COUESAZ Report post Posted January 3, 2006 Anyone that is as good as Joshes dad and some others Here in az have the best dry ground dogs you will ever come across. Thats lon hunting if you ask me.DRY GROUND. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
KGAINES Report post Posted January 4, 2006 Doug, are you saying that cat has been doing the new years thing as long as Dick Clark. Josh, Congrats to you and your Dad. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
az4life Report post Posted January 4, 2006 Josh congrats on another lion kill. Keept knocking them off from 6a all you want to! Some day I would like to settle a score with one of them big cats. When you are tracking them, do you use the new "Tom Tom Go" GPS I have seen the commercials for to get directions? GROAN.... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
.270 Report post Posted January 4, 2006 woo, man that's a ugly lion. was he packin' a paper bag with him? most o' the time when they're old as the hills like that, they're pretty big. that cat looks a little smallish. not trying to run it down or anything. anytime ya get a lion it's a good deal, but it looks like a young cat, bodywise anyway. i can see by it's teeth that it's gotta lotta age on it. anyway, good job. shoot more of em. Lark. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
azcouesandelk Report post Posted January 5, 2006 Awesome job man. That is one knarly looking kitty there. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
billrquimby Report post Posted January 5, 2006 "Josh -- Have you ever had a hunter not involved with your chase shot a cat either before you got there or when the dogs are chasing him. ==Buckhorn " Josh congratulations. That lion is almost as old as I am. Buckhorn -- I had someone shoot what should have been my first bear out from under me -- literally. It was many years ago and I was following Jim Bedlion and his hounds on Doyle Peak in the San Francisco Mountains above Flagstaff. We started out on foot from the sheep camp on the north side and chased the bear over the top into the Inner Basin. When we got to the summit we could hear the dogs barking treed below us. We were starting down to them when we heard two shots, and then the dogs stopped barking and returned to us. Some #$%&*()@! had come along and shot my bear out of the tree! Anyone who knows that mountain knows how hard we worked and how we felt when that happened. I shot another, probably larger bear with Bedlion the next weekend, but I'll never forget that first, tough chase and its outcome. Bill Q Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GRONG Report post Posted January 6, 2006 RAC, it was in 6A. No problem BUCKHORN. ARIZONA GUIDE, That's an awfully nice comment, I'll pass it to my dad. You're right, dry ground hunting is as tough as it gets too. As dry as it has been the past few months have been PERFECT for what we love to do. Soon as it snows you'll have every wanna-be lion hunter out there running every road in the state 24 hrs a day. That's fine with us cause we'll already have caught them by the time it snows. .270, the head on that lion is pretty darn big. It's hard to tell from pics you see of guys holding a lion under the armpits that looks like it's got a african lion head on it. You cut away all the meat that's on a lions head and you'll see how big they really aren't.... most of the time they'll fool ya. This lion had no meat on his head or the rest of him for that matter. In his day he was probably well over 130lbs, when we got him he was lucky to be 80lbs. Seriously, if you can't tell from the pics the thing was all withered and just plain shrivelled up. It'd be like going into an old folk's home and taking out the oldest dude in there. I'm curious to see how big the skull is and how old he was. Hopefully our luck will continue and I'll post a few more pics of dead lions before it's all said and done. Later guys Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DEERSLAM Report post Posted January 6, 2006 Yes, more dead lions Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
.270 Report post Posted January 9, 2006 josh, i can see it has a fair sized head on it, but the body looks all shriveled up. usually when them ol' toms get that old, they are really big. how long was he? did you get a measurement on the skull. i've never seen a tom that old with a head that big and carcass that small. looks like a basset lion. some years back my oldest son and i stumbled into a big tom while coues hunting. by far the oldest lion i ever saw. he was 9' long and weighed around 175 and was poor as heck. he was probably 225 in his prime. he looked a lot like this cat, all rough coated and beat up, but dang he was huge. forearm was bigger than my thigh. i caught a calf killer in new mex with a friend o' mine once. killed 3 of our dogs and hurt several others real bad. we took a game warden back the next day to show him the calf and such. he took some scales. it was only a 7 footer, but weighed 220 pounds. built like a jag. when my grandad was a little kid his dad used to pack him and his older brother into stanley butte and leave em for several months to trap. when it started to warm up he'd come and get em and pack out all the furs. they caught a really big lion in a trap and killed it. didn't have a tape measure so they took a rope and knotted it so they could measure it when they got home. said it was 10' long!!!! he had a heck of story to go with it too. they killed a sonoran grizzly on the same hunt that they figured was near 1000 pounds. and they were 14 an 11 at the time and all they had for firepower was 2 single shot .22's. i guess kids were tougher then. good deal on the lion. shoot more of em. Lark. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Buckhorn Report post Posted January 9, 2006 Buckhorn -- It was many years ago and I was following Jim Bedlion and his hounds on Doyle Peak in the San Francisco Mountains above Flagstaff. Bill, Jims a real good friend of my Grandfather's they used to work together. And that would put a damper on a hunt really quick; glad it ended up being a good hunt. That?s the difference in a good guide and a mediocre guide you can't have all your eggs in one animal! I?ll see you next week at the SCI show in Reno. Josh, Did your dad ever find out what happened to that lion that disappeared over the ridge a couple weeks ago? Buckhorn Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GRONG Report post Posted January 9, 2006 Buckhorn, I don't remember what lion you're talking about. We've chased several lions(key word there is chased) lately and I can't think of one that disappeared over a ridge. .270, Believe me, I'm not calling anyone a liar here at all but some of that stuff sounds like one heck of a "hunting story" if I've ever heard one. If they were 14 and 11 at the time and killed a 10' long cat and a 1000lb grizzly with a single shot .22, sounds like a whole lot of "hunting stories" going on there. Again, not calling anyone a liar but as far as the weights of lions go, a whole lot of people think a female will weigh 150 lbs here in the desert. Maybe in Alberta but here south of the Colorado River, I don't know. My Dad has been professionally hunting lions for over 35 years and has caught his far share of cats and this is the biggest one he ever caught, by far. Tony Mandile actually killed it. Couldn't tell you how big the skull was as the taxidermist mixed up a smaller lion for this one and Tony didn't get his skull or his full body mount, what a shame!!!! Obviously it's a huge cat, probably pushing 180+lbs but I'm telling you it's the biggest cat he's ever caught. Caught it on Bunker Hill, south of Flagstaff, in 6B. I killed a 120-130lb lion, (we actually weighed that one whole but the scale only went to 120lbs so we guessed at the actual weight) back in '98 and Dad was pretty impressed with that one. At the time it was "just another lion" to me. There's actually a short video clip of me shooting him with my bow on my site. http://rimrock-outfitters.com/images/joshslion.mov Regardless, I've seen a lot of dead lions in my life time and some that I know were smaller than my 120+lb lion and the hunter claimed was around 200lbs. I think it's just an ignorant error that a lot of people make just cause they don't know. The old lion we killed last week, the guy told me that he thinks it'll be 15 1/2". Now I know it's got a big head on it but I'm not gonna say till the thing is boiled out. As you probably well know, a 15" skull is pretty freakin huge! I think it's over 14" but I don't know how much more. We didn't measure the lion either but I'll ask the guy to run a tape over the hide. I know that won't be an actual body measurement, cause you can stretch a hide, but I'll ask him. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GRONG Report post Posted January 9, 2006 Here's a picture of my good friend Pat Feldt and his enormous lion he got a few years back. He said he weighed it and gutted, it was 130lbs. Now if many of you are'nt familiar with a cat's inner organs, there's not much to them. So Pat's lion was probably in the 145-150lb range. Freakin huge for an Arizona mountain lion. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Buckhorn Report post Posted January 9, 2006 Here's a picture of my good friend Pat Feldt and his enormous lion he got a few years back. He said he weighed it and gutted, it was 130lbs. Now if many of you are'nt familiar with a cat's inner organs, there's not much to them. So Pat's lion was probably in the 145-150lb range. Freakin huge for an Arizona mountain lion. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Man thats a good looking lion! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DEERSLAM Report post Posted January 10, 2006 Josh, Those are some awesome cats I'd love to have one but living in CA., well you know the story. It sucks Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
muley Report post Posted January 10, 2006 I killed one with Rick Murphy last year that weighed in at 180 lbs, I would put a picture but this site always says there to big, the picture that is. You can look at it at www.arizonatrophyguideservice.com It doesn't matter how big the lion is, it'll still eat a deer in a second. Tell your Dad good job. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
