LAST EDITED ON Mar-10-04 AT 04:27PM (MST)[p]
LAST EDITED ON Mar-10-04 AT 04:26?PM (MST)
LAST EDITED ON Mar-10-04 AT 04:21?PM (MST)
I have hunted the same general area in an OTC unit in Colorado for the past four years. In that time I have taken a few different people out there, and everyone seen a mountain lion except for me.
This past September we were once again hunting the same mountain and the Elk were really into the rut. We had gotten a nice 5 x 4 on September 10th and spent most that day packing it back to camp and taking care of the meat.
We woke up to more rain on the 11th and I walked down the mountain and made about a 4 mile loop back to camp, only seeing a couple Deer. That afternoon I once again headed out to the same general area where we had seen a huge heard of Elk the previous day. I heard some bugling across the valley at about 4pm and I headed after them. By the time I closed the distance to about 1/4 mile it was obvious that this was a huge heard of Elk. It sounded like there were at least 10 different bulls screaming back and forth.
I got right up to the heard and found a nice area to set up and start calling. Nothing. They just kept moving down the mountain. I closed the gap and set up again and again got the same reaction. Finally, on the 5th try and after covering about 3/4 of a mile I heard the bugles of one bull getting louder and louder. I got ready and when I spotted him I could see it was a small 4 pointer. I have only Elk hunted for 4 years, but had taken a nice Elk each time and was hoping for something a little better this time. I quit calling to him and he finally lost interest and headed back to the rest of the heard.
By this time it was only about thirty minutes to dark and I was over 3 miles from camp so I decided to take one more stab before I headed back to camp. Once again I got to within a hundred and fifty yards or so of the heard and set up to try to call one in.
This time I got much different results. This time it sounded like several bulls were coming in to my love sick rendition of a cute Cow Elk. I quickly moved foreword to a different spot which looked like it had better visibility of a small clearing right in front of me. I backed into some knee-high brush and started calling again.
The Elk kept coming and just as I thought they were going to come into view I heard a twig snap behind me. Thinking one had slipped in behind me to try to catch my scent I turned around only to see something large and brown already in the air and about to pounce on me! I only had time to thrust my bow up at it and before I knew it I was being mauled by a Mountain Lion. She hit me right in the chest and knocked me over and in a split second there was a second one on me.
They had me pinned down and the little one was going after the back of my neck while the big one was clawing at my left arm. I got my right arm out from under me and I hit the big one in the face as she tried to bite me. I managed to roll over so I could use my hands and arms to protect my head and neck but things were happening so fast that I really couldn't do anything. I screamed something at them and just like that they were off of me and running in the direction they came from.
I grabbed my bow and ran as fast as I could the more than 3 miles back to camp where the rest of my friends and family were waiting with dinner ready. I was pretty calm about the whole thing till I saw the light from the Colman Lantern. As soon as I got into the camp I just collapsed. Partially from exhaustion, partially from shock. I think it hit me right then that this was very serious and it was not over yet.
As I lay on the ground gasping for air my dad, brother, cousin, and friend ran over to see what was wrong. After a couple minutes I was able to get it out that I had been attacked. They got a light over there and saw all the blood on my arms and face and quickly got my clothes off to see what kind of injuries I had.
My cousin cleaned my injuries with our handy first aid kit and my dad called 911 on the cell phone. I can laugh about it now, but who the hell calls 911 when you are camped on the top of a mountain and 4 hours from the road? I didn't have any life-threatening injuries so we refused the helicopter transport and they said they would send someone up at first light.
Sure enough not long after daylight a Conservation Officer arrived. She took a bunch of pictures on my injuries and got a statement from me. We ascertained that it was a mother and cub mountain Lion. From the size of the tracks the mother was estimated to be about 100 pounds and the cub about 50 pounds.
She (the conservation officer) figured that the pair was following the heard hoping to catch a calf or straggler away from the heard. I had some blood on my pants from butchering the bull that we got the day before and that and my calling must have convinced the Mountain Lions that I was an Elk. At least I can fool them, right? It was the first known attack on a person in Colorado in five years according to the conservation officer.
We hunted one more day but I was a little gun shy so we decided to call it a hunt and chock it off as a very good learning experience. We went back to Minnesota, where by the time we got back I was already a bit of a celebrity. We tried to keep it quiet but once the word got out everyone was calling. I had a couple reporters from Colorado call me and they each wrote a story on it for their respective news papers, the Colorado Springs Gazette and the Rockey Mountain News.
To top this all off, after about a weeks rest in MN I talked my dad into going back out there and I killed a fat cow and a nice bull. (the area we hunt has extra cow tags available)The whole ordeal is easy to joke about now, but I did have more than one night's sleep ruined from the sight of that thing flying through the air in my head!
Sorry for the long story-
Michael
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