MOUNTAIN LION LADY: Chapter 8 (second half)

Mickey Mouse asleep in the tree

This lion had earned the name Mickey Mouse. We followed the hounds who were following the lion up Long Gulch over a couple or ridges and down a side gulch before he finally treed again. This time he picked a taller tree and climbed way up to the top. I darted him in the flank with a reduced dose since I figured he must have gotten some of the first one. We tied up the hounds and started throwing snowballs at him to try to get him to come down. He must have figured bailing out didn't help the first time so he wasn't going to try it again. He fell asleep high in the branches. Chuck volunteered to climb up and fetch him down. We didn't have the heavy tree climbers so with the rope looped over his shoulder Chuck had to make the most of each little branch and rough place on the trunk. The plan was to get the rope around the lion's chest and lower him to the ground but his chest was the part of his anatomy that was farthest away from Chuck. Another problem was that the branch didn't look like it could hold both a big lion and a big man and the big lion had first dibs. Chuck decided to try to lasso the rope around a hind leg while he stayed as close to the trunk as possible. Gray climbed up the hill to get a better vantage point to take a picture while I watched and fretted.

Chuck maneuvering the rope

Chuck successfully got the rope around the Mickey Mouse's foot and tried to ease him off the branch without the branch and both of them coming down. It was with a sigh of relief as I watched the lion descend toward the ground. Unfortunately my sigh was premature. The rope broke part way down and he tumbled the rest of the way like a sack of potatoes. No bones seemed to be broken but he was probably pretty bruised from the fall. The first dart was still hanging from his foreleg. The carbon dioxide charge that is supposed to go off on impact to shove the plunger down hadn't fired so Mickey Mouse had only gotten a wee dribble of the drug. 

He started to come out of the anesthesia before we were quite done. We had made our measurements and hurriedly took our samples then backed off to make sure he recovered. In a short while he got up and wove off down the hill. He moved like a drunk but not an injured one.

By this time it was quite dark so we hiked about 6 miles to the nearest rancher and called the local game warden for a ride back to camp. We returned the next day to get the truck.

Two days later we went hunting in a nearby area with two local guide-and-outfitters. It had snowed the day before so tracking conditions were pretty good. We found a track crossing the road and turned some of the hounds loose. After a short half-hour chase we heard them baying treed. When I peered up into the tree I could see a red nylon collar on the cat. Mickey Mouse stared defiantly down at us! He had traveled some 15 miles in the last couple of days so we knew he was going to be all right.

Mickey Mouse re-treed