appetite, his endurance, or his desire for the chase.
Of all the dogs he was the best to puzzle out a cold trail on a bare
hillside, or in any difficult place. He hardly paid any heed to the
others, always insisting upon working out the trail for himself, and he
never gave up. Of course, the dogs were much more apt to come upon the
cold than upon the fresh trail of a cougar, and it was often necessary
for them to spend several hours in working out a track which was at
least two days old. Both Boxer and Jim had enormous appetites. Boxer was
a small dog and Jim a very large one, and as the relations of the pack
among themselves were those of brutal wild-beast selfishness, Boxer had
to eat very quickly if he expected to get anything when Jim was around.
He never ventured to fight Jim, but in deep-toned voice appealed to
heaven against the unrighteousness with which he was treated; and time
and again such appeal caused me to sally out and rescue his dinner from
Jim’s highway robbery. Once, when Boxer was given a biscuit, which he
tried to bolt whole, Jim simply took his entire head in his jaws, and
convinced him that he had his choice of surrendering the biscuit, or
sharing its passage down Jim’s capacious throat. Boxer promptly gave up
the biscuit, then lay on his back and wailed a protest to fate—his voice
being deep rather than loud, so that on the trail, when heard at a
distance, it sounded a little as if he was croaking. After killing a
cougar we usually cut up the carcass and fed it to the dogs, if we did
not expect another chase that day. They devoured it eagerly, Boxer,
after his meal, always looking as if he had swallowed a mattress.
Next in size to Jim was Tree’em. Tree’em was a good dog, but I never
considered him remarkable until his feat on the last day of our hunt, to
be afterward related. He was not a very noisy dog, and when “barking
treed” he had a meditative way of giving single barks separated by
intervals of several seconds, all the time gazing stolidly up at the
big, sinister cat which he was baying. Early in the hunt, in the course
of a fight with one of the cougars, he received some injury to his tail,
which made it hang down like a piece of old rope. Apparently it hurt him
a good deal and we let him rest for a fortnight. This put him in great
spirits and made him fat and strong, but only enabled him to recover
power over the root of the tail, while the tip hung down as before; it
looked like a curved pump-handle when he tried to carry it erect.
Lil and Nel were two very stanch and fast bitches, the only two dogs
that could keep up to Jim in a quick burst. They had shrill voices.
Their only failing was a tendency to let the other members of the pack
cow them so that they did not get their full share of the food. It was
not a pack in which a slow or timid dog had much chance for existence.
They would all unite in the chase and the fierce struggle which usually
closed it; but the instant the quarry was killed each dog resumed his
normal attitude of greedy anger or greedy fear toward the others.
Another bitch rejoiced in the not very appropriate name of Pete. She was
a most ardent huntress. In the middle of our trip she gave birth to a
litter of puppies, but before they were two weeks old she would slip
away after us and join with the utmost ardor in the hunting and
fighting. Her brother Jimmie, although of the same age (both were
young), was not nearly as far advanced. He would run well on a fresh
trail, but a cold trail or a long check always discouraged him and made
him come back to Goff. He was rapidly learning; a single beating taught
him to let deer alone. The remaining hound, Bruno, had just been added
to the pack. He showed tendencies both to muteness and babbling, and at
times, if he thought himself unobserved, could not resist making a
sprint after a deer; but he occasionally rendered good service. If Jim
or Boxer gave tongue every member of the pack ran to the sound; but not
a dog paid any heed to Jimmie or Bruno. Yet both ultimately became
first-class hounds.
The fighting dogs always trotted at the heels of the horses, which had
become entirely accustomed to them, and made no objection when they
literally rubbed against their heels. The fighters never left us until
we came to where we could hear the hounds “barking treed,” or with their
quarry at bay. Then they tore in a straight line to the sound. They were
the ones who were expected to do the seizing and take the punishment,
though the minute they actually had hold of the cougar, the hounds all
piled on too, and did their share of the killing; but the seizers fought
the head while the hounds generally took hold behind. All of them,
fighters and hounds alike, were exceedingly good-natured and
affectionate with their human friends, though short-tempered to a degree
with one another. The best of the fighters was old Turk, who was by
blood half hound and half “Siberian bloodhound.” Both his father and his
mother were half-breeds of the same strains, and both were famous
fighters. Once, when Goff had wounded an enormous gray wolf in the hind
leg, the father had overtaken it and fought it to a standstill. The two
dogs together were an overmatch for any wolf. Turk had had a sister who
was as good as he was; but she had been killed the year before by a
cougar which bit her through the skull; accidents being, of course,
frequent in the pack, for a big cougar is an even more formidable
opponent to dogs than a wolf. Turk’s head and body were seamed with
scars. He had lost his lower fangs, but he was still a most formidable
dog. While we were at the Keystone Ranch a big steer which had been
driven in, got on the fight, and the foreman, William Wilson, took Turk
out to aid him. At first Turk did not grasp what was expected of him,
because all the dogs were trained never to touch anything domestic—at
the different ranches where we stopped the cats and kittens wandered
about, perfectly safe, in the midst of this hard-biting crew of bear and
cougar fighters. But when Turk at last realized that he was expected to
seize the steer, he did the business with speed and thoroughness; he not
only threw the steer, but would have killed it then and there had he not
been, with much difficulty, taken away. Three dogs like Turk, in their
prime and with their teeth intact, could, I believe, kill an ordinary
female cougar, and could hold even a big male so as to allow it to be
killed with the knife.
Next to Turk were two half-breeds between bull and shepherd, named Tony
and Baldy. They were exceedingly game, knowing-looking little dogs, with
a certain alert swagger that reminded one of the walk of some
light-weight prize-fighters. In fights with cougars, bears, and lynx,
they too had been badly mauled and had lost a good many of their teeth.
Neither of the gallant little fellows survived the trip. Their place was
taken by a white bulldog bitch, Queen, which we picked up at the
Keystone Ranch; a very affectionate and good-humored dog, but, when her
blood was aroused, a dauntless though rather stupid fighter.
Unfortunately she did not seize by the head, taking hold of any part
that was nearest.
The pack had many interesting peculiarities, but none more so than the
fact that four of them climbed trees. Only one of the hounds, little
Jimmie, ever tried the feat; but of the fighters, not only Tony and
Baldy but big Turk climbed every tree that gave them any chance. The
pinyons and cedars were low, multi-forked, and usually sent off branches
from near the ground. In consequence the dogs could, by industrious
effort, work their way almost to the top. The photograph of Turk and the
bobcat in the pinyon (facing p. 12) shows them at an altitude of about
thirty feet above the ground. Now and then a dog would lose his footing
and come down with a whack which sounded as if he must be disabled, but
after a growl and a shake he would start up the tree again. They could
not fight well while in a tree, and were often scratched or knocked to
the ground by a cougar; and when the quarry was shot out of its perch
and seized by the expectant throng below, the dogs in the tree, yelping
with eager excitement, dived headlong down through the branches,
regardless of consequences.
The horses were stout, hardy, sure-footed beasts, not very fast, but
able to climb like goats, and to endure an immense amount of work. Goff
and I each used two for the trip.
The bear were all holed up for the winter, and so our game was limited
to cougars and bobcats. In the books the bobcat is always called a lynx,
which it of course is; but whenever a hunter or trapper speaks of a lynx
(which he usually calls “link,” feeling dimly that the other
pronunciation is a plural), he means a lucivee. Bobcat is a good
distinctive name, and it is one which I think the book people might with
advantage adopt; for wildcat, which is the name given to the small lynx
in the East, is already pre-empted by the true wildcat of Europe. Like
all people of European descent who have gone into strange lands, we
Americans have christened our wild beasts with a fine disregard for
their specific and generic relations. We called the bison “buffalo” as
long as it existed, and we still call the big stag an “elk,” instead of
using for it the excellent term wapiti; on the other hand, to the true
elk and the reindeer we gave the new names moose and caribou—excellent
names, too, by the way. The prong buck is always called antelope, though
it is not an antelope at all; and the white goat is not a goat; while
the distinctive name of “bighorn” is rarely used for the mountain sheep.
In most cases, however, it is mere pedantry to try to upset popular
custom in such matters; and where, as with the bobcat, a perfectly good
name is taken, it would be better for scientific men to adopt it. I may
add that in this particular of nomenclature we are no worse sinners than
other people. The English in Ceylon, the English and Dutch in South
Africa, and the Spanish in South America, have all shown the same genius
for misnaming beasts and birds.
[Illustration:
TURK AND A BOBCAT IN TOP OF A PINYON
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
Bobcats were very numerous where we were hunting. They fed chiefly upon
the rabbits, which fairly swarmed; mostly cotton-tails, but a few jacks.
Contrary to the popular belief, the winter is in many places a time of
plenty for carnivorous wild beasts. In this place, for instance, the
abundance of deer and rabbits made good hunting for both cougar and
bobcat, and all those we killed were as fat as possible, and in
consequence weighed more than their inches promised. The bobcats are
very fond of prairie-dogs, and haunt the dog towns as soon as spring
comes and the inhabitants emerge from their hibernation. They sometimes
pounce on higher game. We came upon an eight months’ fawn—very nearly a
yearling—which had been killed by a big male bobcat; and Judge Foreman
informed me that near his ranch, a few years previously, an
exceptionally large bobcat had killed a yearling doe. Bobcats will also
take lambs and young pigs, and if the chance occurs will readily seize
their small kinsman, the house cat.
Bobcats are very fond of lurking round prairie-dog towns as soon as the
prairie-dogs come out in spring. In this part of Colorado, by the way,
the prairie-dogs were of an entirely different species from the common
kind of the plains east of the Rockies.
We found that the bobcats sometimes made their lairs along the rocky
ledges or in holes in the cut banks, and sometimes in thickets, prowling
about during the night, and now and then even during the day. We never
chased them unless the dogs happened to run across them by accident when
questing for cougar, or when we were returning home after a day when we
had failed to find cougar. Usually the cat gave a good run, occasionally
throwing out the dogs by doubling or jack-knifing. Two or three times
one of them gave us an hour’s sharp trotting, cantering, and galloping
through the open cedar and pinyon groves on the table-lands; and the
runs sometimes lasted for a much longer period when the dogs had to go
across ledges and through deep ravines.
On one of our runs a party of ravens fluttered along from tree to tree
beside us, making queer gurgling noises and evidently aware that they
might expect to reap a reward from our hunting. Ravens, multitudes of
magpies, and golden and bald eagles were seen continually, and all four
flocked to any carcass which was left in the open. The eagle and the
raven are true birds of the wilderness, and in a way their presence both
heightened and relieved the iron desolation of the wintry mountains.
Over half the cats we started escaped, getting into caves or deep holes
in washouts. In the other instances they went up trees and were of
course easily shot. Tony and Baldy would bring them out of any hole into
which they themselves could get. After their loss, Lil, who was a small
hound, once went into a hole in a washout after a cat. After awhile she
stopped barking, though we could still hear the cat growling. What had
happened to her we did not know. We spent a couple of hours calling to
her and trying to get her to come out, but she neither came out nor
answered, and, as sunset was approaching and the ranch was some miles
off, we rode back there, intending to return with spades in the morning.
However, by breakfast we found that Lil had come back. We supposed that
she had got on the other side of the cat and had been afraid or unable
to attack it; so that as Collins the cow-puncher, who was a Southerner,
phrased it, “she just naturally stayed in the hole” until some time
during the night the cat went out and she followed. When once hunters
and hounds have come into the land, it is evident that the bobcats which
take refuge in caves have a far better chance of surviving than those
which make their lairs in the open and go up trees. But trees are sure
havens against their wilderness foes. Goff informed me that he once came
in the snow to a place where the tracks showed that some coyotes had put
a bobcat up a tree, and had finally abandoned the effort to get at it.
Any good fighting dog will kill a bobcat; but an untrained dog, even of
large size, will probably fail, as the bobcat makes good use of both
teeth and claws. The cats we caught frequently left marks on some of the
pack. We found them very variable in size. My two largest—both of course
males—weighed respectively thirty-one and thirty-nine pounds. The
latter, Goff said, was of exceptional size, and as large as any he had
ever killed. The full-grown females went down as low as eighteen pounds,
or even lower.
When the bobcats were in the tree-tops we could get up very close. They
looked like large malevolent pussies. I once heard one of them squall
defiance when the dogs tried to get it out of a hole. Ordinarily they
confined themselves to a low growling. Stewart and Goff went up the
trees with their cameras whenever we got a bobcat in a favorable
position, and endeavored to take its photograph. Sometimes they were
very successful. Although they were frequently within six feet of a cat,
and occasionally even poked it in order to make it change its position,
I never saw one make a motion to jump on them. Two or three times on our
approach the cat jumped from the tree almost into the midst of the pack,
but it was so quick that it got off before they could seize it. They
invariably put it up another tree before it had gone any distance.
Hunting the bobcat was only an incident. Our true quarry was the cougar.
I had long been anxious to make a regular hunt after cougar in a country
where the beasts were plentiful and where we could follow them with a
good pack of hounds. Astonishingly little of a satisfactory nature has
been left on record about the cougar by hunters, and in most places the
chances for observation of the big cats steadily grow less. They have
been thinned out almost to the point of extermination throughout the
Eastern States. In the Rocky Mountain region they are still plentiful in
places, but are growing less so; while on the contrary the wolf, which
was exterminated even more quickly in the East, in the West has until
recently been increasing in numbers. In northwestern Colorado a dozen
years ago, cougars were far more plentiful than wolves; whereas at the
present day the wolf is probably the more numerous. Nevertheless, there
are large areas, here and there among the Rockies, in which cougars will
be fairly plentiful for years to come.
[Illustration:
BOBCAT IN PINYON
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
No American beast has been the subject of so much loose writing or of
such wild fables as the cougar. Even its name is unsettled. In the
Eastern States it is usually called panther or painter; in the Western
States, mountain lion, or, toward the South, Mexican lion. The
Spanish-speaking people usually call it simply lion. It is, however,
sometimes called cougar in the West and Southwest of our country, and in
South America, puma. As it is desirable where possible not to use a name
that is misleading and is already appropriated to some entirely
different animal, it is best to call it cougar.
The cougar is a very singular beast, shy and elusive to an extraordinary
degree, very cowardly and yet bloodthirsty and ferocious, varying
wonderfully in size, and subject, like many other beasts, to queer
freaks of character in occasional individuals. This fact of individual
variation in size and temper is almost always ignored in treating of the
animal; whereas it ought never to be left out of sight.
The average writer, and for the matter of that, the average hunter,
where cougars are scarce, knows little or nothing of them, and in
describing them merely draws upon the stock of well-worn myths which
portray them as terrible foes of man, as dropping on their prey from
trees where they have been lying in wait, etc., etc. Very occasionally
there appears an absolutely trustworthy account like that by Dr. Hart
Merriam in his “Adirondack Mammals.” But many otherwise excellent
writers are wholly at sea in reference to the cougar. Thus one of the
best books on hunting in the far West in the old days is by Colonel
Dodge. Yet when Colonel Dodge came to describe the cougar he actually
treated of it as two species, one of which, the mountain lion, he
painted as a most ferocious and dangerous opponent of man; while the
other, the panther, was described as an abject coward, which would not
even in the last resort defend itself against man—the two of course
being the same animal.
However, the wildest of all fables about the cougar has been reserved
not for hunter or popular writer, but for a professed naturalist. In his
charmingly written book, “The Naturalist in La Plata,” Mr. Hudson
actually describes the cougar as being friendly to man, disinterestedly
adverse to harming him, and at the same time an enemy of other large
carnivores. Mr. Hudson bases his opinion chiefly upon the assertions of
the Gauchos. The Gauchos, however, go one degree beyond Mr. Hudson,
calling the puma the “friend of Christians”; whereas Mr. Hudson only
ventures to attribute to the beast humanitarian, not theological,
preferences. As a matter of fact, Mr. Hudson’s belief in the cougar’s
peculiar friendship for man, and peculiar enmity to other large beasts
of prey, has not one particle of foundation in fact as regards at any
rate the North American form—and it is hardly to be supposed that the
South American form would alone develop such extraordinary traits. For
instance, Mr. Hudson says that the South American puma when hunted will
attack the dogs in preference to the man. In North America he will fight
the dog if the dog is nearest, and if the man comes to close quarters at
the same time as the dog he will attack the man if anything more
readily, evidently recognizing in him his chief opponent. He will often
go up a tree for a single dog. On Mr. Hudson’s theory he must do this
because of his altruistic feeling toward the dog. In fact, Mr. Hudson
could make out a better case of philo-humanity for the North American
wolf than for the North American cougar. Equally absurd is it to talk,
as Mr. Hudson does, of the cougar as the especial enemy of other
ferocious beasts. Mr. Hudson speaks of it as attacking and conquering
the jaguar. Of this I know nothing, but such an extraordinary statement
should be well fortified with proofs; and if true it must mean that the
jaguar is an infinitely less formidable creature than it has been
painted. In support of his position Mr. Hudson alludes to the stories
about the cougar attacking the grizzly bear. Here I am on ground that I
do know. It is true that an occasional old hunter asserts that the
cougar does this, but the old hunter who makes such an assertion also
invariably insists that the cougar is a ferocious and habitual
man-killer, and the two statements rest upon equally slender foundations
of fact. I have never yet heard of a single authentic instance of a
cougar interfering with a full-grown big bear. It will kill bear cubs if
it gets a chance; but then so will the fox and the fisher, not to speak
of the wolf. In 1894, a cougar killed a colt on a brushy river bottom a
dozen miles below my ranch on the Little Missouri. I went down to visit
the carcass and found that it had been taken possession of by a large
grizzly. Both I and the hunter who was with me were very much interested
in what had occurred, and after a careful examination of the tracks we
concluded that the bear had arrived on the second night after the kill.
He had feasted heartily on the remains, while the cougar, whose tracks
were evident here and there at a little distance from the carcass, had
seemingly circled around it, and had certainly not interfered with the
bear, or even ventured to approach him. Now, if a cougar would ever have
meddled with a large bear it would surely have been on such an occasion
as this. If very much pressed by hunger, a large cougar will, if it gets
the chance, kill a wolf; but this is only when other game has failed,
and under all ordinary circumstances neither meddles with the other.
When I was down in Texas, hunting peccaries on the Nueces, I was in a
country where both cougar and jaguar were to be found; but no hunter had
ever heard of either molesting the other, though they were all of the
opinion that when the two met the cougar gave the path to his spotted
brother. Of course, it is never safe to dogmatize about the unknown in
zoology, or to generalize on insufficient evidence; but as regards the
North American cougar there is not a particle of truth of any kind,
sort, or description in the statement that he is the enemy of the larger
carnivores, or the friend of man; and if the South American cougar,
which so strongly resembles its Northern brother in its other habits,
has developed on these two points the extraordinary peculiarities of
which Mr. Hudson speaks, full and adequate proof should be forthcoming;
and this proof is now wholly wanting.
Fables aside, the cougar is a very interesting creature. It is found
from the cold, desolate plains of Patagonia to north of the Canadian
line, and lives alike among the snow-clad peaks of the Andes and in the
steaming forests of the Amazon. Doubtless careful investigation will
disclose several varying forms in an animal found over such immense
tracts of country and living under such utterly diverse conditions. But
in its essential habits and traits, the big, slinking, nearly
uni-colored cat seems to be much the same everywhere, whether living in
mountain, open plain, or forest, under arctic cold or tropic heat. When
the settlements become thick, it retires to dense forest, dark swamp or
inaccessible mountain gorge, and moves about only at night. In wilder
regions it not infrequently roams during the day and ventures freely
into the open. Deer are its customary prey where they are plentiful,
bucks, does, and fawns being killed indifferently. Usually the deer is
killed almost instantaneously, but occasionally there is quite a
scuffle, in which the cougar may get bruised, though, as far as I know,
never seriously. It is also a dreaded enemy of sheep, pigs, calves, and
especially colts, and when pressed by hunger a big male cougar will kill
a full-grown horse or cow, moose or wapiti. It is the special enemy of
mountain sheep. In 1886, while hunting white goats north of Clarke’s
fork of the Columbia, in a region where cougar were common, I found them
preying as freely on the goats as on the deer. It rarely catches
antelope, but is quick to seize rabbits, other small beasts, and even
porcupines, as well as bobcats, coyotes and foxes.
No animal, not even the wolf, is so rarely seen or so difficult to get
without dogs. On the other hand, no other wild beast of its size and
power is so easy to kill by the aid of dogs. There are many
contradictions in its character. Like the American wolf, it is certainly
very much afraid of man; yet it habitually follows the trail of the
hunter or solitary traveller, dogging his footsteps, itself always
unseen. I have had this happen to me personally. When hungry it will
seize and carry off any dog; yet it will sometimes go up a tree when
pursued even by a single small dog wholly unable to do it the least
harm. It is small wonder that the average frontier settler should grow
to regard almost with superstition the great furtive cat which he never
sees, but of whose presence he is ever aware, and of whose prowess
sinister proof is sometimes afforded by the deaths not alone of his
lesser stock, but even of his milch cow or saddle horse.
The cougar is as large, as powerful, and as formidably armed as the
Indian panther, and quite as well able to attack man; yet the instances
of its having done so are exceedingly rare. The vast majority of the
tales to this effect are undoubtedly inventions. But it is foolish to
deny that such attacks on human beings ever occur. There are a number of
authentic instances, the latest that has come to my knowledge being
related in the following letter, of May 15, 1893, written to Dr. Merriam
by Professor W. H. Brewer, of Yale: “In 1880 I visited the base of Mount
Shasta, and stopped a day to renew the memories of 1862, when I had
climbed and measured this mountain. Panthers were numerous and were so
destructive to sheep that poisoning by strychnine was common. A man
living near who had (as a young hunter) gone up Mount Shasta with us in
’62, now married (1880) and on a ranch, came to visit me, with a little
son five or six years old. This boy when younger, but two or three years
old, if I recollect rightly, had been attacked by a panther. He was
playing in the yard by the house when a lean two-thirds grown panther
came into the yard and seized the child by the throat. The child
screamed, and alarmed the mother (who told me the story). She seized a
broom and rushed out, while an old man at the house seized the gun. The
panther let go the child and was shot. I saw the boy. He had the scars
of the panther’s teeth in the cheek, and below on the under side of the
lower jaw, and just at the throat. This was the only case that came to
my knowledge at first hand of a panther attacking a human being in that
State, except one or two cases where panthers, exasperated by wounds,
had fought with the hunters who had wounded them.” This was a young
cougar, bold, stupid, and very hungry. Goff told me of one similar case
where a cougar stalked a young girl, but was shot just before it was
close enough to make the final rush. As I have elsewhere related, I know
of two undoubted cases, one in Mississippi, one in Florida, where a
negro was attacked and killed by a cougar, while alone in a swamp at
night. But these occurred many years ago. The instance related by
Professor Brewer is the only one I have come across happening in recent
years, in which the cougar actually seized a human being with the
purpose of making prey of it; though doubtless others have occurred. I
have never known the American wolf actually to attack a human being from
hunger or to make prey of him; whereas the Old-World wolf, like the
Old-World leopard, undoubtedly sometimes turns man-eater.
Even when hunted the cougar shows itself, as a rule, an abject coward,
not to be compared in courage and prowess with the grizzly bear, and but
little more dangerous to man than is the wolf under similar
circumstances. Without dogs it is usually a mere chance that one is
killed. Goff has killed some 300 cougars during the sixteen years he has
been hunting in northwestern Colorado, yet all but two of them were
encountered while he was with his pack; although this is in a region
where they were plentiful. When hunted with good dogs their attention is
so taken up with the pack that they have little time to devote to men.
When hunted without dogs they never charge unless actually cornered,
and, as a general rule, not even then, unless the man chooses to come
right up to them. I knew of one Indian being killed in 1887, and near my
ranch a cowboy was mauled; but in the first instance the cougar had been
knocked down and the Indian was bending over it when it revived; and in
the next instance, the cowboy literally came right on top of the animal.
Now, under such circumstances either a bull elk or a blacktail buck will
occasionally fight; twice I have known of wounded wapiti regularly
charging, and one of my own cowboys, George Myer, was very roughly
handled by a blacktail buck which he had wounded. In all his experience
Goff says that save when he approached one too close when it was
cornered by the dogs, he never but once had a cougar start to charge
him, and on that occasion it was promptly killed by a bullet. Usually
the cougar does not even charge at the dogs beyond a few feet, confining
itself to seizing or striking any member of the pack which comes close
up; although it will occasionally, when much irritated, make a rapid
dash and seize some bold assailant. While I was on my hunt, one of
Goff’s brothers lost a hound in hunting a cougar; there were but two
hounds, and the cougar would not tree for them, finally seizing and
killing one that came too near. At the same time a ranchman not far off
set his cattle dog on a cougar, which after a short run turned and
killed the dog. But time and again cougars are brought to bay or treed
by dogs powerless to do them the slightest damage; and they usually meet
their death tamely when the hunter comes up. I have had no personal
experience either with the South American jaguar or the Old-World
leopard or panther; but these great spotted cats must be far more
dangerous adversaries than the cougar.
It is true, as I have said, that a cougar will follow a man; but then a
weasel will sometimes do the same thing. Whatever the cougar’s motive,
it is certain that in the immense majority of cases there is not the
slightest danger of his attacking the man he follows. Dr. Hart Merriam
informs me, however, that he is satisfied that he came across one
genuine instance of a cougar killing a man whose tracks he had dogged.
It cannot be too often repeated, that we must never lose sight of the
individual variation in character and conduct among wild beasts. A
thousand times a cougar might follow a man either not intending or not
daring to attack him, while in the thousandth and first case it might be
that the temper of the beast and the conditions were such that the
attack would be made.
Other beasts show almost the same wide variation in temper. Wolves, for
instance, are normally exceedingly wary of man. In this Colorado hunt I
often came across their tracks, and often heard their mournful, but to
my ears rather attractive, baying at night, but I never caught a glimpse
of one of them; nor during the years when I spent much of my time on my
ranch did I ever know of a wolf venturing to approach anywhere near a
man in the day-time, though I have had them accompany me after
nightfall, and have occasionally come across them by accident in
daylight. But on the Keystone Ranch, where I spent three weeks on this
particular trip, an incident which occurred before my arrival showed
that wolves occasionally act with extraordinary boldness. The former
owner of the ranch, Colonel Price, and one of the cowhands, Sabey (both
of whom told me the story), were driving out in a buggy from Meeker to
the ranch accompanied by a setter dog. They had no weapon with them. Two
wolves joined them and made every effort to get at the dog. They
accompanied the wagon for nearly a mile, venturing to within twenty
yards of it. They paid no heed whatever to the shouts and gestures of
the men, but did not quite dare to come to close quarters, and finally
abandoned their effort. Now, this action on their part was, as far as my
experience goes, quite as exceptional among American wolves as it is
exceptional for a cougar to attack a man. Of course, these wolves were
not after the men. They were simply after the dog; but I have never
within my own experience come upon another instance of wolves venturing
to attack a domestic animal in the immediate presence of and protected
by a man. Exactly as these two wolves suddenly chose to behave with an
absolutely unexpected daring, so a cougar will occasionally lose the
fear of man which is inherent in its race.
Normally, then, the cougar is not in any way a formidable foe to man,
and it is certainly by no means as dangerous to dogs as it could be if
its courage and intelligence equalled its power to do mischief. It
strikes with its forepaw like a cat, lacerating the foe with its sharp
claws; or else it holds the animal with them, while the muscular forearm
draws it in until the fatal bite may be inflicted. Whenever possible it
strives to bite an assailant in the head. Occasionally, when fighting
with a large dog, a cougar will throw itself on its back and try to rip
open its antagonist with its hind feet. Male cougars often fight
desperately among themselves.
Although a silent beast, yet at times, especially during the breeding
season, the males utter a wild scream, and the females also wail or
call. I once heard one cry repeatedly after nightfall, seemingly while
prowling for game. On an evening in the summer of 1897 Dr. Merriam had a
rather singular experience with a cougar. His party was camped in the
forest by Tannum Lake, on the east slope of the Cascades, near the
headwaters of a branch of the Yakima. The horses were feeding near by.
Shortly after dark a cougar cried loudly in the gloom, and the
frightened horses whinnied and stampeded. The cougar cried a number of
times afterward, but the horses did not again answer. None of them was
killed, however; and next morning, after some labor, all were again
gathered together. In 1884 I had a somewhat similar experience with a
bear, in the Big Horn Mountains.
Occasionally, but not often, the cougars I shot snarled or uttered a
low, thunderous growl as we approached the tree, or as the dogs came
upon them in the cave. In the death-grapple they were silent, excepting
that one young cougar snarled and squalled as it battled with the dogs.
The cougar is sometimes tamed. A friend of mine had one which was as
good-natured as possible until it was a year old, when it died. But one
kept by another friend, while still quite young, became treacherous and
dangerous. I doubt if they would ever become as trustworthy as a tame
wolf, which, if taken when a very young puppy, will often grow up
exactly like a dog. Two or three years ago there was such a tame wolf
with the Colorado Springs greyhounds. It was safer and more friendly
than many collies, and kept on excellent terms with the great
greyhounds; though these were themselves solely used to hunt wolves and
coyotes, and tackled them with headlong ferocity, having, unaided,
killed a score or two of the large wolves and hundreds of coyotes.
Hunting in the snow we were able to tell very clearly what the cougars
whose trails we were following had been doing. Goff’s eye for a trail
was unerring, and he read at a glance the lesson it taught. All the
cougars which we came across were living exclusively upon deer, and
their stomachs were filled with nothing else; much hair being mixed with
the meat. In each case the deer was caught by stalking and not by lying
in wait, and the cougar never went up a tree except to get rid of the
dogs. In the day-time it retired to a ledge, or ravine, or dense
thicket, starting to prowl as the dark came on. So far as I could see
the deer in each case was killed by a bite in the throat or neck. The
cougar simply rambled around in likely grounds until it saw or smelled
its quarry, and then crept up stealthily until with one or two
tremendous bounds it was able to seize its prey. If, as frequently
happened, the deer took alarm in time to avoid the first few bounds, it
always got away, for though the cougar is very fast for a short
distance, it has no wind whatever. It cannot pursue a deer for any
length of time, nor run before a dog for more than a few hundred yards,
if the dog is close up at the start. I was informed by the ranchmen that
when in May the deer leave the country, the cougars turn their attention
to the stock, and are very destructive. They have a special fondness for
horseflesh and kill almost every colt where they are plentiful, while
the big males work havoc with the saddle bands on the ranches, as well
as among the brood mares. Except in the case of a female with young they
are roving, wandering beasts, and roam great distances. After leaving
their day lairs, on a ledge, or in a gorge or thicket, they spend the
night travelling across the flats, along the ridges, over the spurs.
When they kill a deer they usually lie not very far away, and do not
again wander until they are hungry. The males travel very long distances
in the mating season. Their breeding-time is evidently irregular. We
found kittens with their eyes not yet open in the middle of January. Two
of the female cougars we killed were pregnant—in one case the young
would have been born almost immediately, that is, in February; and in
the other case in March. One, which had a partially grown young one of
over fifty pounds with it, still had milk in its teats. At the end of
January we found a male and female together, evidently mating. Goff has
also found the young just dropped in May, and even in June. The females
outnumber the males. Of the fourteen we killed, but three were males.
When a cougar kills a deer in the open it invariably drags it under some
tree or shelter before beginning to eat. All the carcasses we came
across had been thus dragged, the trail showing distinctly in the snow.
Goff, however, asserted that in occasional instances he had known a
cougar to carry a deer so that only its legs trailed on the ground.
The fourteen cougars we killed showed the widest variation not only in
size but in color, as shown by the following table. Some were as
slaty-gray as deer when in the so-called “blue”; others, rufous, almost
as bright as deer in the “red.” I use these two terms to describe the
color phases; though in some instances the tint was very undecided. The
color phase evidently has nothing to do with age, sex, season, or
locality. In this table the first cougar is the one killed by Stewart,
the sixth by Webb. The length is measured in a straight line, “between
uprights,” from the nose to the extreme tip of the tail, when the beast
was stretched out. The animals were weighed with the steelyard and also
spring scales. Before measuring, we pulled the beast out as straight as
we possibly could; and as the biggest male represents about, or very
nearly, the maximum for the species, it is easy to see that there can be
no basis for the talk one sometimes hears about ten and eleven foot
cougars. No cougar, measured at all fairly, has ever come anywhere near
reaching the length of nine feet. The fresh hide can easily be stretched
a couple of feet extra. Except the first two, all were full-grown; the
biggest male was nearly three times the size of the smallest female.
───────────┬───────────┬───────────────────────┬───────────┬───────────
Sex. │ Color. │ Length. │ Weight. │ Date.
───────────┼───────────┼───────────────────────┼───────────┼───────────
│ │ Feet. Inches. │ Pounds. │ 1901.
│ │ │ │
[1]Female. │Blue. │ 4 11 │ 47 │January 19
[1]Female. │Red. │ 4 11½ │ 51 │February 12
Female. │Blue. │ 6 │ 80 │January 14
Female. │Red. │ 6 4 │ 102 │January 28
Female. │Blue. │ 6 5 │ 105 │February 12
Female. │Blue. │ 6 5 │ 107 │January 18
Female. │Red. │ 6 9 │ 108 │January 24
Female. │Blue. │ 6 7 │ 118 │January 15
Female. │Blue. │ 6 7 │ 120 │January 31
Female. │Red. │ 6 9 │ 124 │February 5
Female. │Blue. │ 7 │ 133 │February 8
Male. │Red. │ 7 6 │ 160 │February 13
Male. │Blue. │ 7 8 │ 164 │January 27
Male. │Red. │ 8 │ 227 │February 14
───────────┴───────────┴───────────────────────┴───────────┴───────────
Footnote 1:
Young.
I shot five bobcats: two old males weighing 39 and 31 pounds
respectively; and three females, weighing, respectively, 25, 21, and 18
pounds. Webb killed two, a male of 29 pounds and a female of 20; and
Stewart two females, one of 22 pounds, and the other a young one of 11
pounds.
I sent the cougar and bobcat skulls to Dr. Merriam, at the Biological
Survey, Department of Agriculture, Washington. He wrote me as follows:
“The big [cougar] skull is certainly a giant. I have compared it with
the largest in our collection from British Columbia and Wyoming, and
find it larger than either. It is in fact the largest skull of any
member of the _Felis concolor_ group I have seen. A hasty preliminary
examination indicates that the animal is quite different from the
northwest coast form, but that it is the same as my horse-killer from
Wyoming—_Felis hippolestes_. In typical _Felis concolor_ from Brazil the
skull is lighter, the brain-case thinner and more smoothly rounded,
devoid of the strongly developed sagittal crest; the under jaw
straighter and lighter.
“Your series of skulls from Colorado is incomparably the largest, most
complete and most valuable series ever brought together from any single
locality, and will be of inestimable value in determining the amount of
individual variation.”
[Illustration:
STARTING FOR A HUNT
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
We rode in to the Keystone Ranch late on the evening of the second day
after leaving Meeker. We had picked up a couple of bobcats on the way,
and had found a cougar’s kill (or bait, as Goff called it)—a doe, almost
completely eaten. The dogs puzzled for several hours over the cold trail
of the cougar; but it was old, and ran hither and thither over bare
ground, so that they finally lost it. The ranch was delightfully
situated at the foot of high wooded hills broken by cliffs, and it was
pleasant to reach the warm, comfortable log buildings, with their clean
rooms, and to revel in the abundant, smoking-hot dinner, after the long,
cold hours in the saddle. As everywhere else in the cattle country
nowadays, a successful effort had been made to store water on the
Keystone, and there were great stretches of wire fencing—two
improvements entirely unknown in former days. But the foreman, William
Wilson, and the two punchers or cowhands, Sabey and Collins, were of the
old familiar type—skilled, fearless, hardy, hard-working, with all the
intelligence and self-respect that we like to claim as typical of the
American character at its best. All three carried short saddle guns when
they went abroad, and killed a good many coyotes, and now and then a
gray wolf. The cattle were for the most part grade Herefords, very
different from the wild, slab-sided, long-horned creatures which covered
the cattle country a score of years ago.
The next day, January 14th, we got our first cougar. This kind of
hunting was totally different from that to which I had been accustomed.
In the first place, there was no need of always being on the alert for a
shot, as it was the dogs who did the work. In the next place, instead of
continually scanning the landscape, what we had to do was to look down
so as to be sure not to pass over any tracks; for frequently a cold
trail would be indicated so faintly that the dogs themselves might pass
it by, if unassisted by Goff’s keen eyes and thorough knowledge of the
habits of the quarry. Finally, there was no object in making an early
start, as what we expected to find was not the cougar, but the cougar’s
trail; moreover, the horses and dogs, tough though they were, could not
stand more than a certain amount, and to ride from sunrise to sunset,
day in and day out, for five weeks, just about tested the limits of
their endurance.
We made our way slowly up the snow-covered, pinyon-clad side of the
mountain back of the house, and found a very old cougar trail which it
was useless to try to run, and a couple of fresh bobcat trails which it
was difficult to prevent the dogs from following. After criss-crossing
over the shoulders of this mountain for two or three hours, and
scrambling in and out of the ravines, we finally struck another cougar
trail, much more recent, probably made thirty-six hours before. The
hounds had been hunting free to one side or the other of our path. They
were now summoned by a blast of the horn, and with a wave of Goff’s hand
away they went on the trail. Had it been fresh they would have run out
of hearing at once, for it was fearfully rough country. But they were
able to work but slowly along the loops and zigzags of the trail, where
it led across bare spaces, and we could keep well in sight and hearing
of them. Finally they came to where it descended the sheer side of the
mountain and crossed the snow-covered valley beneath. They were still
all together, the pace having been so slow, and in the snow of the
valley the scent was fresh. It was a fine sight to see them as they
rushed across from one side to the other, the cliffs echoing their
chiming. Jim and the three bitches were in the lead, while Boxer fell
behind, as he always did when the pace was fast.
Leading our horses, we slid and scrambled after the hounds; but when we
reached the valley they had passed out of sight and sound, and we did
not hear them again until we had toiled up the mountain opposite. They
were then evidently scattered, having come upon many bare places; but
while we were listening, and working our way over to the other side of
the divide, the sudden increase in the baying told Goff that they had
struck the fresh trail of the beast they were after; and in two or three
minutes we heard Jim’s deep voice “barking treed.” The three fighters,
who had been trotting at our heels, recognized the difference in the
sound quite as quickly as we did, and plunged at full speed toward it
down the steep hillside, throwing up the snow like so many snowploughs.
In a minute or two the chorus told us that all the dogs were around the
tree, and we picked our way down toward them.
While we were still some distance off we could see the cougar in a low
pinyon moving about as the dogs tried to get up, and finally knocking
one clean out of the top. It was the first time I had ever seen dogs
with a cougar, and I was immensely interested; but Stewart’s whole
concern was with his camera. When we were within fifty yards of the
tree, and I was preparing to take the rifle out of the scabbard, Stewart
suddenly called “halt,” with the first symptoms of excitement he had
shown, and added, in an eager undertone: “Wait, there is a rabbit right
here, and I want to take his picture.” Accordingly we waited, the cougar
not fifty yards off and the dogs yelling and trying to get up the tree
after it, while Stewart crept up to the rabbit and got a kodak some six
feet distant. Then we resumed our march toward the tree, and the cougar,
not liking the sight of the reinforcements, jumped out. She came down
just outside the pack and ran up hill. So quick was she that the dogs
failed to seize her, and for the first fifty yards she went a great deal
faster than they did. Both in the jump and in the run she held her tail
straight out behind her; I found out afterward that sometimes one will
throw its tail straight in the air, and when walking along, when first
roused by the pack, before they are close, will, if angry, lash the tail
from side to side, at the same time grinning and snarling.
In a minute the cougar went up another tree, but, as we approached,
again jumped down, and on this occasion, after running a couple of
hundred yards, the dogs seized it. The worry was terrific; the growling,
snarling, and yelling rang among the rocks; and leaving our horses we
plunged at full speed through the snow down the rugged ravine in which
the fight was going on. It was a small though old female, only a few
pounds heavier than either Turk or Jim, and the dogs had the upper hand
when we arrived. They would certainly have killed it unassisted, but as
it was doing some damage to the pack, and might at any moment kill a
dog, I ended the struggle by a knife-thrust behind the shoulder. To
shoot would have been quite as dangerous for the dogs as for their
quarry. Three of the dogs were badly scratched, and Turk had been bitten
through one foreleg, and Boxer through one hind leg.
[Illustration:
THE FIRST COUGAR KILLED
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
As will be seen by the measurements given before, this was much the
smallest full-grown cougar we got. It was also one of the oldest, as its
teeth showed, and it gave me a false idea of the size of cougars;
although I knew they varied in size I was not prepared for the wide
variation we actually found.
The fighting dogs were the ones that enabled me to use the knife. All
three went straight for the head, and when they got hold they kept their
jaws shut, worrying and pulling, and completely absorbing the attention
of the cougar, so as to give an easy chance for the deathblow. The
hounds meanwhile had seized the cougar behind, and Jim, with his
alligator jaws, probably did as much damage as Turk. However, neither in
this nor in any other instance, did any one of the dogs manage to get
its teeth through the thick skin. When cougars fight among themselves
their claws and fangs leave great scars, but their hides are too thick
for the dogs to get their teeth through. On the other hand, a cougar’s
jaws have great power, and dogs are frequently killed by a single bite,
the fangs being driven through the brain or spine; or they break a dog’s
leg or cut the big blood-vessels of the throat.
I had been anxious to get a set of measurements and weights of cougars
to give to Dr. Hart Merriam. Accordingly I was carrying a tape, while
Goff, instead of a rifle, had a steelyard in his gun scabbard. We
weighed and measured the cougar, and then took lunch, making as
impartial a distribution of it as was possible among ourselves and the
different members of the pack; for, of course, we were already growing
to have a hearty fellow-feeling for each individual dog.
The next day we were again in luck. After about two hours’ ride we came
upon an old trail. It led among low hills, covered with pinyon and
cedar, and broken by gullies or washouts, in whose sharp sides of clay
the water had made holes and caves. Soon the hounds left it to follow a
bobcat, and we had a lively gallop through the timber, dodging the sharp
snags of the dead branches as best we might. The cat got into a hole in
a side washout; Baldy went in after it, and the rest of us, men and
dogs, clustered about to look in. After a considerable time he put the
cat out of the other end of the hole, nearly a hundred yards off, close
to the main washout. The first we knew of it we saw it coming straight
toward us, its tail held erect like that of a whitetail deer. Before
either we or the dogs quite grasped the situation it bolted into another
hole almost at our feet, and this time Baldy could not find it, or else
could not get at it. Then we took up the cougar trail again. It
criss-crossed in every direction. We finally found an old “bait,” a
buck. It was interesting to see the way in which the cougar had prowled
from point to point, and the efforts it had made to approach the deer
which it saw or smelled. Once we came to where it had sat down on the
edge of a cliff, sitting on its haunches with its long tail straight
behind it and looking out across the valley. After it had killed,
according to the invariable custom of its kind, it had dragged the deer
from the open, where it had overtaken it, to the shelter of a group of
trees.
We finally struck the fresh trail; but it, also, led hither and thither,
and we got into such a maze of tracks that the dogs were completely
puzzled. After a couple of hours of vain travelling to and fro, we gave
up the effort, called the dogs off, and started back beside a large
washout which led along between two ridges. Goff, as usual, was leading,
the dogs following and continually skirting to one side or the other.
Suddenly they all began to show great excitement, and then one gave
furious tongue at the mouth of a hole in some sunken and broken ground
not thirty yards to our right. The whole pack rushed toward the
challenge, the fighters leaped into the hole, and in another moment the
row inside told us that they had found a cougar at home. We jumped off
and ran down to see if we could be of assistance. To get into the hole
was impossible, for two or three hounds had jumped down to join the
fighters, and we could see nothing but their sterns. Then we saw Turk
backing out with a dead kitten in his mouth. I had supposed that a
cougar would defend her young to the last, but such was not the case in
this instance. For some minutes she kept the dogs at bay, but then
gradually gave ground, leaving her three kittens. Of course, the dogs
killed them instantly, much to our regret, as we would have given a good
deal to have kept them alive. As soon as she had abandoned them, away
she went completely through the low cave or hole, leaped out of the
other end, which was some thirty or forty yards off, scaled the bank,
and galloped into the woods, the pack getting after her at once. She did
not run more than a couple of hundred yards, and as we tore up on our
horses we saw her standing in the lower branches of a pinyon only six or
eight feet from the ground. She was not snarling or grinning, and looked
at us as quietly as if nothing had happened. As we leaped out of the
saddles she jumped down from the tree and ran off through the pack. They
were after her at once, however, and a few yards farther on she started
up another tree. Either Tony or Baldy grabbed her by the tip of the
tail, she lost her footing for a moment, and the whole pack seized her.
She was a powerful female of about the average size, being half as heavy
again as the one we first got, and made a tremendous fight; and savage
enough she looked, her ears tight back against her head, her yellow eyes
flashing, and her great teeth showing as she grinned. For a moment the
dogs had her down, but biting and striking she freed her head and fore
quarters from the fighters, and faced us as we ran up, the hounds still
having her from behind. This was another chance for the knife, and I
cheered on the fighters. Again they seized her by the head, but though
absolutely stanch dogs, their teeth, as I have said, had begun to
suffer, and they were no longer always able to make their holds good.
Just as I was about to strike her she knocked Turk loose with a blow,
bit Baldy, and then, her head being free, turned upon me. Fortunately,
Tony caught her free paw on that side, while I jammed the gun-butt into
her jaws with my left hand and struck home with the right, the knife
driving straight to the heart. The deep fang marks she left in the
stock, biting the corner of the shoulder clean off, gave an idea of the
power of her jaws. If it had been the very big male cougar which I
afterward killed, the stock would doubtless have been bitten completely
in two.
The dogs were pretty well damaged, and all retired and lay down under
the trees, where they licked their wounds, and went to sleep; growling
savagely at one another when they waked, but greeting us with
demonstrative affection, and trotting eagerly out to share our lunch as
soon as we began to eat it. Unaided, they would ultimately have killed
the cougar, but the chance of one or two of them being killed or
crippled was too great for us to allow this to be done; and in the
mix-up of the struggle it was not possible to end it with the rifle. The
writhing, yelling tangle offered too shifting a mark; one would have
been as apt to hit a dog as the cougar. Goff told me that the pack had
often killed cougars unassisted; but in the performance of such feats
the best dogs were frequently killed, and this was not a risk to be
taken lightly.
In some books the writers speak as if the male and female cougar live
together and jointly seek food for the young. We never found a male
cougar anywhere near either a female with young or a pregnant female.
According to my observation the male only remains with the female for a
short time, during the mating season, at which period he travels great
distances in search of his temporary mates—for the females far outnumber
the males. The cougar is normally a very solitary beast. The young—two
to four in number, though more than one or two rarely grow up—follow the
mother until over half grown. The mother lives entirely alone with the
kittens while they are small. As the males fight so fiercely among
themselves, it may be that the old he-cougars kill the young of their
own sex; a ranchman whom I knew once found the body of a young male
cougar which had evidently been killed by an old one; but I cannot say
whether or not this was an exceptional case.
During the next ten days Stewart and Webb each shot a cougar. Webb’s was
got by as pretty an exhibition of trailing on the part of Goff and his
hounds as one could wish to see. We ran across its old tracks while
coming home on Wednesday, January 16th. The next day, Thursday, we took
up the trail, but the animal had travelled a long distance; and, as
cougars so often do, had spent much of its time walking along ledges, or
at the foot of the cliffs, where the sun had melted the snow off the
ground. In consequence, the dogs were often at fault. Moreover, bobcats
were numerous, and twice the pack got after one, running a couple of
hours before, in one instance, the cat went into a cave, and, in the
other, took to a tree, where it was killed by Webb. At last, when
darkness came on, we were forced to leave the cougar trail and ride
home; a very attractive ride, too, loping rapidly over the snow-covered
flats, while above us the great stars fairly blazed in the splendor of
the winter night.
Early next morning we again took up the trail, and after a little while
found where it was less than thirty-six hours old. The dogs now ran it
well, but were thrown out again on a large bare hillside, until Boxer
succeeded in recovering the scent. They went up a high mountain and we
toiled after them. Again they lost the trail, and while at fault jumped
a big bobcat which they ran up a tree. After shooting him we took lunch,
and started to circle for the trail. Most of the dogs kept with Goff,
but Jim got off to one side on his own account; and suddenly his baying
told us that he had jumped the cougar. The rest of the pack tore toward
him and after a quarter of a mile run they had the quarry treed. The
ground was too rough for riding, and we had to do some stiff climbing to
get to it on foot.
Stewart’s cougar was a young of the year, and, according to his custom,
he took several photographs of it. Then he tried to poke it so that it
would get into a better position for the camera; whereupon it jumped out
of the tree and ran headlong down hill, the yelling dogs but a few feet
behind. Our horses had been left a hundred yards or so below, where they
all stood, moping, with their heads drooped and their eyes half shut, in
regular cow-pony style. The chase streamed by not a yard from their
noses, but evidently failed to arouse even an emotion of interest in
their minds, for they barely looked up, and made not a movement of any
kind when the cougar treed again just below them.
We killed several bobcats; and we also got another cougar, this time in
rather ignominious fashion. We had been running a bobcat, having an
excellent gallop, during the course of which Stewart’s horse turned a
somersault. Without our knowledge the dogs changed to the fresh trail of
a cougar, which they ran into its den in another cut bank. When we
reached the place they had gone in after it, Baldy dropping into a hole
at the top of the bank, while the others crawled into the main entrance,
some twenty-five yards off at the bottom. It was evidently a very rough
house inside, and above the baying, yelping, and snarling of the dogs we
could hear the rumbling overtone of the cougar’s growl. On this day we
had taken along Queen, the white bull bitch, to “enter” her at cougar.
It was certainly a lively experience for a first entry. We reached the
place in time to keep Jim and the hound bitches out of the hole. It was
evident that the dogs could do nothing with the cougar inside. They
could only come at it in front, and under such circumstances its claws
and teeth made the odds against them hopeless. Every now and then it
would charge, driving them all back, and we would then reach in, seize a
dog and haul him out. At intervals there would be an awful yelling and a
hound would come out bleeding badly, quite satisfied, and without the
slightest desire to go in again. Poor Baldy was evidently killed inside.
Queen, Turk, and Tony were badly clawed and bitten, and we finally got
them out too; Queen went in three times, and came out on each occasion
with a fresh gash or bite; Turk was, at the last, the only one really
anxious to go in again. Then we tried to smoke out the cougar, for as
one of the dogs had gotten into the cave through an upper entrance, we
supposed the cougar could get out by the same route. However, it either
could not or would not bolt; coming down close to the entrance where we
had built the sage-brush fire, there it stayed until it was smothered.
We returned to the ranch carrying its skin, but not over-pleased, and
the pack much the worse for wear. Dr. Webb had to sew up the wounds of
three of the dogs. One, Tony, was sent back to the home ranch, where he
died. In such rough hunting as this, it is of course impossible to
prevent occasional injuries to the dogs when they get the cougar in a
cave, or overtake him on the ground. All that can be done is to try to
end the contest as speedily as possible, which we always did.
[Illustration:
AFTER THE FIGHT
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
Judging from the experience of certain friends of mine in the Argentine,
I think it would be safe to crawl into a cave to shoot a cougar under
normal circumstances; but in this instance the cave was a long, winding
hole, so low that we could not get in on hands and knees, having to work
our way on our elbows. It was pitch dark inside, so that the rifle
sights could not be seen, and the cougar was evidently very angry and
had on two or three occasions charged the dogs, driving them out of the
entrance of the hole. In the dark, the chances were strongly against
killing it with a single shot; while if only wounded, and if it had
happened to charge, the man, in his cramped position, would have been
utterly helpless.
The day after the death of the smoked-out cougar Stewart and Webb
started home. Then it snowed for two days, keeping us in the ranch.
While the snow was falling, there was no possibility of finding or
following tracks; and as a rule wild creatures lie close during a storm.
We were glad to have fresh snow, for the multitude of tracks in the old
snow had become confusing; and not only the southern hillsides but the
larger valleys had begun to grow bare, so that trailing was difficult.
The third day dawned in brilliant splendor, and when the sun arose all
the land glittered dazzling white under his rays. The hounds were
rested, we had fresh horses, and after an early breakfast we started to
make a long circle. All the forenoon and early afternoon we plodded
through the snowdrifts, up and down the valleys, and along the ridge
crests, without striking a trail. The dogs trotted behind us or circled
from one side to the other. It was no small test of their stanchness,
eager and fresh as they were, for time after time we aroused bands of
deer, to which they paid no heed whatever. At last, in mid-afternoon, we
suddenly struck the tracks of two cougars, one a very large one, an old
male. They had been playing and frolicking together, for they were
evidently mating, and the snow in the tracks showed that they had
started abroad before the storm was entirely over. For three hours the
pack followed the cold trail, through an exceedingly rugged and
difficult country, in which Goff helped them out again and again.
Just at sunset the cougars were jumped, and ran straight into and
through a tangle of spurs and foothills, broken by precipices, and riven
by long deep ravines. The two at first separated and then came together,
with the result that Tree’em, Bruno, and Jimmie got on the back trail
and so were left far behind; while old Boxer also fell to the rear, as
he always did when the scent was hot, and Jim and the bitches were left
to do the running by themselves. In the gathering gloom we galloped
along the main divide, my horse once falling on a slippery sidehill, as
I followed headlong after Goff—whose riding was like the driving of the
son of Nimshi. The last vestige of sunlight disappeared, but the full
moon was well up in the heavens when we came to a long spur, leading off
to the right for two or three miles, beyond which we did not think the
chase could have gone. It had long run out of hearing. Making our way
down the rough and broken crest of this spur, we finally heard far off
the clamorous baying which told us that the hounds had their quarry at
bay. We did not have the fighters with us, as they were still under the
weather from the results of their encounter in the cave.
As it afterward appeared, the cougars had run three miles before the
dogs overtook them, making their way up, down and along such difficult
cliffs that the pack had to keep going round. The female then went up a
tree, while the pack followed the male. He would not climb a tree and
came to bay on the edge of a cliff. A couple of hundred yards from the
spot, we left the horses and scrambled along on foot, guided by the
furious clamor of the pack. When we reached them, the cougar had gone
along the face of the cliff, most of the dogs could not see him, and it
was some time before we could make him out ourselves. Then I got up
quite close. Although the moonlight was bright I could not see the
sights of my rifle, and fired a little too far back. The bullet,
however, inflicted a bad wound, and the cougar ran along a ledge,
disappearing around the cliff-shoulder. The conduct of the dogs showed
that he had not left the cliff, but it was impossible to see him either
from the sides or from below. The cliff was about a hundred feet high
and the top overhung the bottom, while from above the ground sloped down
to the brink at a rather steep angle, so that we had to be cautious
about our footing. There was a large projecting rock on the brink; to
this I clambered down, and, holding it with one hand, peeped over the
edge. After a minute or two I made out first the tail and then the head
of the cougar, who was lying on a narrow ledge only some ten feet below
me, his body hidden by the overhang of the cliff. Thanks to the
steepness of the incline, I could not let go of the rock with my left
hand, because I should have rolled over; so I got Goff to come down,
brace his feet against the projection, and grasp me by my legs. He then
lowered me gently down until my head and shoulders were over the edge
and my arms free; and I shot the cougar right between the ears, he being
in a straight line underneath me. The dogs were evidently confident that
he was going to be shot, for they had all gathered below the cliff to
wait for him to fall; and sure enough, down he came with a crash,
luckily not hitting any of them. We could hear them seize him, and they
all, dead cougar and worrying dogs, rolled at least a hundred yards down
the steep slope before they were stopped by a gully. It was an
interesting experience, and one which I shall not soon forget. We
clambered down to where the dogs were, admired our victim, and made up
our minds not to try to skin him until the morning. Then we led down our
horses, with some difficulty, into the snow-covered valley, mounted
them, and cantered home to the ranch, under the cold and brilliant moon,
through a white wonderland of shimmering light and beauty.
Next morning we came back as early as possible, intending first to skin
the male and then to hunt up the female. A quarter of a mile before we
reached the carcass we struck her fresh trail in the snow of the valley.
Calling all the dogs together and hustling them forward, we got them
across the trail without their paying any attention to it; for we wanted
to finish the job of skinning before taking up the hunt. However, when
we got off our horses and pulled the cougar down to a flat place to skin
it, Nellie, who evidently remembered that there had been another cougar
besides the one we had accounted for, started away on her own account
while we were not looking. The first thing we knew we heard her giving
tongue on the mountains above us, in such rough country that there was
no use in trying to head her off. Accordingly we jumped on the horses
again, rode down to where we had crossed the trail and put the whole
pack on it. After crossing the valley the cougar had moved along the
ledges of a great spur or chain of foothills, and as this prevented the
dogs going too fast we were able to canter alongside them up the valley,
watching them and listening to their chiming. We finally came to a large
hillside bare of snow, much broken with rocks, among which grew patches
of brush and scattered pinyons. Here the dogs were at fault for over an
hour. It had evidently been a favorite haunt of the cougars; they had
moved to and fro across it, and had lain sunning themselves in the dust
under the ledges. Owing to the character of the ground we could give the
hounds no assistance, but they finally puzzled out the trail for
themselves. We were now given a good illustration of the impossibility
of jumping a cougar without dogs, even when in a general way its haunt
is known. We rode along the hillside, and quartered it to and fro, on
the last occasion coming down a spur where we passed within two or three
rods of the brush in which the cougar was actually lying; but she never
moved and it was impossible to see her. When we finally reached the
bottom, the dogs had disentangled the trail; and they passed behind us
at a good rate, going up almost where we had come down. Even as we
looked we saw the cougar rise from her lair, only fifty yards or so
ahead of them, her red hide showing bright in the sun. It was a very
pretty run to watch while it lasted. She left them behind at first, but
after a quarter of a mile they put her up a pinyon. Approaching
cautiously—for the climbing was hard work and I did not wish to frighten
her out of the tree if it could be avoided, lest she might make such a
run as that of the preceding evening—I was able to shoot her through the
heart. She died in the branches, and I climbed the tree to throw her
down. The only skill needed in such shooting is in killing the cougar
outright so as to save the dogs. Six times on the hunt I shot the cougar
through the heart. Twice the animal died in the branches. In the other
four cases it sprang out of the tree, head and tail erect, eyes blazing,
and the mouth open in a grin of savage hate and anger; but it was
practically dead when it touched the ground.
[Illustration:
COUGAR IN A TREE
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
Although these cougars were mates, they were not of the same color, the
female being reddish, while the male was slate-colored. In weighing this
male we had to take off the hide and weigh it separately (with the head
and paws attached), for our steelyard only went up to 150 pounds. When
we came to weigh the biggest male we had to take off the quarters as
well as the hide.
Thinking that we had probably exhausted the cougars around the Keystone
Ranch, we spent the next fortnight off on a trip. We carried only what
we could put in the small saddle-pockets—our baggage being as strictly
limited as it ought to be with efficient cavalry who are on an active
campaign. We worked hard, but, as so often happens, our luck was not in
proportion to our labor.
The first day we rode to the Mathes brothers’ ranch. On the high divides
it was very cold, the thermometer standing at nearly twenty degrees
below zero. But we were clad for just such weather, and were not
uncomfortable. The three Mathes brothers lived together, with the wives
and children of the two married ones. Their ranch was in a very
beautiful and wild valley, the pinyon-crowned cliffs rising in walls on
either hand. Deer were abundant and often in sight from the ranch doors.
At night the gray wolves came down close to the buildings and howled for
hours among the precipices, under the light of the full moon. The still
cold was intense; but I could not resist going out for half an hour at a
time to listen to them. To me their baying, though a very eerie and
lonesome sound, full of vaguely sinister associations, has,
nevertheless, a certain wild music of its own which is far from being
without charm.
We did not hear the cougars calling, for they are certainly nothing like
as noisy as wolves; yet the Mathes brothers had heard them several
times, and once one of them had crept up and seen the cougar, which
remained in the same place for many minutes, repeating its cry
continually. The Mathes had killed but two cougars, not having any dogs
trained to hunt them. One of these was killed under circumstances which
well illustrate the queer nature of the animal. The three men, with one
of their two cattle dogs, were walking up the valley not half a mile
above the ranch-house, when they saw a cougar crossing in front of them,
a couple of hundred yards off. As soon as she saw them she crouched flat
down with her head toward them, remaining motionless. Two, with the dog,
stayed where they were, while the other ran back to the ranch-house for
a rifle and for the other dog. No sooner had he gone than the cougar
began deliberately to crawl toward the men who were left. She came on
slowly but steadily, crouched almost flat to the ground. The two unarmed
men were by no means pleased with her approach. They waved their hands
and jumped about and shouted; but she kept approaching, although slowly,
and was well within a hundred yards when the other brother arrived, out
of breath, accompanied by the other dog. At sight of him she jumped up,
ran off a couple of hundred yards, went up a tree, and was killed. I do
not suppose she would have attacked the men; but as there was an
unpleasant possibility that she might, they both felt distinctly more
comfortable when their brother rejoined them with the rifle.
There was a good deal of snowy weather while we were at the Mathes
ranch, but we had fair luck, killing two cougars. It was most
comfortable, for the ranch was clean and warm, and the cooking
delicious. It does not seem to me that I ever tasted better milk and
butter, hot biscuits, rice, potatoes, pork and bulberry and wild-plum
jam; and of course the long days on horseback in the cold weather gave
an edge to our appetites. One stormy day we lost the hounds, and we
spent most of the next day in finding such of them as did not come
straggling in of their own accord. The country was very rough, and it
was astounding to see some of the places up and down which we led the
horses. Sometimes I found that my horse climbed rather better than I
did, for he would come up some awkward-looking slope with such a rush
that I literally had to scramble on all-fours to get out of his way.
There was no special incident connected with killing either of these two
cougars. In one case Goff himself took the lead in working out the trail
and preventing the hounds getting off after bobcats. In the other case
the trail was fresher and the dogs ran it by themselves, getting into a
country where we could not follow; it was very rough, and the cliffs and
gorges rang with their baying. In both cases they had the cougar treed
for about three hours before we were able to place them and walk up to
them. It was hard work, toiling through the snow over the cliffs toward
the baying; and on each occasion the cougar leaped from the tree at our
approach, and ran a quarter of a mile or so before going up another,
where it was shot. As I came up to shoot, most of the dogs paid no
attention, but Boxer and Nellie always kept looking at me until I
actually raised the rifle, when they began to spring about the spot
where they thought the cougar would come down. The cougar itself always
seemed to recognize the man as the dangerous opponent; and as I strode
around to find a place from whence I could deliver an instantaneously
fatal shot, it would follow me steadily with its evil yellow eyes. I
came up very close, but the beasts never attempted to jump at me.
Judging from what one reads in books about Indian and African game, a
leopard under such circumstances would certainly sometimes charge.
Three days of our trip were spent on a ride to Colorow Mountain; we went
down to Judge Foreman’s ranch on White River to pass the night. We got
another cougar on the way. She must really be credited to Jim. The other
dogs were following in our footsteps through the snow, after having made
various futile excursions of their own. When we found that Jim was
missing, we tried in vain to recall him with the horn, and at last
started to hunt him up. After an hour’s ride we heard him off on the
mountain, evidently following a trail, but equally evidently not yet
having jumped the animal. The hounds heard him quite as quickly as we
did, and started toward him. Soon we heard the music of the whole pack,
which grew fainter and fainter, and was lost entirely as they
disappeared around a spur, and then began to grow loud again, showing
that they were coming toward us. Suddenly a change in the note convinced
us that they had jumped the quarry. We stood motionless; nearer and
nearer they came; and then a sudden burst of clamor proclaimed that they
were barking treed. We had to ride only a couple of hundred yards; I
shot the cougar from across a little ravine. She was the largest female
we got.
The dogs were a source of unceasing amusement, not merely while hunting,
but because of their relations to one another when off duty. Queen’s
temper was of the shortest toward the rest of the pack, although, like
Turk, she was fond of literally crawling into my lap, when we sat down
to rest after the worry which closed the chase. As soon as I began to
eat my lunch, all the dogs clustered close around and I distributed
small morsels to each in turn. Once Jimmie, Queen, and Boxer were
sitting side by side, tightly wedged together. I treated them with
entire impartiality; and soon Queen’s feelings overcame her, and she
unostentatiously but firmly bit Jimmie in the jaw. Jimmie howled
tremendously and Boxer literally turned a back somersault, evidently
fearing lest his turn should come next.
On February 11th we rode back to the Keystone Ranch, carrying the three
cougar skins behind our saddles. It was again very cold, and the snow on
the divides was so deep that our horses wallowed through it up to their
saddle-girths. I supposed that my hunt was practically at an end, for I
had but three days left; but as it turned out these were the three most
lucky days of the whole trip.
The weather was beautiful, the snow lying deep enough to give the dogs
easy trailing even on the southern slopes. Under the clear skies the
landscape was dazzling, and I had to wear snow-glasses. On the first of
the three days, February 12th, we had not ridden half an hour from the
ranch before we came across the trail of a very big bobcat. It was so
heavy that it had broken through the crust here and there, and we
decided that it was worth following. The trail went up a steep mountain
to the top, and we followed on foot after the dogs. Among the cliffs on
the top they were completely at fault, hunting every which way. After
awhile Goff suddenly spied the cat, which had jumped off the top of a
cliff into a pinyon. I killed it before any of the dogs saw it, and at
the shot they all ran in the wrong direction. When they did find us
skinning it, they were evidently not at all satisfied that it was really
their bobcat—the one which they had been trailing. Usually as soon as
the animal was killed they all lay down and dozed off; but on this
occasion they kept hurrying about and then in a body started on the back
trail. It was some time before we could get them together again.
After we had brought them in we rode across one or two ridges, and up
and down the spurs without finding anything, until about noon we struck
up a long winding valley where we came across one or two old cougar
trails. The pack were following in our footsteps behind the horses,
except Jim, who took off to one side by himself. Suddenly he began to
show signs that he had come across traces of game; and in another moment
he gave tongue and all the hounds started toward him. They quartered
around in the neighborhood of a little gulch for a short while, and then
streamed off up the mountain-side; and before they had run more than a
couple of minutes we heard them barking treed. By making a slight turn
we rode almost up to the tree, and saw that their quarry was a young
cougar. As we came up, it knocked Jimmie right out of the tree. On
seeing us it jumped down and started to run, but it was not quite quick
enough. Turk seized it and in a minute the dogs had it stretched out. It
squalled, hissed, and made such a good fight that I put an end to the
struggle with the knife, fearing lest it might maim one of the hounds.
While Goff was skinning it I wandered down to the kill near which it had
been lying. This was a deer, almost completely devoured. It had been
killed in the valley and dragged up perhaps a hundred yards to some
cedars. I soon saw from the tracks around the carcass that there was an
older cougar with the younger one—doubtless its mother—and walked back
to Goff with the information. Before I got there, however, some of the
pack had made the discovery for themselves. Jim, evidently feeling that
he had done his duty, had curled up and gone to sleep, with most of the
others; but old Boxer and the three bitches (Pete had left her pups and
joined us about the time we roused the big bobcat), hunted about until
they struck the fresh trail of the old female. They went off at a great
rate, and the sleeping dogs heard them and scampered away to the sound.
The trail led them across a spur, into a valley, and out of it up the
precipitous side of another mountain. When we got to the edge of the
valley we could hear them barking treed nearly at the summit of the
mountain opposite. It was over an hour’s stiff climbing before we made
our way around to them, although we managed to get the horses up to
within a quarter of a mile of the spot. On approaching we found the
cougar in a leaning pinyon on a ledge at the foot of a cliff. Jimmie was
in the lower branches of the pinyon, and Turk up above him, within a few
feet of the cougar. Evidently he had been trying to tackle her and had
been knocked out of the tree at least once, for he was bleeding a good
deal and there was much blood on the snow beneath. Yet he had come back
into the tree, and was barking violently not more than three feet beyond
her stroke. She kept up a low savage growling, and as soon as I
appeared, fixed her yellow eyes on me, glaring and snarling as I worked
around into a place from which I could kill her outright. Meanwhile Goff
took up his position on the other side, hoping to get a photograph when
I shot. My bullet went right through her heart. She bit her paw,
stretched up her head and bit a branch, and then died where she was,
while Turk leaped forward at the crack of the rifle and seized her in
the branches. I had some difficulty in bundling him and Jimmie out of
the tree as I climbed up to throw down the cougar.
Next morning we started early, intending to go to Juniper Mountain,
where we had heard that cougars were plentiful; but we had only ridden
about half an hour from the ranch when we came across a trail which by
the size we knew must belong to an old male. It was about thirty-six
hours old and led into a tangle of bad lands where there was great
difficulty in working it out. Finally, however, we found where it left
these bad lands and went straight up a mountain-side, too steep for the
horses to follow. From the plains below we watched the hounds working to
and fro until they entered a patch of pinyons in which we were certain
the cougar had killed a deer, as ravens and magpies were sitting around
in the trees. In these pinyons the hounds were again at fault for a
little while, but at last evidently found the right trail, and followed
it up over the hill-crest and out of sight. We then galloped hard along
the plain to the left, going around the end of the ridge and turning to
our right on the other side. Here we entered a deep narrow valley or
gorge which led up to a high plateau at the farther end. On our right,
as we rode up the valley, lay the high and steep ridge over which the
hounds had followed the trail. On the left it was still steeper, the
slope being broken by ledges and precipices. Near the mouth of the gorge
we encountered the hounds, who had worked the trail down and across the
gorge, and were now hunting up the steep cliff-shoulder on our left.
Evidently the cougar had wandered to and fro over this shoulder, and the
dogs were much puzzled and worked in zigzags and circles around it,
gradually getting clear to the top. Then old Boxer suddenly gave tongue
with renewed zest and started off at a run almost on top of the ridge,
the other dogs following. Immediately afterward they jumped the cougar.
We had been waiting below to see which direction the chase would take
and now put spurs to our horses and galloped up the ravine, climbing the
hillside on our right so as to get a better view of what was happening.
A few hundred yards of this galloping and climbing brought us again in
sight of the hounds. They were now barking treed and were clustered
around a pinyon below the ridge crest on the side hill opposite us. The
two fighters, Turk and Queen, who had been following at our horses’
heels, appreciated what had happened as soon as we did, and, leaving us,
ran down into the valley and began to work their way through the deep
snow up the hillside opposite, toward where the hounds were. Ours was an
ideal position for seeing the whole chase. In a minute the cougar jumped
out of the tree down among the hounds, who made no attempt to seize him,
but followed him as soon as he had cleared their circle. He came down
hill at a great rate and jumped over a low cliff, bringing after him
such an avalanche of snow that it was a moment before I caught sight of
him again, this time crouched on a narrow ledge some fifteen or twenty
feet below the brink from which he had jumped, and about as far above
the foot of the cliff, where the steep hill-slope again began. The
hounds soon found him and came along the ledge barking loudly, but not
venturing near where he lay facing them, with his back arched like a
great cat. Turk and Queen were meanwhile working their way up hill. Turk
got directly under the ledge and could not find a way up. Queen went to
the left and in a minute we saw her white form as she made her way
through the dark-colored hounds straight for the cougar. “That’s the end
of Queen,” said Goff; “he’ll kill her now, sure.” In another moment she
had made her rush and the cougar, bounding forward, had seized her, and
as we afterward discovered had driven his great fangs right through the
side of her head, fortunately missing the brain. In the struggle he lost
his footing and rolled off the ledge, and when they struck the ground
below he let go of the bitch. Turk, who was near where they struck, was
not able to spring for the hold he desired, and in another moment the
cougar was coming down hill like a quarter-horse. We stayed perfectly
still, as he was travelling in our direction. Queen was on her feet
almost as quick as the cougar, and she and Turk tore after him, the
hounds following in a few seconds, being delayed in getting off the
ledge. It was astonishing to see the speed of the cougar. He ran
considerably more than a quarter of a mile down hill, and at the end of
it had left the dogs more than a hundred yards behind. But his bolt was
shot, and after going perhaps a hundred yards or so up the hill on our
side and below us, he climbed a tree, under which the dogs began to bay
frantically, while we scrambled toward them. When I got down I found him
standing half upright on a big branch, his forepaws hung over another
higher branch, his sides puffing like bellows, and evidently completely
winded. In scrambling up the pinyon he must have struck a patch of
resin, for it had torn a handful of hair off from behind his right
forearm. I shot him through the heart. At the shot he sprang clean into
the top of the tree, head and tail up, and his face fairly demoniac with
rage; but before he touched the ground he was dead. Turk jumped up,
seized him as he fell, and the two rolled over a low ledge, falling
about eight feet into the snow, Turk never losing his hold.
No one could have wished to see a prettier chase under better
circumstances. It was exceedingly interesting. The only dog hurt was
Queen, and very miserable indeed she looked. She stood in the trail,
refusing to lie down or to join the other dogs, as, with prodigious
snarls at one another, they ate the pieces of the carcass we cut out for
them. Dogs hunting every day, as these were doing, and going through
such terrific exertion, need enormous quantities of meat, and as old
horses and crippled steers were not always easy to get, we usually fed
them the cougar carcasses. On this occasion, when they had eaten until
they could eat no longer, I gave most of my lunch to Queen—Boxer, who
after his feast could hardly move, nevertheless waddling up with his
ears forward to beg a share. Queen evidently felt that the lunch was a
delicacy, for she ate it, and then trotted home behind us with the rest
of the dogs. Rather to my astonishment, next day she was all right, and
as eager to go with us as ever. Though one side of her head was much
swollen, in her work she showed no signs of her injuries.
[Illustration:
“BARKING TREED”
From a photograph by Philip B. Stewart
]
Early the following morning, February 14th, the last day of my actual
hunting, we again started for Juniper Mountain, following the same
course on which we had started the previous day. Before we had gone a
mile, that is, only about half-way to where we had come across the
cougar track the preceding day, we crossed another, and as we deemed a
fresher, trail, which Goff pronounced to belong to a cougar even larger
than the one we had just killed. The hounds were getting both weary and
footsore, but the scent put heart into them and away they streamed. They
followed it across a sage-brush flat, and then worked along under the
base of a line of cliffs—cougar being particularly apt thus to travel at
the foot of cliffs. The pack kept well together, and it was pleasant, as
we cantered over the snowy plain beside them, to listen to their baying,
echoed back from the cliffs above. Then they worked over the hill and we
spurred ahead and turned to the left, up the same gorge or valley in
which we had killed the cougar the day before. The hounds followed the
trail straight to the cliff-shoulder where the day before the pack had
been puzzled until Boxer struck the fresh scent. Here they seemed to be
completely at fault, circling everywhere, and at one time following
their track of yesterday over to the pinyon-tree up which the cougar had
first gone.
We made our way up the ravine to the head of the plateau, and then,
turning, came back along the ridge until we reached the top of the
shoulder where the dogs had been; but when we got there they had
disappeared. It did not seem likely that the cougar had crossed the
ravine behind us—although as a matter of fact this was exactly what had
happened—and we did not know what to make of the affair.
We could barely hear the hounds; they had followed their back trail of
the preceding day, toward the place where we had first come across the
tracks of the cougar we had already killed. We were utterly puzzled,
even Goff being completely at fault, and we finally became afraid that
the track which the pack had been running was one which, instead of
having been made during the night, had been there the previous morning,
and had been made by the dead cougar. This meant, of course, that we had
passed it without noticing it, both going and coming, on the previous
day, and knowing Goff’s eye for a track I could not believe this. He,
however, thought we might have confused it with some of the big wolf
tracks, of which a number had crossed our path. After some hesitation,
he said that at any rate we could find out the truth by getting back
into the flat and galloping around to where we had begun our hunt the
day before; because if the dogs really had a fresh cougar before them he
must have so short a start that they were certain to tree him by the
time they got across the ridge crest. Accordingly we scrambled down the
precipitous mountain-side, galloped along the flat around the end of the
ridge and drew rein at about the place where we had first come across
the cougar trail on the previous day. Not a dog was to be heard
anywhere, and Goff’s belief that the pack was simply running a back
track became a certainty both in his mind and mine, when Jim suddenly
joined us, evidently having given up the chase. We came to the
conclusion that Jim, being wiser than the other dogs, had discovered his
mistake while they had not; “he just naturally quit,” said Goff.
After some little work we found where the pack had crossed the broad
flat valley into a mass of very rough broken country, the same in which
I had shot my first big male by moonlight. Cantering and scrambling
through this stretch of cliffs and valleys, we began to hear the dogs,
and at first were puzzled because once or twice it seemed as though they
were barking treed or had something at bay; always, however, as we came
nearer we could again hear them running a trail, and when we finally got
up tolerably close we found that they were all scattered out. Boxer was
far behind, and Nellie, whose feet had become sore, was soberly
accompanying him, no longer giving tongue. The others were separated one
from the other, and we finally made out Tree’em all by himself, and not
very far away. In vain Goff called and blew his horn; Tree’em
disappeared up a high hillside, and with muttered comments on his
stupidity we galloped our horses along the valley around the foot of the
hill, hoping to intercept him. No sooner had we come to the other side,
however, than we heard Tree’em evidently barking treed. We looked at one
another, wondering whether he had come across a bobcat, or whether it
had really been a fresh cougar trail after all.
Leaving our horses we scrambled up the canyon until we got in sight of a
large pinyon on the hillside, underneath which Tree’em was standing,
with his preposterous tail arched like a pump-handle, as he gazed
solemnly up in the tree, now and then uttering a bark at a huge cougar,
which by this time we could distinctly make out standing in the
branches. Turk and Queen had already left us and were running hard to
join Tree’em, and in another minute or two all of the hounds, except the
belated Boxer and Nellie, had also come up. The cougar having now
recovered his wind, jumped down and cantered off. He had been running
for three hours before the dogs and evidently had been overtaken again
and again, but had either refused to tree, or if he did tree had soon
come down and continued his flight, the hounds not venturing to meddle
with him, and he paying little heed to them. It was a different matter,
however, with Turk and Queen along. He went up the hill and came to bay
on the top of the cliffs, where we could see him against the sky-line.
The hounds surrounded him, but neither they nor Turk came to close
quarters. Queen, however, as soon as she arrived rushed straight in, and
the cougar knocked her a dozen feet off. Turk tried to seize him as soon
as Queen had made her rush; the cougar broke bay, and they all
disappeared over the hill-top, while we hurried after them. A quarter of
a mile beyond, on the steep hillside, they again had him up a
pinyon-tree. I approached as cautiously as possible so as not to alarm
him. He stood in such an awkward position that I could not get a fair
shot at the heart, but the bullet broke his back, and the dogs seized
him as he struck the ground. There was still any amount of fight in him,
and I ran in as fast as possible, jumping and slipping over the rocks
and the bushes as the cougar and dogs rolled and slid down the steep
mountain-side—for, of course, every minute’s delay meant the chance of a
dog being killed or crippled. It was a day of misfortunes for Jim, who
was knocked completely out of the fight by a single blow. The cougar was
too big for the dogs to master, even crippled as he was; but when I came
up close Turk ran in and got the great beast by one ear, stretching out
the cougar’s head, while he kept his own forelegs tucked way back so
that the cougar could not get hold of them. This gave me my chance and I
drove the knife home, leaping back before the creature could get round
at me. Boxer did not come up for half an hour, working out every inch of
the trail for himself, and croaking away at short intervals, while
Nellie trotted calmly beside him. Even when he saw us skinning the
cougar he would not hurry nor take a short cut, but followed the scent
to where the cougar had gone up the tree, and from the tree down to
where we were; then he meditatively bit the carcass, strolled off, and
lay down, satisfied.
It was a very large cougar, fat and heavy, and the men at the ranch
believed it was the same one which had at intervals haunted the place
for two or three years, killing on one occasion a milch cow, on another
a steer, and on yet another a big work horse. Goff stated that he had on
two or three occasions killed cougars that were quite as long, and he
believed even an inch or two longer, but that he had never seen one as
large or as heavy. Its weight was 227 pounds, and as it lay stretched
out it looked like a small African lioness. It would be impossible to
wish a better ending to a hunt.
The next day Goff and I cantered thirty miles into Meeker, and my
holiday was over.